On January 22, 2022, over two dozen neo-nazi white supremacists gathered outside Brigham & Women’s Hospital to protest a pilot program meant to correct the racial inequities in cardiovascular care at that hospital. The leads of that program, Drs. Michelle Morse and Bram Wispelway, were targeted by name and identified in photographs. This incident was not an isolated event but the culmination of the continued failure of the healthcare system as a whole to embrace and uplift antiracism initiatives that actualize health equity for all patients and curate safe and nurturing educational and working environments where Black and other minoritized identities can thrive.
While we are not surprised by the immense opposition to equity work by far-right extremists, we are shocked by the palpable silence of hospitals, medical and healthcare professional societies, and other healthcare stakeholders who– following the 2020 George Floyd murder and the resultant protests–made public statements renewing their commitment to antiracism efforts in healthcare and society at large. With the exception of the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Medical Association, Massachusetts Medical Society, a few individuals, and internal communications within the Brigham, to our knowledge, no other hospital system or professional society has addressed the incident that took place on January 22nd.