An Open Letter to Governor Kate Brown Regarding the Failure in Leadership and Pervasive Sexual Misconduct at Oregon Health & Science University

CONTENT WARNING: In support of trauma-informed communications, please be aware that this message contains topics that may be activating for survivors of gender violence.

Dear Governor Brown,

As the person who appoints the leadership of Oregon Health & Science University, I believe you are in a unique position to respond to the latest controversy.

This letter will address:

• The “serious problem with sexual misconduct” that came to light from a survey of OHSU faculty in March 2017, and the promised response by Executive Vice Provost David Robinson.
• The credible accusations against an OHSU Anesthesiology Resident from the lawsuit filed on February 26, 2021 that make it clear OHSU leadership did not respond in a meaningful way to the 2017 survey.
• The cavalier attitude that the Dean of the OHSU School of Medicine, Dr. Sharon Anderson, has towards sexual misconduct.
• The current language that OHSU is using and how that echoes the promises made in 2017, without any clear plan to prevent such sexual misconduct from happening again in the future.

In considering the situation that is happening at OHSU, I think it is important to note that it is an extremely nuanced issue. The latest controversy involves race, sex, power, and notoriety. It also involves an institution likely attempting to do its best and to live up to its ideals. Unfortunately, I think there has been a failure in leadership so severe that the people of Oregon deserve an accounting of what happened and who made decisions that allowed for the perpetrator of sexual misconduct to not be held to account. It appears OHSU not only denied but attempted to suppress the survivor from reporting the misconduct.

In a response to the compelling lawsuit that was submitted on February 26, 2021, OHSU released a statement that said “OHSU does not condone behavior as described in the lawsuit. We are continuously working to evolve our culture, policies and practices to provide an environment where all learners, employees, patients and visitors feel safe and welcome.” While this sounds nice, an examination of the lawsuit leads makes it clear that OHSU not only fails to take sexual misconduct reports seriously, but they also provide a ripe environment for sexual harassment and assault because of failure at the highest levels of leadership. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, empty statements that promise to do the right thing are not. It is your responsibility to appoint individuals to the OHSU Executive Board who can lead with wisdom and integrity to allow the institution to be one that provides the highest quality of care to all Oregonians, and is a safe and accountable environment for all employees and patients. I believe the sexual assaults and harassments that have occurred at the OHSU are enabled by the known track record for a lack of accountability.

In case you are not fully aware of the situation, it does not start with the latest controversy. My knowledge of OHSU’s institutional failings starts in 2017, when the head of emergency medicine, Dr. John Ma, became the subject of an internal investigation at OHSU following complaints of harassment by staff. Following the investigation, a public announcement was made on the OHSU website that Dr. Ma was stepping down, but gave no explanation of why he would suddenly relinquish a prestigious job he has held since 2007. The headline read “After 12 years of service, Dr. John Ma will step down as chair July 8; Dr. Mary Tanski will serve as interim chair.” A source that was privy to the investigation said “OHSU, by its actions and ongoing glowing support of John Ma, has failed to act on credible, substantial and corroborating testimony of over 40 individuals, while they may have negotiated the resignation of John Ma, they did so with language that is reserved for a man who should be rewarded for his actions, not a man who systematically and repeatedly, over 12 years, intimidated, professionally bullied and threatened both physicians and nonclinical persons.”

Dr. Sharon Anderson, who is the dean of the OHSU School of Medicine, said this in 2019 regarding sexual misconduct: “If it’s somebody that you know is not a chronic offender, you can sort of sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk and say cut it out.” This statement is unacceptable, and should concern you as the leader of Oregon. There is no place for sexual misconduct at OHSU. Even one time is unacceptable. This quote from Dr. Sharon Anderson also implies that she knows there are chronic offenders at OHSU, and her policy seems to be to quietly send them on their way to continue their predation. This breaks the trust of everyone who is aware of the assaults and harassment, because they see the reality of the situation apart from the statements where OHSU says all the right things. It prevents future survivors of sexual assault and harassment from reporting to the appropriate systems designed to check this behavior.

Here are the facts of the current case as I know them — OHSU helped Dr. Campbell get a job at University of Florida and offered to pay the victim $6,000 for mental health treatment. It then said its sexual misconduct funds were depleted and said it would only pay for the therapy in exchange that all accusations be dropped. That is insult added to injury and heaped on the survivor. In 2017 after an OHSU faculty survey revealed a “serious problem with sexual misconduct,” Executive Vice Provost David Robinson stated: “We have no tolerance for discrimination, and intend to take a deep dive to come up with initiatives to address these problems.” Clearly the deep dive never happened, or it was extremely ineffectual. This speaks to the leadership of the institution. The Dr. Campbell case seems very similar to the case with Dr. John Ma. (Dr. John Ma is now, in perhaps a dagger of irony to every sexual assault survivor, practicing as a physician in Florida).

OHSU is now claiming in their prepared statement that “[Dr. Jason Campbell] resigned in lieu of a dismissal hearing on October 23, 2020. OHSU subsequently reported our findings that Dr. Campbell violated our harassment policy and code of conduct to the University of Florida.” The University of Florida makes a contradictory claim, on March 2nd that they “recently learned of a new hire who is the subject of allegations of misconduct from a previous institution.” This is only after a massive 40M+ lawsuit was filed over OHSU’s abhorrent treatment of the woman who reported her sexual assault to 13 of OHSU’s faculty, six of whom were in leadership roles. One of these faculty, Dr. Esther Choo, was a founder of “TIMES UP Healthcare” a movement that says “sexual harassment and gender discrimination have no place in health care.” This is someone who should have championed survivors, but because of the institutional culture at OHSU told the plaintiff by text in regards to reporting sexual harassment “It’s never worth it. Never.” Either OHSU or UF is being economical with the truth in such a way that the average Oregonian would look at them with disgust. That is not the heart of the issue however, the issue is the OHSU leadership were too cowardly to do the right thing, which was recommended to them by their own investigator. They instead quietly passed him on to do more harm in another state, which is contrary to the cornerstone of medical ethics “Do no harm.”

This kind of issue affects the quality of life for Oregonians deeply, as OHSU is the only academic medical center in the state. Many of us remember when the OHSU Heart Transplant Program shut down for nearly 2 nears, beginning in 2018, after all the Cardiologists on the Heart Failure Team left the institution. There have been internal allegations that sexual harassment may have led to the female Cardiologists to leave. Was this the same type of sexual harassment the hidden cause behind the closure of OHSU’s Heart Transplant Program, which left Oregonians without access to cutting edge healthcare for for over 2 years? It is particularly interesting that OHSU was unable to recruit Cardiologists to the institution during that time, which should not be challenging for such a prestigious center unless there was such a strong reputation among Cardiologists about the culture of the institution.

In the two cases I mentioned (Dr. Jason Campbell, Dr. John Ma), it is not a he said she said situation, there are written records documenting the harassment. It should not have been hard for someone in a leadership position who cared about the employees who proudly stand for OHSU’s stated culture to do the right thing.

We are calling upon you, as Governor of Oregon, to show leadership for every survivor of sexual assault at OHSU, and for every future survivor of sexual assault at OHSU. We cannot change human nature, but we can change how we respond to it. Leadership in this situation demands that someone abandon the flowery rhetoric which did no good in 2017, and take a hard look at who would be equipped to deal with these issues and lead OHSU into the future, for all Oregonians. We all want OHSU to be the place it claims to be. We are calling upon you to change what has been business as usual from this institution for too long. We are calling upon you to address the leadership failings that have made survivors of sexual assault feel unheard, helpless, and powerless. We are calling upon you to change the culture of saying the right thing but not doing the right thing. The right thing was not done in 2017. The right thing was not done in 2020. You can do the right thing in 2021.