TY - JOUR
T1 - Mentoring Underrepresented Minority Physician-Scientists to Success
AU - Kalet, Adina
AU - Libby, Anne M.
AU - Jagsi, Reshma
AU - Brady, Kathleen
AU - Chavis-Keeling, Deborah
AU - Pillinger, Michael H.
AU - Daumit, Gail L.
AU - Drake, Amelia F.
AU - Drake, Wonder Puryear
AU - Fraser, Victoria
AU - Ford, Daniel
AU - Hochman, Judith S.
AU - Jones, Rochelle D.
AU - Mangurian, Christina
AU - Meagher, Emma A.
AU - McGuinness, Georgeann
AU - Regensteiner, Judith G.
AU - Rubin, Deborah C.
AU - Yaffe, Kristine
AU - Ravenell, Joseph E.
N1 - Funding Information:
Clearly, extramural funders play a role in encouraging culture change. For example, Programs to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research, sponsored by the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, is a model program. Other institutes should be encouraged to follow the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s lead. The Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has extensive experience in encouraging cultural change, and the new NIH Common Fund’s Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program (offering U54 funding) has committed $70.5 million to fund up to 4 awards in 2021 to enhance and maintain cultures of inclusive excellence in the biomedical research community through recruiting cohorts of URM scientists.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
PY - 2022/4/1
Y1 - 2022/4/1
N2 - As the nation seeks to recruit and retain physician-scientists, gaps remain in understanding and addressing mitigatable challenges to the success of faculty from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists program, implemented in 2015 at 10 academic medical centers in the United States, seeks to retain physician-scientists at risk of leaving science because of periods of extraordinary family caregiving needs, hardships that URM faculty - especially those who identify as female - are more likely to experience. At the annual Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists program directors conference in 2018, program directors - 21% of whom identify as URM individuals and 13% as male - addressed issues that affect URM physician-scientists in particular. Key issues that threaten the retention of URM physician-scientists were identified through focused literature reviews; institutional environmental scans; and structured small- and large-group discussions with program directors, staff, and participants. These issues include bias and discrimination, personal wealth differential, the minority tax (i.e., service burdens placed on URM faculty who represent URM perspectives on committees and at conferences), lack of mentorship training, intersectionality and isolation, concerns about confirming stereotypes, and institutional-level factors. The authors present recommendations for how to create an environment in which URM physician-scientists can expect equitable opportunities to thrive, as institutions demonstrate proactive allyship and remove structural barriers to success. Recommendations include providing universal training to reduce interpersonal bias and discrimination, addressing the consequences of the personal wealth gap through financial counseling and benefits, measuring the service faculty members provide to the institution as advocates for URM faculty issues and compensating them appropriately, supporting URM faculty who wish to engage in national leadership programs, and sustaining institutional policies that address structural and interpersonal barriers to inclusive excellence.
AB - As the nation seeks to recruit and retain physician-scientists, gaps remain in understanding and addressing mitigatable challenges to the success of faculty from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists program, implemented in 2015 at 10 academic medical centers in the United States, seeks to retain physician-scientists at risk of leaving science because of periods of extraordinary family caregiving needs, hardships that URM faculty - especially those who identify as female - are more likely to experience. At the annual Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists program directors conference in 2018, program directors - 21% of whom identify as URM individuals and 13% as male - addressed issues that affect URM physician-scientists in particular. Key issues that threaten the retention of URM physician-scientists were identified through focused literature reviews; institutional environmental scans; and structured small- and large-group discussions with program directors, staff, and participants. These issues include bias and discrimination, personal wealth differential, the minority tax (i.e., service burdens placed on URM faculty who represent URM perspectives on committees and at conferences), lack of mentorship training, intersectionality and isolation, concerns about confirming stereotypes, and institutional-level factors. The authors present recommendations for how to create an environment in which URM physician-scientists can expect equitable opportunities to thrive, as institutions demonstrate proactive allyship and remove structural barriers to success. Recommendations include providing universal training to reduce interpersonal bias and discrimination, addressing the consequences of the personal wealth gap through financial counseling and benefits, measuring the service faculty members provide to the institution as advocates for URM faculty issues and compensating them appropriately, supporting URM faculty who wish to engage in national leadership programs, and sustaining institutional policies that address structural and interpersonal barriers to inclusive excellence.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127952283&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004402
DO - 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004402
M3 - Article
C2 - 34495889
AN - SCOPUS:85127952283
SN - 1040-2446
VL - 97
SP - 497
EP - 502
JO - Academic Medicine
JF - Academic Medicine
IS - 4
ER -