AMA to meet amid backlash over racial health equity plan

The nation’s largest, most influential doctors’ group is holding its annual policymaking meeting amid backlash over its most ambitious plan ever — to help dismantle centuries-old racism and bias in all realms of the medical establishment.

The dissenters are a minority of physicians, including some white Southern delegates who accuse the American Medical Association of reverse discrimination.

Dr. Gerald Harmon, the group’s incoming president, a 69-year-old white native of rural South Carolina, seems intent on breaking down stereotypes and said pointedly in a phone interview, “This plan is not up for debate.”

The six-day meeting that began Friday is being held virtually. It offers a chance for doctors to adopt policies that spell out how the AMA should implement its health equity plan. But some white doctors say the plan goes too far.

Portions of the plan include the language of critical race theory. The dissenters took offense and attacked the plan in documents recently leaked online. One leaked draft of a letter intended for AMA executives called portions of the plan “divisive, accusatory and insulting.”

“White males are repeatedly characterized as repressive and to some degree responsible for the inequities. This … implies reverse discrimination,” the letter said.

U.S. physicians, including AMA members, are overwhelmingly white. With roughly 270,000 members, the AMA represents just over a quarter of U.S. doctors.

One measure at this week’s meeting would have the group create guidelines to help hospitals, academic medical centers and doctors’ offices create and prominently display anti-racist policies that clearly define racist behavior and “microaggressions” — subtle behaviors and actions that can be as damaging as overt racism and bias.

Another measure asks the AMA to bolster efforts to create a more diverse physician workforce.

Voting is scheduled for Monday through Wednesday. Harmon begins his one-year term as president on Tuesday.