Population Health Aging Research - Advancing Health Equity and Diversity (PHAR-AHEaD)

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ABSTRACT There is an urgent need to diversify the research workforce to meet current and future research demands that support a healthy aging society. Lack of diversity is an important problem in Medicine, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (MSTEM), where inadequate institutional preparation and economic challenges can serve as barriers to entry. Population health sits at the nexus of the MSTEM fields and thus a training program in population health aging research is uniquely suited to serve as a bridge linking underrepresented students to multiple MSTEM disciplines. Moreover, these fields are critical for developing solutions to support health equity in aging. Our goal is to support scholars from backgrounds underrepresented in MSTEM fields in the academic pathways to graduate education and research in aging and population health. The Stanford Population Health Aging Research - Advancing Health Equity and Diversity (PHAR-AHEaD) summer program is an 8- week training and research experience for college students from underrepresented and historically excluded groups in the health sciences. We bring together a diverse team of over 25 faculty members from across Stanford University to foster an inclusive academic environment where college students can explore the core foundations of population health sciences under the umbrella of a life course perspective on aging. Population health integrates a spectrum of disciplines; a unique strength of our program is the breadth of training in aging, epidemiology, statistics, health policy, and community engagement. We pair this instruction with a faculty mentored research project to build skills and support student contributions to team science. We enrich students with professional development opportunities to learn the “hidden curriculum” of academia; these unwritten lessons and values are disproportionately inaccessible to students from historically excluded backgrounds. PHAR-AHEaD was founded on the principles that research experiences, faculty networks, and professional development are crucial components in graduate school admissions and future success as a researcher. Access to these opportunities is not equitably distributed, leading to underrepresentation and exclusion in the field. We are committed to reducing known barriers and creating a more equitable educational experience. This program will ignite interest and lower the barriers for students from historically excluded and underrepresented groups to pursue further studies and careers in aging and population health research.