Op-Ed: Why affirmative action bans hurt health equity
LA TimesA protester holds a sign in support of affirmative action outside the Supreme Court in 2015. To negate decades of exclusion for individuals from underrepresented racial groups, particularly Black Americans, one strategy public postsecondary schools have used to diversify their student bodies is affirmative action — considering race and ethnicity as one of many factors in admissions. In our recent study in Annals of Internal Medicine, we found that for public medical schools in states that implemented affirmative action bans, enrollment of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups decreased by more than a third in the five years after the ban compared with the year before the ban. But policies that reduce the number of physicians from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups — as we have found affirmative action bans to do at medical schools — will probably harm health outcomes of patients from those same groups. U.S. News & World Report released its first ranking of this kind in 2021, evaluating medical schools based on the percentage of enrolled students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.
History of this topic
Opinion: Why rolling back diversity programs shows pure cowardice
LA TimesSupreme Court’s affirmative action ruling leaves colleges looking for new ways to promote diversity
Associated PressDivided Supreme Court outlaws affirmative action in college admissions, says race can’t be used
Associated Press
Editorial: Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban is a catastrophic blow to the American dream
LA Times
Op-Ed: The Supreme Court will end affirmative action. What happens next?
LA Times
Op-Ed: If the Supreme Court bans affirmative action, it continues the U.S. legacy of racial discrimination
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