Enhancing Mentoring of Diverse Early Career Researchers

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Project Summary/Abstract Recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minorities into academic gastroenterology (GI) has been a major challenge for decades (Merchant, 2010). Indeed, as of 2017, only 3.2% of gastroenterology fellows were African American and 8.5% were Hispanic (Quezada, 2017). To address these challenges NIDDK has funded initiatives by the American Gastroenterology Association (AGA) since 2012: R25 DK096968 Investing in the Future to Promote Diversity in GI Training (9/10/2012 – 8/31/2017) and R25 DK118761 AGA - Fostering Opportunities Resulting in Workforce and Research Diversity (FORWARD, R25 DK118761 7/1/2018 – 4/30/2023). FORWARD is a structured curriculum that has been successful in helping junior GI faculty from URM backgrounds (twenty so far) to succeed in academia. Its renewal for the next 5 years has received a favorable score. For the past ten years this PI and others at AGA, who are passionate about diversity, have volunteered their time to compete for funding, organize, coordinate and supervise the progress of these NIDDK-funded initiatives. This K26 award will provide dedicated salary support to allow this investigator to decrease his clinical load and reallocate salary support to hire a senior scientist to assist the PI with the day-to-day operation of his research program. These measures will for the first time allow the PI the dedicated time that might better guarantee the success of these national initiatives. At the institutional level, these funds will free time to continue mentoring URM students at the undergraduate and graduate levels and newly hired junior GI faculty.