The Cardiovascular Research Training Program (CRTP) was established at the University of New Mexico upon the funding of this Minority Institutional Research Training (MIRT) Grant ten years ago. It has served to provide opportunities for under-represented minority predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees to gain research training in cardiovascular biology. This grant has also been a catalyst for the development of an integrated program of research and training in cardiovascular sciences at the university. The CRTP has bridged the basic and clinical sciences and has fostered new productive collaborations between disciplines. This area of research and training emphasis has particular relevance to the state of New Mexico where the incidence of cardiovascular-related disease is high, especially in the Hispanic and Native American populations. Since the last application, several new programs have evolved that unify research in the cardiovascular sciences at UNM, including the formation of the Vascular Physiology Group that includes researchers from the School of Medicine, the College of Pharmacy and the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI). In addition, a new NIEHS Center has been established at UNM and LRRI that has a core devoted to cardiovascular and renal toxicology. Several mentors on the present grant are associated with these newly formed groups and are involved in highly collaborative research. In addition, the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program offers a unified training environment involving each of these entities. The CRTP is an integral part of the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at the Health Sciences Center. The graduate program is non-departmental and provides interdisciplinary training over a broad base of biomedical science in the first year, followed by in-depth training in the chosen discipline. The multidisciplinary nature of our training has served as an attraction cited by many applicants to the program. The goals of the current application are to build upon this framework and to improve our demonstrated success in recruiting and training minority scientists. To foster this latter objective, we have designed recruitment strategies that better integrate our program with existing minority-based undergraduate and master's program at the University of New Mexico and partner institutions in our state and in Southern Colorado.
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