Background: Some racial and ethnic groups are particularly susceptible to certain Heart, Lung, Blood and Sleep (HLBS) disorders. These disparities have persisted over time, even in the face of notable improvements in morbidity and mortality rates overall. Since the diversity of the US population is projected to increase by 2043, there is a sense of urgency to address these disparities now. The NIH is committed to recruiting and retaining a more diverse workforce with the potential to contribute new ideas and innovative solutions to help reduce these disparities. Objectives: In response to RFA-HL-14-022, this is a competing renewal application to serve as the Coordination Core (CC) for the Programs to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research (PRIDE). The PRIDE consists of up to 8 Summer Institute (SI) research education training programs with the general goal of providing research experiences, skills development and mentoring for junior level biomedical researchers who are members of underrepresented groups. The CC will facilitate the coordination of education and evaluation activities among the SI programs via the following Aims: 1) Develop and coordinate outreach efforts to recruit trainees and mentors; 2) Foster networking by planning and coordinating annual meetings to be attended by faculty, staff, mentors and trainees from all 8 SI programs; 3) Facilitate communications across the SI programs, trainees, mentors and NHLBI; and 4) Develop and implement an evaluations plan. The evaluation plan will (i) assess processes and outcomes, (ii) collect and track outcomes data across time that allows for an assessment of the impact of the PRIDE programs on increasing diversity and (iii) benchmark these outcomes against a national cohort. Significance and Innovation: Since this application is a competing renewal, much of the infrastructure and organization needed to address these aims is already mature and operational. However, we are cognizant that changes will be required as new programs with new needs join the PRIDE. We are prepared to make timely and efficient changes in our protocols as needed. In addition, a critical barrier in this type of research is in knowing whether and to what extent the programs have been successful, primarily because relevant comparison groups are difficult to find. Our application specifically addresses this issue as the third part o our final Specific Aim. We will use outcomes data about our national cohort of over 100,000 medical school matriculants from 1993-2000 as a benchmark for this comparison. Methodology: This project is built around our web-based infrastructure which allows Public or Secure access to program information, including our on-line data entry system. Summary: Our team has the expertise and experience to continue as the coordination core for the PRIDE and evaluate those indicators of success outlined in the RFA and this proposal. Further, we are uniquely positioned to assess the impact of this program by benchmarking our results against those of our existing national database, and look forward to tracking the career development of these bright motivated investigators as they lead us to the future.
The PRIDE is a mentored summer training experience in developing research skills for junior-level faculty who are underrepresented in the biomedical sciences. The Coordination Core will track indices of career success (e.g. grant awards) over time to determine if these mentored training programs will lead to increasing the diversity among individuals engaged in health related research.
