You have a cold or the flu, or a sprained ankle from a pickleball game, and you go to a doctor.
You expect a medical opinion with a recommendation for treatment.
But what you get actually is a flood of propaganda about distribution of money, global power and environmental and social well-being ideologies.
That is a concern, according to the senior director of medical watchdog Do No Harm.
It is Ian Kingsbury, the director of that group’s Center for Accountability in Medicine, who told the Center Square the huge increase in the medical community in “non-health related factors such as environmental, economic, and social well-being” causes “may allow harmful ideologies to influence healthcare overall.”
“The expansion of the social determinants of health framework is a serious cause for concern,” he told the publication.
It is the World Health Organization that defines “social determinants of health” as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.”
That group states those factors “are shaped by the distribution of money, power and resources at global, national and local levels, which are themselves influenced by policy choices.”
That results in physicians trying to advance “a leftist political ideology rather than allowing providers to focus on high-quality patient care.”
Kingsbury told the publication, “As the concept of SDOH becomes overly inclusive and addresses complex social and economic issues, we increasingly burden physicians with solving problems far outside their clinical expertise.”
He explained his organization “is committed to ensuring the medical field is not influenced by political agendas and remains focused on recruiting and educating excellent healthcare professionals who can deliver top-tier care.”
The report from Do No Harm itself listed alarming trends, especially found in medical “journals.”
The “sheer volume of SDOH-related articles has more than tripled over the past decade, rising from 69 articles in 2016 to 216 in 2024, even as the total number of journal articles increased by only 1.7 percent,” that report confirmed.
And, “the composition of the SDOH conversation has shifted markedly.”
“Perhaps the most striking finding is the surge in discussion of race/ethnicity, racism/racial discrimination, and discrimination,” the report cited.
Finally, it charges, “While income, poverty, and socioeconomic status remain the most commonly cited determinants, the scope of SDOH has broadened to more frequently include environmental and climate-related factors, which rose from 4 percent of articles in 2016 to roughly 14 percent in 2024.”
That suggests the emphasis in medical literature on “social determinants” now not only is growing but is expanding to areas beyond the expertise of medical professionals.
“Physicians and researchers making causal claims about complex social systems they are not equipped to evaluate and lending the authority of medical science to policy prescriptions whose effectiveness and feasibility have not been established,” the report warned.
