This application requests funds to establish and support a PREP at the Albany Medical College (AMC), focused on health disparities and designed to encourage underrepresented minorites who hold a recent baccalaureate degree in a biomedically relevant science to pursue a research doctorate. """"""""PREP: Addressing Health Disparities"""""""" will draw opportunities from four academic departments at AMC in which research is related to health disparities, including cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, substance abuse and trauma, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and HIV. With careful attention and significant effort, talented and promising minority baccalaureate graduates who, for any reason, may have decided to postpone application to graduate school, will be recruited and will spend up to two years as an apprentice doing meaningful, authentic, mentored research in the laboratory of an NIH-funded investigator who has the time and inclination to invest in training these apprentices. Apprentices will spend 75% of their time doing research and increasing their laboratory competence, but will also take part in a series of important Enrichment Activities. Centered around aspects of health disparities, Enrichment Activities will be selected from an extensive list and arranged according to an Individual Educational Plan developed for each apprentice. PREP will be administered by a Program Director and an Apprentice Oversight Committee and thoroughly evaluated by a PREP Oversight Committee on an annual basis. The long-term objective is to increase the number of competitively trained underrepresented minorities who will go on to careers that address health problems that disproportionately affect minorities and the medically underserved. Extensive evaluation of apprentices and of the program, and tracking of all apprentices for several years during and after the program, will measure the effectiveness of the program against a cleady delineated set of outcome goals designed to meet the objective of the program announcement.
