University develops $200,000 course teaching medical professionals that ‘white supremacy’ has led to ‘structural racism’ in health care

The University of Minnesota spent $219,633 developing a training course that teaches medical professionals about “structural racism” within the health care industry as a result of “white supremacy,” according to documents obtained by watchdog Do No Harm and reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The course, created by Diversity Science, was developed to comply with Minnesota’s Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act, which went into effect earlier this year, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

Do No Harm program manager Laura Morgan told the DCNF, “This is a substantial amount of money for a publicly funded school of medicine to spend on an online training module.”

The hour-long diversity, equity, and inclusion training program discusses “racism and bias in perinatal care.”

According to the university’s Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity, “From the roots of U.S. history, white supremacy was used to justify and uphold the institution of slavery and colonialism,” which led to “myths that Black and Indigenous people were innately ‘less than’ white people.”

The document obtained by Do No Harm repeatedly refers to women as “birthing people.”

“Black birthing people are ~2x more likely to die due to pregnancy complications than their white counterparts, and Indigenous birthing people are ~4x more likely to die,” the training document stated. “Black & Indigenous babies are over 2x more likely to die before their 1st birthday than white babies.”

A video from Diversity Science claims, “80% of the deaths of black birthing people are preventable.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 84% of pregnancy-related deaths, including all races, are preventable.

The training program argues that “white supremacy,” “structural racism,” and “implicit racial bias” are “interconnected and mutually reinforcing.” These “unconscious” yet “automatic” implicit racial biases “influence the health care Black and Indigenous people receive,” it states.

The university’s course notes that “structural racism is a public health crisis” and calls upon health care professionals to “counteract the burdens” by implementing “culturally- and relationship-centered care,” “desegregating the workforce,” and considering “antiracism as a core professional competency.”

In addition to the training document, medical professionals view a video that provides a timeline detailing racism in the health care industry. The timeline, titled “Stereotype: Black people don’t feel pain in the same way as white people,” starts in 1619 and skips the civil rights movement and any progress made within the industry.

“Today: Studies still find racial inequities in pain care, including postpartum pain,” the timeline states.

The University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Health Department did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!