RALEIGH — Records obtained by a group of healthcare students and medical professionals have uncovered what it describes as radical and divisive racial justice training in North Carolina.
The group Do No Harm (DNH) shared the findings of a public records requests with North State Journal. Do No Harm describes itself as “a diverse group of physicians, healthcare professionals, medical students, patients, and policymakers united by a moral mission: Protect healthcare from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology.”
“We draw attention to the radical ideology of “anti-racism” in healthcare. It is increasingly embedded within medical education and training, medical research, medical practice, and medical public policy, and it’s promoting divisive and discriminatory ideas,” DNH’s website states.
Records obtained by DNH identified four public entities engaging in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training including Pitts County Public Health, UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, and North Carolina Principal Fellows Program.
A total of $150,050 was paid by the four entities to the Racial Equity Institute, LLC (REI) for their “Groundwater approach” anti-racism training between 2017-2021.
- Pitts County Public Health paid REI $23,700 for four training events in 2017-2018.
- UNC-Chapel Hill paid REI $96,000 for eight training events from March – June 2021.
- The North Carolina Principal Fellows Program, a collaboration with the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, paid REI $19,500 for two sessions in 2019.
- North Carolina State University’s Park Scholarship paid REI $10,850 for 10 training events between 2018-2021.
REI specializes in anti-racist training “to challenge patterns of power and grow equity” and its Phase 1 Workshop training is “designed to develop the capacity of participants to better understand racism in its institutional and structural forms.”
In Aug. of 2021, North State Journal uncovered similar training for staff and undergraduates at North Carolina State University conducted by a company called EverFi. That DEI training included topics like intersectionality, microaggressions and “whitesplaining.”
According to DNH, the “discriminatory ideology known as “anti-racism” is taking over the medical field” and the group claims 72% of top-ranked medical schools inject identity politics into admissions.
An example in North Carolina includes a racial justice task force created at Duke University’s School of Nursing. The task force has three guiding principles in its mission statement, the first of which is “Equity, equality and justice forms the foundation of our work.” Additionally, Duke’s task force will identify “mandatory” antiracism and educational justice trainings.
DNH also points to Cone Health’s network of hospitals and medical centers in the Greensboro area as having “gone woke” based on information provided by a whistleblower. Cone Health has apparently instituted training using REI’s Groundwater approach, book readings such as Ibram Kendi’s “How to be an antiracist,” and requiring DEI courses be taken.
“The 2021 Cone Health DEI Report encourages employees and organizational leaders to participate in “hardwiring DEI into everything we do” during 2022 by applying “an equity lens” to achieve the organization’s vision. This encourages staff to be political activists, not healthcare professionals,” according to DNH.
DNH’s Program Manager Laura Morgan told North State Journal that REI’s Groundwater Approach has been seen in other states and appears to be making a lot of money from it.
Morgan, a registered nurse, penned an article at the Wall Street Journal in September outlining how she was fired from her job earlier this year for refusing to take “Implicit Bias” training.
Morgan said the healthcare profession used the unrest during 2020 as a “springboard” to go farther with DEI training and practices by instituting DEI offices and officers.
“Ideologies are taking over healthcare schools and policy,” Morgan said. She later added new nurses entering the field are already coming in “a little bit programmed” since DEI training proliferates higher education institutions.
