Overcoming the Impact of Students for Fair Admission v Harvard to Build a More Representative Health Care Workforce: Perspectives from Ending Unequal Treatment

The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA) has had a major impact on university admissions practices, not only at the undergraduate level (the focus of the legal challenge) but at the graduate level as well, including for health profession programs.¹ Indeed, health professional education has been a specific target of the attack on affirmative action since the seminal 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v Bakke,² which barred the use of medical school minority admissions quotas while also recognizing diversity in higher education as a compelling governmental interest that justified other strategies, including use of statistical data, to achieve a diverse student body. By expressing skepticism of racial and ethnic diversity in educational admissions as a compelling educational goal in its own right, SFFA imposes legal barriers that will likely end race-conscious admissions in practice for the foreseeable future while at the same time leaving the door open to individualized, limited consideration of applicants’ experience based on their race and ethnicity.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s recent report Ending Unequal Treatment: Strategies to Achieve Equitable Health Care and Optimal Health for All, released in the wake of SFFA, concludes that the evidence strongly shows the value of a diverse health care workforce in achieving a more equitable health care system.³ In the context of the Ending Unequal Treatment findings, this article discusses the imperative of a representative health care workforce as a core element of any strategy for overcoming the persistence of health and health care inequities as well as options for future programmatic and policy action in the face of race-conscious admissions bans.

References

1. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 US 181, (US Sup Ct 2023).
2. Legal Information Institute. Regents of the University of California v Bakke (1978). Conell Law School. Updated December 2020. Accessed July 16, 2024. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/regents_of_the_university_of_california_v_bakke_(1978).
3. Benjamin GB, DeVoe JE, Amankwah FK, Nass SJ, eds. Ending Unequal Treatment: Strategies to Achieve Equitable Health Care and Optimal Health for All. National Academies Press; 2024.