Blue Cross Blue Shield Excludes Organizations With White CEOs From Grant Program

The webpage for Advancing Healthy Food Equity, a grant program run by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, in 2023. Screenshot/The Epoch Times

The leader of a medical watchdog organization is calling Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of North Carolina’s grant program for organizations not run by white people a new level of apartheid.

“If ever there was a bad idea, the notion that we should start to separate our country along racial lines is amongst the worst,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb told The Epoch Times.

Goldfarb is a former associate dean for curriculum at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

He’s now chairman of the medical watchdog group Do No Harm and is the author of the book, “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors Into Social Justice Warriors Is Destroying American Medicine,” which follows how medical schools hurried to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in 2020.

BCBS North Carolina’s $300,000 grant program is called Advancing Healthy Food Equity (AHFE), an initiative that disqualifies any organization with a white CEO from participating.

To qualify, the community being directly served by the organization must also not be white.

“This opportunity is specifically designed to support community-rooted organizations that are led by, serving, and accountable to American Indians, Black, Latino, other People of Color, and members of immigrant communities, to increase their ability to engage in advocacy to address the root causes of inequitable access to healthy food,” a spokesperson for BCBS said in the promotional video for the grant program.

The spokesperson added that the grant funds are to be used specifically for advocacy.

According to AHFE’s website, nonwhite communities are disproportionately affected by food insecurity because of systematic racism.

“Many organizations led by, serving, and accountable to these communities have significant experience with, and insights about, the systemic barriers to equitable access to healthy food, along with potential solutions,” BCBS North Carolina said on its website. “However, they need additional resources to engage in advocacy to inform and drive policy and practice change at the institutional, municipal, county, state, or federal levels.”

BCBS Says Race Plays ‘Significant Role’

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation will award up to 10 organizations a three-year grant at $100,000 a year.

A note at the bottom of the webpage for the grant program states that “race plays a significant role in the inequities we see in our communities, and therefore it must also have a significant place in our organization’s strategies to increase equitable access to healthy food.”

Goldfarb said this plan takes divisiveness to a new level.

“Even having a leader of an organization who is white is enough to prevent the entity, which apparently serves minority communities, from participating in a grant program,“ he said. ”Do Americans really want this sort of apartheid?”

The Epoch Times reached out to Blue Cross Blue Shield, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation for comment.