The American Psychological Association (APA) - Minority Fellowship Program in Psychology is a national program designed to increase the numbers of underrepresented ethnic minority groups conducting mental health-related and health disparity oriented research of interest to NIMH and NIDA. Our program has been in existence for over 25 years and we are viewed as an important training model and contributor to the training of close to 1,000 trainees across all of our programs. Our program shares NIMH's and NIDA's goal of increasing the number of ethnic minority researchers. A total of 249 fellows have been supported. Nearly 61 percent of all trainees have earned their doctoral degrees. If we subtract the number still in training from the total trainees, this percentage rises to 88 percent. This clearly suggests that we have been highly successful in the first mission of MFP, increasing the number of ethnic/racial minority mental health researchers with doctoral level training. Most fellows were trained in the highest Carnegie classification universities (Research I). The continuing under-representation of minorities in the scientific workforce is documented in the proposal. The MFP in Psychology proposes to achieve its major goal by supporting the predoctoral studies of 30 graduate student trainees in a variety of psychology specialties related to the mission of NIMH and NIDA, and 3 postdoctoral fellows whose research programs and career goals are similarly relevant to the institute?s missions. During their tenure, the MFP will support their career development through the provision of stipends, active mentoring, and the provision of specialized programs to complement the training they receive at their various universities. The program is led by James M. Jones and has a Training Advisory Committee that is diverse and is composed of active researchers and contributors to the training of psychologists.
