Top Medical Association Academic Blames Health Care Problems On ‘Cisgenderism’

A top employee for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) said that he had dedicated his career to unpacking people’s “invisible knapsacks” of white privilege, and blamed problems with American health care on “isms” like “cisgenderism.” 

Philip Alberti, the founding director of the AAMC’s Center for Health Justice, made these comments during an appearance last month on HealthAffairs’ “Research and Justice for All” podcast. The December 18 appearance comes as the AAMC, which facilitates medical education in the United States, has come under fire for its promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and leftist ideology.

During the podcast, Alberti told host Rhea Boyd that “isms” are a foundational cause of sickness in the country. 

“My training was around social conditions as fundamental causes of disease,” he said. “What social conditions am I talking about? I’m talking about racism, classism, sexism, cisgenderism, all the isms. That’s what we’re talking about.” 

“And these are fundamental causes for a couple of reasons. One is that they’re clever. So if you close off one pathway for racism to operate, that’s cool, it’s just going to find some other pathway,” he added, saying that the “isms” control resources, power, voice, money, and beneficial social relationships.

Earlier in the podcast, he said that his interest in DEI-related issues began when leftist academic Peggy McIntosh came to his high school and encouraged students to consider the “invisible knapsack of white privilege” that they had.

“That was a very early moment for me to say, I don’t know what I’m gonna do or how it’s gonna be, but I’m gonna dedicate myself to unpacking my own and others’ invisible knapsacks to really create pathways of opportunity wherever I can,” he said.

The AAMC administers the MCAT, a test used for admission to medical colleges, and sponsors the accrediting body for allopathic medical schools. It counts as members all 158 American medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the organization it co-sponsors. 

Do No Harm senior director of programs Laura Morgan criticized Alberti’s comments, saying he was “the product of a politicized higher education system that taught him illogical concepts that do not have a legitimate place in medical schools like ‘the invisible knapsack of white privilege.’”

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Morgan pointed out that the Alberti-run Center for Health Justice put out an “Advancing Health Equity” language guide in 2021 in partnership with the AAMC and the American Medical Association that suggested infusing agenda-driven commentary into health care discussions. 

The guide recommends changing a sentence like “Low-income people have the highest level of coronary artery disease in the United States” to “People underpaid and forced into poverty as a result of banking policies, real estate developers gentrifying neighborhoods, and corporations weakening the power of labor movements, among others, have the highest level of coronary artery disease in the United States.”

Morgan was also critical of Alberti’s assertion during the podcast that health equity “should infuse everything that we do.” 

“The work should pervade both kinds of organizational equity, diversity, and inclusion as well as what I see as the complementary field of population health, health equity, science, policy. Right? That should infuse everything that we do,” Alberti said. 

Morgan told The Daily Wire that she’d “rather see the AAMC put its time, effort, and resources into infusing excellence – not to mention scientific fact – into everything they do.”

Do No Harm released a report last month that exposed the AAMC’s embrace of DEI.

A report from The Daily Wire last week revealed the membership costs of being a part of the AAMC, which has 171 members in both the United States and Canada. An invoice obtained by Do No Harm showed that the University of Utah School of Medicine paid over $75,000 for a full year of membership.