Michigan health department rebrands DEI office

• The Michigan health department has renamed the Office of Race, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (REDI). It’s now called the Office of Culture, Community, Education and Leadership.
• The office was formed in 2020 and was previously tasked with addressing disparities within ‘racial and ethnic minority populations’
• The new name comes at a time when public and private institutions in Michigan have backed away from programs considered DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion 

A Michigan Department of Health and Human Services office dedicated to the health issues of the state’s historically marginalized communities has been quietly renamed, with its replacement omitting some of the diversity-driven language of its predecessor.

The Office of Race, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (REDI) has been effectively swapped out with the new Office of Culture, Community, Education and Leadership. 

Another division, the Office of Equity and Minority Health (OEMH), which the state previously touted as “the third oldest minority health office in the United States,” appears to have been scrubbed from the state health department’s website.

MDHHS officials confirmed to Bridge that it had rebranded the OEMH as the Michigan Office of Transformation, Engagement, and Community Health (MI-TEaCH) in May “to align with broader departmental and community priorities.”

“Over the last 37 years, the office has had many different names, but its charge has remained the same: to lead and advance community health by reducing or eliminating differences in health outcomes caused by social, economic, cultural and geographic factors by ensuring access to health care for all Michiganders,” spokesperson Lynn Sutfin wrote in an email. 

The health department did not respond to Bridge Michigan’s request for comment on the changes to REDI.

The new names come as institutions nationwide face increased federal pressure to end programs centered on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to halt “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing,” prompting rollbacks in the public and private sectors.

Notably, MI-TEaCH reframes its core goals around eliminating varying health outcomes caused by “social, economic, cultural, and geographic factors” in the state, while the former office was tasked with diminishing disparities among “Michigan's racial and ethnic minority populations.”

Sutfin said the 16 staffers on MI-TEACH “develop policy, education and programs, assess data trends and issues, design criteria for evaluation and coordinate efforts with local, state and regional agencies” in compliance with state requirements.

Bridge also compared the MI-TEaCH website with an archived version of the OEMH website, as it appeared on May 3. 

OEMH was tasked with surveying and analyzing racial and ethnic data, devising strategies to improve health outcomes for residents, coordinating with local communities and providing training on community engagement and topics like equity and implicit bias. 

The group’s stated commitment was “to work towards ensuring health equity and eradicating health disparities continuously and steadfastly among Michigan's diverse communities, which include American Indians/Alaska Natives, Arab and Chaldean Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Black/African Americans, and Hispanics/Latinos.”

Reference to these groups has been pushed to a secondary MI-TEaCH page and omits Chaldean Americans as a specified target group.

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COVID-19 connection 

The Office of Equity and Minority Health began in 1988 as the Michigan Office of Minority Health, created by executive order. The state’s effort to structurally address health disparities was codified as law in 2007. 

Those efforts were compounded by an executive order in 2019, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer instructed state agency heads to designate an equity and inclusion officer for their departments to educate other employees on issues of prohibited discrimination and equal opportunities in state contracting. 

The state’s health-related DEI efforts came into the spotlight during the COVID-19 emergency of 2020, when the offices were considered the MDHHS’s “primary coordinating body” to eliminate health disparities among Michigan’s populations of color.

In 2021, the state health department was awarded nearly $32 million in federal funding to “address COVID-19 health disparities among populations at high-risk and underserved, including racial and ethnic minority populations and rural communities.” 

The OEMH developed 11 health equity advisory councils to facilitate the program, each supported by a “backbone organization” like the Detroit-based nonprofit Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES), which focused on serving low-income, Black and Hispanic city residents.

Officials at MOSES told Bridge they were unaware of the recent changes in the state’s DEI health offices, but said the state should continue engaging local communities for health-related solutions.

“The need for an agency to make sure there’s a fair lens for access is important,” said MOSES executive director Ponsella Hardaway. “Accurate data that shows the health impact for all people is really important. Covid really highlighted that.”

DEI in retreat

The ramifications of Trump’s anti-DEI directive have been “mixed,” according to Joan C. Williams, director of the Equality Action Center at UC Law San Francisco.

“In the federal government, DEI is done,” Williams told Bridge. “In state government and private employers, it’s a much more complicated picture. Some people are heading for the hills.”

While some companies are steadfast in continuing their DEI commitments, Williams said others have rebranded their initiatives using words like “culture” or "professional development.”

“Different kinds of DEI initiatives present different risk profiles,” Williams explained, adding that conservative activists like Edward Blum have brought on several lawsuits to disrupt related programs.

Williams said it’s “unclear” whether the Trump administration could effectively rescind state funding because of DEI programs, but that the White House has displayed a pattern of making decisions while waiting for the courts “to catch up.”

“People in the Trump administration are clearly trying to use every lever they can to get rid of DEI,” she said. “I think a lot of people are thinking, ‘why the heck should I make life easy for people who are trying to target these programs?’” 

In Michigan, the anti-DEI wave has already had an impact.

General Motors stripped DEI language from its annual investor report earlier this year, an overture Ford had similarly made in August 2024 when the automaker dropped its participation in a Human Rights Campaign survey program.

This March, the University of Michigan closed its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion, and ended its DEI strategic plan, a move the ACLU of Michigan admonished as “succumbing to authoritarian bullying of the Trump administration without a fight.”