Demand the LCME Require Every Future Doctor to Learn When Medical Tools Fail Patients
The Issue
I'm a resident physician. And almost everything I've spent the last several years teaching millions of people on social media: The pulse oximeter that reads oxygen differently in patients with darker skin, the kidney equation that delayed kidney transplants for Black patients, the spirometry racial adjustment rooted in 19th-century pseudoscience... came from digging through research papers.
Now, the explicit accreditation requirement that medical schools teach about health disparities and health inequities has been removed.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the body that sets the standards every U.S. medical school must meet for accreditation, finalized new standards in March 2026 that removed the explicit expectation that students learn about "the importance of health care disparities and health inequities," replacing it with broader language about self-directed learning. The revised standards won't take effect until the 2027-2028 academic year, which means there's still time to reconsider this change.
This doesn't prevent medical schools from teaching these topics. Many undoubtedly will. But accreditation standards define the minimum knowledge every future physician is expected to have before graduating. "Optional" and "required" are not the same thing, and requirements are how a profession decides what every doctor should know.
At the same time, Congress is debating many of these same issues. However people feel about that broader debate, I think one question deserves to rise above politics:
Should every future doctor be required to learn medical evidence that affects how they care for patients?
This isn't about politics. A pulse oximeter has no political party. A kidney equation has no ideology. They're clinical tools. If the evidence shows they work differently for some patients, every future physician should learn that evidence.
I'm asking the LCME to restore an explicit requirement that every accredited medical school teach evidence-based health disparities and the clinical lessons that have changed modern medicine. Every patient deserves a physician trained on the medical evidence that affects how they're diagnosed, monitored, and treated.
If you agree, sign this petition.
Paid partnership. Joel Bervell is a Change Ambassador who receives compensation in connection with this petition.
8,833
The Issue
I'm a resident physician. And almost everything I've spent the last several years teaching millions of people on social media: The pulse oximeter that reads oxygen differently in patients with darker skin, the kidney equation that delayed kidney transplants for Black patients, the spirometry racial adjustment rooted in 19th-century pseudoscience... came from digging through research papers.
Now, the explicit accreditation requirement that medical schools teach about health disparities and health inequities has been removed.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the body that sets the standards every U.S. medical school must meet for accreditation, finalized new standards in March 2026 that removed the explicit expectation that students learn about "the importance of health care disparities and health inequities," replacing it with broader language about self-directed learning. The revised standards won't take effect until the 2027-2028 academic year, which means there's still time to reconsider this change.
This doesn't prevent medical schools from teaching these topics. Many undoubtedly will. But accreditation standards define the minimum knowledge every future physician is expected to have before graduating. "Optional" and "required" are not the same thing, and requirements are how a profession decides what every doctor should know.
At the same time, Congress is debating many of these same issues. However people feel about that broader debate, I think one question deserves to rise above politics:
Should every future doctor be required to learn medical evidence that affects how they care for patients?
This isn't about politics. A pulse oximeter has no political party. A kidney equation has no ideology. They're clinical tools. If the evidence shows they work differently for some patients, every future physician should learn that evidence.
I'm asking the LCME to restore an explicit requirement that every accredited medical school teach evidence-based health disparities and the clinical lessons that have changed modern medicine. Every patient deserves a physician trained on the medical evidence that affects how they're diagnosed, monitored, and treated.
If you agree, sign this petition.
Paid partnership. Joel Bervell is a Change Ambassador who receives compensation in connection with this petition.
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Petition created on July 10, 2026