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-19-001, 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 10 Summer Institute (SI) research education training programs with the general goal of providing research experiences, skills development and mentoring for early career 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: To facilitate 1) program-wide outreach and recruitment efforts; 2) program-wide mentor identification and orientation; 3) program-wide communications, including the program-wide annual scientific meeting; and 4) development and implementation of a program-wide evaluation protocol and data analysis plan. The evaluation protocol will assess key outcomes, collect and track outcomes across time so that it allows for an assessment of the impact of the PRIDE programs on increasing diversity, and benchmark these outcomes against comparison group of untrained faculty matched to the PRIDE participants. Significance and Innovation: Since this application is a competing renewal, much of the infrastructure and organization needed to address these aims is already operational. Moreover, the PI has served in this capacity since the beginning of this project (over 8 years), allowing a unique degree of continuity. While changes undoubtedly will be required as new programs and new needs join the PRIDE, we are prepared to make timely and efficient changes in our existing protocols as needed. Further, a critical barrier is in knowing whether the training has been successful, primarily because relevant comparisons are difficult to find. Our application specifically addresses this issue as by collecting a matched group of untrained early stage faculty 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 unique expertise and experience to continue as the CC 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 a matched comparison group, 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
