Physician-scientists represent a critical component of the biomedical workforce, and are uniquely equipped to pose clinically relevant questions that link biomedical research to clinical care. Nonetheless, the number of physicians electing to pursue a research career has steadily declined. This distressing trend has been particularly noticeable in pediatrics despite both basic and translational research advances and growing knowledge that early life influences, exposures, and health status play a significant role in lifelong health and disease. Academic departments of pediatrics strive to improve care for children, and recognize that sustained progress requires creating and translating new knowledge about childhood disease. Pediatric physician- scientists are central to this process reflecting that they are uniquely equipped to pose clinically relevant questions, influenced by their experience of caring for patients, and are inimitably positioned to perform research that directly benefits those patients. Yet in a survey recently conducted by FIS/PSDP leaders, 94% of Chairs of Pediatrics across the US see the decline of physician-scientists as a ?very significant? focus of concern. Further, of direct relevance to this meeting, approximately 40% of Chairs commented that they have a shortage of mentors, particularly women and URiM trainees, to even effectively expose trainees to the diverse range of scientific careers and diversity of physician scientist role models. Therefore, a major goal of this meeting is to help in addressing this gap for all pediatric physician-scientists, but particularly women and URiM trainees. Recent data demonstrates a clear association between early research exposure and the subsequent pursuit of subspecialty fellowship and intensive research training leading to a career in academic medicine.] In this renewal R13 application, we propose to support residents-in-training to attend the annual FIS conferences which is an intensive 1.5-day meeting that: 1) addresses an unmet workforce need by focusing on the pediatric physician-scientist pipeline at the mid-residency level with an emphasis on recruiting women and diversity scholars while also expanding the overall program; 2) provides integration with the NICHD K12-funded, highly successful Pediatric Scientist Development Program (PSDP) Fellowship program that provides a model for broad workforce expansion; 3) has intentional inclusion of diverse senior pediatrician researchers as speakers and broad breadth of T0-T4 science in the program; 4) engages all ~145 Department of Pediatrics Chairs in the US within Schools of Medicine, 5) provides for the first time longitudinal mentorship to physician-scientists trainees of the R13 program, 6) measures feedback from trainees, and 7) longitudinally evaluates the impact by following professional development of trainees for no less than seven years.
The Frontiers in Science (FIS) Conference promotes research and networking opportunities for pediatric trainees interested in investigative careers by facilitating interactions between pediatric residents, pediatric researchers, and department chairs. Now in its 31st year, FIS synergizes with the NICHD-funded Pediatric Scientist Development Program focusing on pediatric residents-in-training and encouraging careers in academic pediatrics as future physician scientists. Our renewal request is to support a portion of the infrastructure toward organizing and conducting the conference, and a portion of the conference expenses to provide partial support for ~75 pediatric residents-in-training to attend the FIS conference with special emphasis on increasing the recruitment of women and individuals of all types of diversity (URiM).
