$27 million grant will strengthen effort to increase biomedical workforce diversity

UCLA has received $27.2 million from the National Institutes of Health to spearhead the new phase of an initiative to enhance the diversity of the U.S. ’s biomedical workforce.The five-year grant funds the second and final phase of an NIH program called theDiversity Program Consortium: Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-Funded Workforce. Launched in 2014, the multi-institution initiative is aimed at engaging students and early-career researchers in the biomedical and biobehavioral sciences who are from underrepresented backgrounds, and preparing them for success in the NIH-funded workforce.To date, more than 30,000 students and researchers have participated; the program will follow their progress in the field for the next several years.“This is a landmark national project and the largest of its kind to develop evidence-based practices for institutions to increase diversity and promote excellence in the next generation of biomedical and biobehavioral researchers,” said Dr. Keith Norris, a professor of medicine in the division o f general internal medicine and health services research at theDavid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.Norris is one of the project ’s three principal investigators. The others are Dr. Teresa Seeman, a professor of medicine in the Geffen School of Medicine division of geriatrics, and of epidemiology at theUCLA Fielding School of Public Health; and Steven Wallace, a professor of community health sciences at the Fielding School.In 2014, the NIH fu...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news