I am a Black Doctor. Donald Trump Is a Medical Threat.
A licensed physician explains the danger Donald Trump poses to the health and wellness of every American.
I am a Black doctor.
In a profession where Black women make up less than 3% of physicians, I don’t have the luxury of seeing myself as just “a doctor.” I have worked in federally qualified rural facilities treating migrant farm workers and in urgent-care clinics in middle-class Black communities, where access to any primary care physicians is rare. Treating low-wealth and indigent patients at a county-owned hospital in one of America’s Blackest cities, I can personally attest to the data showing that Black patients live longer in counties with Black doctors. I am a proud HBCU graduate, where 70% of African-American doctors acquired their degree, and earned a doctor of medicine degree and a master of science in health care quality and safety.
I served as a physician and officer in the U.S. Air Force, where Black women airmen make up less than 1% of officers. I currently work in a majority-Black city knowing that babies, Black men and Black women fare better under the care of Black doctors. Working in community health has been one of my greatest professional joys. While I am adamant about serving every individual with the dignity, respect and professionalism they deserve, I also understand how representation translates to quantifiable real-world health outcomes. Among the patients and communities patients I serve, being “a doctor” is not enough.
I am a Black doctor.
Over the course of my 28-year career working in private, county, state and federally funded medical facilities, I have also seen how politics can affect patients’ access to quality, available and affordable health care. I am sworn to deliver care regardless of race, ethnicity or political persuasion, so I don’t view health care as a partisan issue. But as someone who took an oath to “improve the public health” and “not let any lesser public or professional consideration interfere with my primary commitment,” it is my duty as a doctor and a Black doctor to warn my community of one of the greatest medical risk factors on the horizon: the Trump administration.
Here’s a few reasons every American should be concerned.
1. There will be fewer Black doctors.
Becoming a doctor is expensive. And for aspiring Black doctors, school funding, lack of resources and economic barriers are significant impediments that partly explain why African-American doctors are so rare.
One of the reasons why we have as many Black doctors as we do is that the federal government spends billions of dollars addressing these inequities. Federal grants fund science programs for high school students and college fellowships, as well as grants to address health disparities. Placing the efforts that remove economic barriers for smart, capable hardworking students under the umbrella of “DEI” ensures they won’t have access to the resources required to achieve their dreams of becoming medical professionals.
But the federal government doesn’t do this because it is “woke.” These policies were created to address the country’s critical shortage of doctors. Dismantling this school-to-doctor pipeline, eliminating affirmative action and undoing loan forgiveness will only preserve a medical system that is already in crisis because marginalized groups lack access to equal opportunity.
2. There will be more misinformation.
Every day, doctors battle misinformation from uninformed politicians, quack doctors and conspiracy theorists. Now these people are in charge.
The medical community views Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a threat to the health and well-being of every American. Physicians have criticized potential Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Mehmet Oz’s conspiracy theories for years. The federal government helps create the standards for medical care. This doesn’t just affect doctors. RFK Jr.’s decisions would directly determine the safety of the food we consume, the efficacy of every medical device and how cancer research is conducted. Dr. Oz could ultimately decide if your grandmother’s illness should be treated with peer-reviewed research or quack science.
Putting unqualified conspiracy theorists with no medical expertise in charge of health care undermines the integrity of the entire health care system.
3. Communicable diseases will return.
Every citizen should be concerned about the politicization of the Centers for Disease Control.
The CDC is a key resource that doctors depend on for learning about breakthroughs in medical science, drug interactions and treatment for everyday illnesses. Doctors across the country depend on the CDC’s Health Alert Network — a messaging service that transmits health alerts, updates and other information to more than a million medical professionals. The CDC also regulates vaccine schedules and provides free public immunization in places where people often lack access to affordable health care. Trump has also withdrawn the U.S. from the World Health Organization, a key leader in the global scientific community’s fight against communicable diseases. Trump is dismantling the USAID, which treats outbreaks in countries around the world before the diseases have a chance to make it to the U.S.
Without these key systems, your kid could be drinking milk infected with bird flu at a school where their unvaccinated classmates are infected with malaria.
4. For Black patients, dismantling DEI is a matter of life and death.
For years, a racially biased test kept thousands of Black patients off the kidney transplant list. But because the Congressional Black Caucus fought for federal funding, the FDA approved an at-home test that addressed the medical inequity.
Women and minority test subjects were historically excluded from clinical trials, a fact that the medical and pharmaceutical industry has slowly tried to fix. Under the Biden administration, the Democratic-controlled House passed the Food and Drug Omnibus Act, which required pharmaceutical companies to include a broader range of subjects in their clinical trials. But three days after Trump’s inauguration, the website disappeared, primarily because of what the FDA named the new plan:
5. Medical care for the rich, nothing for the poor.
The “experts” from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have already taken control of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency that provides coverage for more than 160 million Americans. Many elderly, indigent and minor patients receive benefits from this program under the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program. Doctors and health care facilities nationwide temporarily lost access to the federal systems that reimburse doctors and clinics for services they provide to the needy.
But this is just one example of the Project 2025 effort to privatize medical care. If implemented, the policies will result in a profit-driven system that deprioritizes the well-being of working-class Americans over the interests of health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and powerful health care corporations.
DEI, conspiracy theories or politics might not be the reason why your grandmother has to spend her life savings on medical treatments.
6. Expect more suicides and less mental health care.
Black Americans are more likely to experience mental health crises and suicidal ideation. According to a recent study, anti-LGBTQ laws have caused a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary youth.
Trump will make it worse.
Since taking office, Trump has signed four different executive orders directly targeting transgender people. While the scientific community views drug addiction, homelessness and psychological illness as medical issues, Donald Trump has repeatedly advocated for treating mental illness by returning to mental institutions, mass incarceration and tent cities for the homeless.
7. We might not know the extent of the damage.
We know Black patients are more likely to use preventative health care under the care of a Black doctor. Research shows that Black Americans living in poverty experience more psychological distress. White medical students believe Black patients feel more pain. Black college students graduate with more student debt. According to a 2020 study, Black infants are less likely to die if they have a Black doctor.
Researchers were able to discover these disparities because every federal agency compiles demographic data that researchers use to advance the scientific and medical community’s knowledge. But under the reimagined federal government outlined in Project 2025, Trump would dismantle the civil rights department inside nearly every federal agency and ban workers from collecting this data.
To ensure that this data doesn’t exist, Trump has placed Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the funding of the entire federal government. He has allowed Elon Musk to scrub public health and epidemiology data. He has fired the inspectors general responsible for enforcing these standards in federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor. He has halted the communications from every federal agency that deals with public health.
Without these important backstops, even the best and brightest non-DEI doctors won’t be able to cure the health issues that lay on the horizon. The health and safety of every American is now in danger, not because of an unknown pandemic or a dangerous virus that could create the next pandemic.
Donald Trump is the illness we should worry about.
Dr. Karen Reynolds is a practicing physician with 28 years of experience. She is board-certified by the American Board of Family Medicine.
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As a Black physician/pediatrician myself I echo this as well. Also Black children lives are at risks in ways people don’t understand. We live in scary times. People don’t realize Pediatricians are paid through Medicaid not Medicare.
This was an amazing read and incredibly informative.