U.S. Government has announced to spend $500 million to help minorities especially blacks who are entering in biomedical research fields where lack of diversity is disturbing and disheartening.
The awards were announced by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency. As part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH doles out north of $31 billion annually to hundreds of thousands of researchers at thousands of universities and institutions around the globe.
The NIH said it recognized through its study that black applicants were 10 percent less likely to receive its grants than whites or Hispanics, saying “the quality of educational and mentoring experiences may differ for applicants who self-identify as black or African-American.” Furthermore, the NIH said that there were an alarmingly low number of non-white research applicants in general.
The NIH has taken this initiative to help minority students to pursue their higher education. They have made a 10 year plan that will grant $50 million per annum to help minority students with scholarships, research experiences and even graduate loan repayment. The agency has also promised to make diversity a core consideration of NIH governance. With these grants they will erase bias toward awards and scholarships.
The two main goals of this initiative are:
1. to increase the range of the NIH-funded workforce
2. to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly in the peer review system.
NIH’s Plan of Action:
-Evaluate current training programs
-Phase out unsuccessful programs and expand successful ones
-Increase number of early career reviewers including those from underrepresented populations
-Examine grant review process for bias and develop interventions
-Improve support for grant applicants
-Gather expert advice on additional action steps.
This is really a great initiative to help medical students. Let’s hope that these aids should draw more outstanding young minority people to the medical profession.
Good Luck!!
Vaishali Arora
