The Center for Accountability in Medicine, a project of Do No Harm, promotes excellence, transparency, and integrity in healthcare. Through data-driven research and public rankings, the Center empowers policy solutions grounded in evidence and equal opportunity – not ideology.
Medical School Excellence Index
Dozens of medical schools across the country have sacrificed excellence and merit for the pursuit of identity politics. Many push divisive, discriminatory ideas and practices onto their students.
The Center for Accountability in Medicine’s Medical School Excellence Index shines a light on these harmful practices, revealing which medical education programs are putting identity politics over clinical excellence.
Here’s how it works:
- The Index ranks medical schools according to three main criteria: academic excellence, transparency, and rejection of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
- Excellence scores are determined by the MCAT scores and GPAs of matriculated students.
- Transparency scores are determined by the public availability of curricula and the degree to which the school differentiates performance among enrolled students.
- DEI scores are determined by whether the school has an office dedicated to DEI and the degree to which the school’s mission statement reflects a rejection of DEI.
Find out which medical schools are the worst offenders:
Resources
Leadership Team
Ian Kingsbury, PhD
Director of the Center for Accountability in Medicine
Ian Kingsbury is the Director of the Center for Accountability in Medicine. Kingsbury has also served as Do No Harm’s Director of Research since Spring 2023. In that role, he has taken the healthcare establishment to task over their lies about DEI and pediatric gender medicine. Kingsbury has published several reports and his op-eds are regularly featured in leading national media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, National Review, and the New York Post. His X account @PeerReReview is a valuable resource for debunking new “studies” from activists who try to pass off political agendas as research.
Jason Bedrick
Senior Fellow
Jason Bedrick is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Accountability in Medicine. He has been engaged in public policy for more than two decades, and his research has focused on education policy. He is also a Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He previously served as a legislator in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and was an Education Policy Research Fellow at the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy in New Hampshire. Bedrick received his master’s degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he was a fellow at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Bedrick resides in Phoenix with his wife and five children.
Jay Greene, PhD
Senior Fellow
Jay Greene is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Accountability in Medicine. Greene’s past research has covered a diverse set of topics in the areas of education and health policy. He has recently examined the effect of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on youth suicide rates as well as the ways in which DEI initiatives have distorted the mission of higher education. He is also a senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation. He previously served as Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, which he founded and led for 16 years. Greene received his BA in history from Tufts University and earned his PhD in government from Harvard University.
Naomi Risch
Research Associate
Naomi Grant Risch is a Research Associate at the Center for Accountability in Medicine. Risch holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland in Government & Politics and Spanish and a master’s in international relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), with concentrations in security and Latin America.
Identity Politics in Your State
Find out if institutions, facilities, and programs in your backyard have adopted discriminatory practices or controversial ideologies. Click below to learn more.
About the Center
From spurious claims to shoddy research, bad actors are using junk science to inject identity politics into every corner of healthcare. The notion that “diversity” initiatives improve patient health outcomes, or the notion that children benefit from dangerous sex change interventions, lack credible evidence.
That’s why we need to correct the record.
The Center for Accountability in Medicine, a project of Do No Harm, promotes excellence, transparency, and integrity in healthcare. Through data-driven research and public rankings, the Center empowers policy solutions grounded in evidence and equal opportunity – not ideology.
From medical schools to academic journals to healthcare associations and more, the Center ensures these institutions uphold scientific rigor, avoid discriminatory practices, and prioritize healthcare quality over political ideology.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices impact healthcare?
By definition, DEI places the interests of patients subordinate to regressive ideological goals. It implicitly – and often explicitly – treats the practice of medicine not as a means to treat patients, but as a vehicle to engineer desired social outcomes.
For example, it seeks to overcome different outcomes among racial and gender groups by actively discriminating in favor of some people and against others. Under the guise of increasing “diversity,” medical schools and other institutions engage in racial discrimination, excluding individuals based on racial background. Policies aimed at promoting “health equity” likewise favor certain racial groups over others.
These practices violate basic ethical principles, are fundamentally anti-science, and demonstrate a contempt for intellectual rigor. Moreover, they necessarily degrade the quality of medicine and medical education by prioritizing ideological goals over merit and excellence.
What is racial concordance?
Racial concordance refers to the dynamic when patients are treated by physicians of the same race. Many discriminatory hiring and admissions policies are (implicitly or explicitly) justified on the grounds that racial concordance improves health outcomes, thereby requiring medical institutions to hire or admit more physicians or students of certain racial groups. However, the notion that racial concordance improves health outcomes is not supported by the preponderance of existing evidence.
Why is it so harmful for children to undergo medical gender transition?
There is no credible evidence to support pediatric medical transition and its associated interventions (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures) to treat gender dysphoria in minors. Moreover, these interventions can cause life-altering damage to children’s bodies including infertility, diminished bone density, and more.
Despite this, hospitals and clinics across the country subject children to these interventions while major medical associations have largely endorsed this regime.
These practices are not grounded in evidence-based medicine, but instead are ideologically motivated. By exposing the shoddy science behind these procedures –and the bad actors ignoring this lack of evidence – the Center works to protect children from these medical interventions.
What is “holistic review” in medical school admissions?
“Holistic review” is an approach to medical school admissions that devalues academic achievement to make room for other, less merit-based factors. This approach is often justified on the grounds of pursuing “equity” and other non-medical goals and outcomes. Do No Harm’s research has shown that many schools that profess to employ holistic review penalize certain racial groups in the admissions process. This is evidence that these schools are continuing to engage in racial discrimination, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that race-conscious admissions violate the Constitution.
Why is the focus on “social determinants of health” in medicine and healthcare concerning?
“Social determinants of health” or SDOH refer to social, economic, and environmental conditions that can be construed as influencing individuals’ health.
Although SDOH may be correlated with disparities in health outcomes, the evidence that SDOH cause or “determine” poor health outcomes is shoddy and weak, at best. Much of the scholarship on the topic confuses social and economic conditions that correlate with poor health outcomes with the actual causes of those outcomes, ignoring other factors such as individual agency and health decisions that contribute to health outcomes.
Despite this, proponents of the SDOH theory of healthcare seek to inject it into medical education and healthcare more broadly. This can be harmful to patients, as it focuses on abstract and opaque policy questions removed from the practice of medicine rather than focusing on patients’ individual needs.
How does the Center build upon Do No Harm’s existing work?
The Center expands and builds upon Do No Harm’s work to shed light on the influence of identity politics in medical education and clinical practice. Specifically, the Center’s focus is on using research, data, and public rankings to provide transparency and promote accountability.
How can I support the Center’s mission?
You can support the Center for Accountability in Medicine through a donation to Do No Harm.
If you wish to donate online, please use our donation page.
If you wish to donate via mailed check, our address is:
Do No Harm
11357 Nuckols Road PMB 115
Glen Allen, VA 23059
Connect with Us
DoNoHarmMedicine.org
naomi@donoharmmedicine.org
Do No Harm is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. EIN: 87-4701865