The EDUCATE Act 2025: A Dangerous Prescription for Medical Education and Vulnerable Communities
- Dr. Sharon Washington
- Jul 15
- 8 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Dr. Sharon Washington July 15,2025
In March 2024, Rep. Greg Murphy, MD (R-NC), introduced the EDUCATE Act (Embracing anti-Discrimination, Unbiased Curricula, and Advancing Truth in Education Act)—now reintroduced as S. 1811 in 2025—legislation that would bar federal funding from any medical schools or teaching hospitals that incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in admissions, curricula, hiring, or research.
At face value, the bill claims to uphold “fairness.” In practice, it would gut decades of progress in medical education, workforce diversity, and culturally responsive care in healthcare training.
This is not just ideological rhetoric. The EDUCATE Act is one of the most dangerous anti-DEI bills targeting healthcare education, posing an immediate threat to historically marginalized learners, vulnerable patient populations, and the ethical foundations of modern medicine.
Since then, the bill has been reintroduced to the 119th Congress with renewed language—and the same dangerous implications for equitable medical education and health disparities research.
Table of Contents
What the EDUCATE Act Means for Medical Education
The EDUCATE Act 2025 (S. 1811) would cause medical schools to lose access to federal funding—including grants and student loans—unless they certify they:
Do not require faculty, students, or staff to affirm concepts such as:
America being systemically racist
Collective guilt based on race or identity
Preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, or gender
Do not offer race- or identity-based distinctions in admissions, hiring, courses, or benefits
Do not maintain DEI offices or require diversity statements for students or staff
Provision | Impact & Implications |
DEI Office Ban | Blocks entire structural DEI efforts—staffing, programming, budgets. |
Admission/Hiring Policies | No consideration of race/ethnicity/gender in admissions, hiring, or promotions. |
Cultural Competency Courses | Bans mandatory bias or equity training embedded in curriculum. |
Research on Disparities | Although not expressly banning research, federal funding may dry up indirectly due to funding requirements. |
Accrediting agencies would also be blocked from requiring equity-focused policies as conditions of accreditation. While demographic data collection remains technically allowed, these institutions cannot use the data to ensure representation of diverse patient populations or repair historic exclusion.
In short, the EDUCATE Act 2025 is a federal DEI ban for medical education, designed to dismantle inclusive training practices in healthcare and undermine culturally responsive medical training.
How the EDUCATE Act Threatens Culturally Responsive Care
As CHEST Advocates outlines, patients do not arrive in neutral bodies. Their experiences of illness, healing, and healthcare are shaped by race, language, geography, immigration status, trauma history, disability, gender identity, and countless other social factors. Medical care that ignores these realities is not “objective”—it is incomplete.
Culturally responsive training isn’t about political correctness—it’s about clinical accuracy. It equips future physicians to:
Diagnose conditions whose presentation varies across skin tones or ethnic groups
Recognize historical mistrust and communicate with compassion
Adapt treatment plans to account for language access, religious practice, or community care patterns
Provide safer, more respectful care to LGBTQ+, Indigenous, and other often-overlooked patients
When we remove this training, we don’t create fairness—we create danger. Recoiling from these advancements doesn’t make care more “neutral.” It makes it less informed, less safe, and less effective.
This retreat will:
Widen existing racial health disparities in maternal mortality, cancer detection, diabetes management, and mental health access for BIPOC communities
Exacerbate inequities for non-English-speaking, low-income, and rural patients
Undermine progress in transgender and gender-affirming care, leaving clinicians ill-prepared to serve these populations with competence or dignity
Without DEI in healthcare training, clinicians risk worsening health disparities, perpetuating bias, and deepening medical mistrust.
The Impact on Marginalized Medical Students
At Sharon Washington Consulting, we’ve coached hundreds of medical learners—many of them first-generation, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, or living with chronic illness or disability—who are navigating the compounded pressures of medical training while carrying identity-based burdens that their peers and institutions often overlook.
We’ve seen firsthand how racism, bias, and the “hidden curriculum”—the unspoken norms, hierarchies, and power dynamics of medical culture—can derail a learner’s confidence, well-being, and trajectory. DEI services in medical education serve as essential counterweights to that unspoken curriculum. They offer:
Affinity spaces and mentorship for students who may never see themselves reflected in faculty
Identity-affirming wellness programs that address the real trauma of exclusion and microaggressions
Accommodations advocacy for learners with disabilities or learning differences navigating rigid, often ableist systems
Culturally informed advising that can be the difference between burnout and breakthrough
Eliminating these supports under the false banner of “neutrality” doesn’t level the playing field. It throws marginalized learners back into isolation, where they are expected to navigate systems built without them in mind—often while being tasked to represent and defend their communities in moments of institutional harm.
As APAMSA writes in their response to the EDUCATE Act, this bill “seeks to remove the very resources that help support first-generation, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ trainees in medicine.”
The consequences are measurable—and devastating:
Black, Indigenous, and Latino learners are less likely to match into residency training programs than their white counterparts.
Black learners already face higher attrition rates in medical school and residency. A 2023 JAMA study found that Black residents are more likely to leave residency programs than their white peers, often due to unaddressed bias, isolation, and lack of institutional support.
Learners with ADHD, dyslexia, chronic illness, or sensory processing challenges frequently face stigma when requesting accommodations—stigma that DEI offices often help buffer. Without such support, these learners are more likely to be mislabeled, dismissed, or pushed out entirely.
LGBTQ+ learners report high rates of mistreatment and identity-based harassment, which correlates with lower program satisfaction, poor mental health outcomes, and higher attrition.
Without structural support, these learners are not just navigating academic rigor—they’re carrying invisible labor, emotional exhaustion, and often the weight of proving they belong in a system that hasn’t meaningfully accounted for their humanity.
The EDUCATE Act 2025 doesn’t just cut funding. It cuts safety nets. It withdraws lifelines. And it risks the erosion of an already fragile pipeline of diverse physicians who reflect—and are equipped to care for—our most vulnerable communities.
The Chilling Effect on Health Disparities Research
The EDUCATE Act 2025 doesn’t just aim to silence classroom dialogue—it threatens to erase entire fields of critical inquiry by defunding federally supported research that names racism, bias, or identity-based oppression as drivers of health outcomes.
If passed, this legislation would:
Prohibit federal funding for research that explicitly addresses systemic racism in medicine or public health
Penalize institutions for collecting demographic data tied to race, gender identity, or socioeconomic status
Undermine studies that examine culturally specific models of care, such as community-based maternal health, harm reduction strategies, or trans-affirming services
This isn’t hypothetical. We’re already seeing the impact. Across institutions I’ve supported, clients are reporting devastating funding losses—some as high as 50–75%—for projects focused on:
Black maternal mortality and perinatal support
HIV/AIDS prevention and care in under-resourced communities
Gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary patients
LGBTQIA+ mental health and youth support
Environmental racism and chronic illness in low-income neighborhoods
As funding vanishes, so do:
Jobs—many held by researchers from the very communities the studies aim to support
Community partnerships that offer culturally tailored care
Essential services for uninsured, low-income, and system-impacted populations
This deliberate withdrawal of support sends a chilling message: your lives, your questions, and your solutions don’t matter here. And worse, it hollows out our collective medical knowledge base. Without sustained investment in equity-centered research, we risk producing a generation of physicians trained without a nuanced understanding of the very systems that shape patient outcomes. We lose:
Insight into why Black women die in childbirth at 3–4 times the rate of white women
Tools to intervene in the overdose crisis disproportionately impacting Indigenous and low-income communities
Strategies to support trans youth, many of whom are already navigating hostile healthcare and policy landscapes
This is not just a political issue—it’s a scientific and ethical crisis. To defund this work is to willfully blind our healthcare system to the realities of the populations it claims to serve.
And once the infrastructure is dismantled, rebuilding it will take decades—time we cannot afford, especially as health disparities deepen under the weight of climate change, economic inequity, and rising medical mistrust.
The Bigger Picture: From DEI to Disinformation
The EDUCATE Act 2025 is not operating in a vacuum. It is part of a larger national movement to:
Dismantle civil rights-era advancements
Ban inclusive curricula in K–12 and higher education
Undermine public trust in science and medicine
Criminalize equity work under the language of “meritocracy” or “colorblindness”
These efforts are strategic. As The Hill notes in its analysis, this legislation doesn’t make medicine “fairer”—it makes it less prepared to care for a diverse population.
And it’s not just learners or activists raising alarm. The American Medical Association, Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), American Academy of Emergency Medicine, and countless faculty and physician coalitions have voiced opposition.
How SWC Is Responding
At Sharon Washington Consulting, we’ve partnered with over 25 institutions to build longitudinal equity-rooted curricula, support marginalized learners, and equip faculty to navigate this fraught moment with clarity and care.
Our approach is grounded in the BRIDGE Framework—connecting behavioral accountability, racial literacy, and somatic resilience to system-level transformation.
We know this work makes an impact:
Greater retention of diverse learners
Improved feedback culture
More connected, trauma-informed care teams
Restored trust between institutions and their contributors
But we also know that in this climate, even the most well-intentioned institutions feel uncertain.
What We Must Do Now: From Concern to Collective Action
This is not a symbolic moment. It’s a turning point. Here’s how institutions, educators, and healthcare leaders can respond:
1. Name It Loudly
Issue institutional statements that name the EDUCATE Act for what it is: a threat to science, ethics, and health equity.
Use terms like censorship, disinvestment in science, and legislated harm—this isn’t about “neutrality.”
2. Mobilize Learners and Faculty
Use didactic sessions to:
Discuss the bill and its implications.
Host guest speakers or panels about policy, DEI, and resistance.
Organize call-in or letter-writing actions to Congress during lunch or training blocks.
Launch petitions or joint letters through professional networks, residency programs, or student orgs (SNMA, LMSA, APAMSA, etc.).
3. Leverage Op-Eds and Public Statements
Publish op-eds from deans, residents, and faculty.
Use storytelling and research to show how DEI saves lives and builds trust.
Share examples of harm when DEI is absent—from misdiagnoses to patient refusal of care.
4. Form Regional and National Coalitions
Medical schools, residency programs, and hospitals must link arms.
Convene cross-institutional coalitions to strategize resistance—through academic associations, consortia, and public advocacy.
Protect whistleblowers, learners, and staff at risk of retaliation for continuing DEI work.
5. Build Internal Training and Infrastructure
Develop online modules on bias mitigation and racial literacy, hosted independently if needed.
Train staff and faculty to respond to this legislative moment with courage, not silence.
Fund DEI and health equity work through private philanthropy if federal dollars are restricted.
Let’s Stay Grounded and Growing
This is not the time to retreat. It’s the time to organize, educate, and re-root our work in community care and ethical accountability. Whether you’re a clinician, faculty member, DEI leader, or ally, your voice matters.
Bias is real. Harm has happened. But so has repair—and that must continue.
Explore 1:1 coaching or team consulting to navigate this moment with courage and clarity:
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We may not control Congress.
But we control what we teach.
What we fund.
What we refuse to normalize.
And how fiercely we protect each other.
Now is not the time to back down. It's time to build.
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