Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of an article originally published by the College Fix on October 3, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission.
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) Medicine’s Black Doctors Directory can no longer exclude members based on race following a recent district court ruling in favor of the medical advocacy group Do No Harm.
Following a lawsuit filed by the group, the directory is “equally open to physicians regardless of race,” the ruling states.
The directory’s parent company, WURD Radio, in collaboration with Penn Medicine and the Consortium of DEI Health Educators, has renamed the initiative to the “Community Health and Wellness Directory,” it states.
Reached for comment, Do No Harm referred the College Fix to a recent news release.
“Do No Harm has long opposed ‘racial concordance,’ a thoroughly debunked theory that only breeds suspicion and prejudice. When medical providers prioritize expertise and high-quality care, patients will see better health outcomes,” Chairman Stanley Goldfarb said.
Racial concordance is the theory that medical professionals provide better care to patients of the same race.
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Echoing the medical advocacy group, Project 21 Ambassador Linda Tarver told the College Fix via email, “racial concordance is a flawed approach.”
Project 21 advocates for black conservatism and is a project of the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Proponents of racial concordance argue that pairing patients with providers of the same race could reduce healthcare disparities by offering “culturally sensitive and appropriate care.” This premise is fundamentally flawed, Tarver said.
“The evidence does not demonstrate a Black Doctors Directory has eliminated inequities in diseases among Black people. What correlation is there to black doctors and proper diet, nutrition, exercise, intentional lifestyle changes, and good choices in the black community?” she said.
Additionally, “Are Caucasian doctors unqualified to promote healthy living and lifestyles?” she said.
Tackling systemic disparities in healthcare access doesn’t come from matching patients with doctors of the same skin color, Tarver said.
Instead, improving health equity requires an open discussion about when, what, and where to introduce beneficial lifestyle changes, choices, and habits within the black community, Tarver told the Fix.
“Medicine is perhaps the most important industry in the world. It is indeed the most complex and should be the least racially driven,” she said.
“The human anatomy consists of organismal levels: organ systems, organs, tissues, and cells. None of these include Black organs, Hispanic tissues, or Asian cells,” she said.
Tarver clarified that “dealing with true racial discrimination in the health industry is essential.”
For example, black men lead in rates of amputations compared to rates of limb recovery and prevention efforts. But black doctors aren’t effectively tackling this issue. It requires a collective effort from everyone to support those who are ill and in need, she said.
“We seek healing from a competent and experienced health provider! No color or race or religion denied!” Tarver said.
Following the ruling, Penn Medicine spokesperson Holly Auer told the Daily Pennsylvanian that the school is “pleased that this matter has been closed.”
She added that “this valuable online resource will continue to be available to help patients gather important information about potential health care providers and make decisions about where to receive care.”
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“Penn Medicine is deeply committed to providing comfortable, convenient options for patients and communities that we serve, and to offering care that addresses each patient’s unique needs while tackling longstanding health disparities that impact individuals of color,” Auer said.
The College Fix reached out to the Community Health and Wellness Directory, Penn Medicine, and WURD Radio via email on multiple occasions, but has received no response.
Earlier this year, an open records investigation found that a widely-cited study used to support racial concordance appears to have left out data that “undermine[d] the narrative,” the College Fix previously reported.
A 2020 study, spearheaded by George Mason University business professor Brad Greenwood, concluded that the mortality rate for black newborns drops by half when treated by black doctors, compared to white infants.
Yet, Freedom of Information Act documents reveal that a critical data point was removed from the main text, likely because it complicated the study’s policy implications.
Image: “Clinical Research Building of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA” by Rehua on Wikimedia Commons
