HB731 & SB 1710, a bill in the Florida Senate filed by Representative Lauren Melo and Senator Nick DiCeglie, requires medical institutions of higher education to provide letter grade-based assessments. In addition, this bill also bans "DEI" from medical schools, including bias training and awareness of social determinants of health, which has shown to improve patient outcomes.

Medical students in Florida oppose this change, because medical students benefit from working in a collaborative way, not a competition among peers, to effectively study to become a physician. In addition, the LCME requires credit hours in cultural competency and health disparities. If this bill passes, it may jeopardize Florida medical schools' accreditation status as courses on these topics would be prohibited.

Many medical schools across the country currently do not provide letter grade-based assessments. Also for the Florida schools who currently do not use them, it should continue to be up to the school to the decide, the state should not mandate it one way or the other. This bill will hurt current medical students and also damage recruiting efforts for talented medical school applicants to Florida. At worst, this bill will prevent medical students from receiving their degree after graduating due to LCME requirements.

Make your voice heard now, and send a message to your State Senators to oppose HB731 & SB 1710.

This ActionNetwork form will make it easy, after entering your address it will automatically find out who your State Senator is, and then on the next page you can edit the message to be sent to them.