Do No Harm activist group alleges ‘racial discrimination’ in program designed to support under-served communities
Conservative campaigners are targeting a decades-old federal scholarship program designed to provide Native Hawaiian students with funding to pursue healthcare careers and place practitioners in the state’s most medically under-served communities.
Do No Harm, a Virginia-based advocacy group for healthcare clinicians “focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice”, filed its federal lawsuit challenging the US health department’s Native Hawaiian Health Scholarship Program (NHHSP) last week.
The lawsuit represents several members of Do Not Harm, including a white woman entering a nursing program in the fall and two other non-Native Hawaiian individuals who expressed interest in the scholarship, according to the suit.
In a press release about the lawsuit, Do No Harm said the scholarship’s requirement that applicants be “Native Hawaiians” was a violation of federal law and tantamount to “racial discrimination”.
