Disparities and Health Equity

State of Mississippi, et al., v. Xavier Becerra, in his official capacity as Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al. (Filed: 11/12/2024)
In 2015, the bipartisan Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 was signed into law, altering how the government reimburses physicians under Medicare. The law created the MIPS program, which evaluated physician scores in four categories, including “Improvement Activities.” Physicians must complete 2-4 activities in this category, and one of 104 available activities is the option to “Create and Implement an Anti-Racism Plan.” In 2022, several physicians and states filed a complaint against the measure, alleging that anti-racism efforts are discriminatory and violate constitutional principles of racial equality.

ACP has extensive policy on addressing racism and health and racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care. ACP explicitly commits to being an antiracist organization and undertaking efforts to eliminate racism from the practice of medicine. In this amicus brief, the interested parties argue that anti-racism initiatives are essential to improving clinical practice and health outcomes for all patients. They further argue that marginalized populations are at increased risk for adverse health outcomes and receive lower quality care and reduced access to treatments due to social determinants of health and medical racism and bias. This brief was filed with the district court in support of the federal government’s position that antiracism plans can result in improved health outcomes and are appropriate to be one improvement activity option.

See additional relevant ACP advocacy in the Increasing Health Equity and Racial Health Disparities sections.

Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. University of North Carolina (UNC), et al. (Filed: 7/2022)
This case is a combination of two cases addressing affirmative action policies. This brief was filed in the Supreme Court in support of Harvard and UNC policies intended to foster educational diversity.

ACP policy supports measures that would improve diversity within the physician workforce and states that “institutions of higher education should appropriately consider a person’s race and ethnicity as one factor in determining admission in order to counter the impact of current discriminatory practices and the legacy of past discrimination practices and better reflect the current composition of the population.” In this amicus brief, interested parties argue that diversity is vital to health outcomes and in turn to the educational missions of the nation’s medical schools, and that limiting or precluding holistic review would result in a compounding loss of diversity and threaten patients' health.

See additional relevant ACP advocacy in the Increasing Health Equity and Racial Health Disparities sections.