Consumers’ Research, a conservative nonprofit dedicated to protecting American consumers from harmful products, has launched a scathing ad campaign accusing the Cleveland Clinic of prioritizing left-wing politics over patient care.
The ongoing six-figure campaign, titled “Cleveland Clinic Exposed,” asks whether the medical institution is the “wokest hospital in America” on its website, citing the hospital’s penchant for DEI, gender transitions, and climate activism. The awareness campaign features an ad that will air during the Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Toronto Raptors basketball game Wednesday night.
“Is Cleveland Clinic the wokest hospital in America?” the 30-second television ad asks. “They prioritize care based on skin color. Perform child sex changes. Push transgender propaganda on vulnerable kids. Insert DEI into everything they do.”
“And spend millions on climate activism. The CEO admits it: Healthcare is only a part of their mission. Cleveland Clinic. Focused on a political agenda. Not what’s best for patients.”
This is not the first time that Cleveland Clinic has been accused of promoting a socially progressive agenda in the past.
In August, Cleveland Clinic was hit with a civil-rights complaint filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty for “creating a racial dichotomy” that prioritized minority patients based on their skin color. The Ohio-based medical center’s Minority Stroke Program and Minority Men’s Health Center were the DEI-infused programs in question.
A month later, the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the allegations that Cleveland Clinic had discriminated against white patients. National Review previously reported on WILL’s complaint and HHS’s investigation, both of which remain ongoing.
Further illustrating its commitment to DEI, Cleveland Clinic hired Jacqui Robertson as its chief diversity and inclusion officer in 2022. It appears she remains in that position based on her LinkedIn profile, but Cleveland Clinic removed the webpage that announced Robinson’s appointment.
“I don’t believe that diversity and inclusion should ever be a standalone strategy,” Robertson said in a 2023 podcast interview. “It has to be embedded in everything that we do. And so that’s our processes, that’s our metrics.”
Cleveland Clinic has also embraced the transgender ideology, in part, by performing sex changes on over 100 minors and prescribing puberty blockers or hormones to more than 300 underage patients, according to the Stop the Harm Database.
Furthermore, the medical center opened a new LGBTQ+ clinic in Weston, Fla., in December and achieved a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Healthcare Equality Index last year.
Cleveland Clinic also lobbied against the Ohio legislature’s SAFE Act in 2023. The bill, which prohibits gender-transition services for minors, became law in 2024 after the Ohio senate overrode Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of the legislation. The state law was temporarily blocked after taking effect but later upheld in court.
Cleveland Clinic claims it “does not perform gender-affirming surgeries on patients prior to their 18th birthday” in compliance with the law, per its website. “However, we can still meet with you and your child to discuss their gender questions.”
Regarding its climate activism, Cleveland Clinic voluntarily signed the United Nations Global Compact that aims to make businesses and firms worldwide more socially responsible for the environment.
Additionally, the healthcare facility established a $7.5 million “Green Revolving Fund” fund and launched a “greening” initiative that makes its operating rooms more climate friendly.
A spokesperson for Cleveland Clinic disputed the campaign led by Consumers’ Research, dismissing the allegations and cited evidence as “inaccuracies and lies.”
“For over 100 years, Cleveland Clinic’s mission has been to care for life, research for health and educate those who serve,” the spokesperson said. “We do not discriminate or create preferences based on race, gender or any other characteristics, and we abide by ethical and legal standards of care with respect to our delivery of healthcare services. Cleveland Clinic is a nonpartisan organization and we neither have nor promote a political agenda.”
Other components of the campaign include mobile billboards outside the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Cleveland Clinic’s Main Campus, and the Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee. It also features a “Woke Alert” that keeps track of the medical center’s worst woke offenses and a targeted digital campaign.
“By its own shocking words and deeds, Cleveland Clinic has quite possibly become the wokest hospital in America,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, said in a statement provided to National Review. “The clinic’s leadership alarmingly proclaims that DEI ‘has to be embedded in everything that we do.’ Such a sentiment plagues the entire hospital system and should frighten every patient in need of its services.”
“From unethical race-based care to transgender mutilation surgeries on kids to bowing at the altar of climate extremism, Cleveland Clinic seems hell-bent on satisfying every woke fixation while cost-reduction for patients is a distant afterthought,” Hild added. “It is wrong when any company prioritizes woke objectives over its consumers, but it is especially disturbing when the perpetrator is a medical facility and consumers are patients. Cleveland Clinic must reverse course, shun woke radicalism, stop spending resources in the wrong places, and make affordable quality care its only focus.”