Dr. Kola Okuyemi, esteemed Principal Investigator for NRMN's Professional Development Core, has been named University of Minnesota's first Endowed Chair for Health Equity Research in recognition of the tireless efforts he and his researchers have led in addressing community health and health equity.
The Chronicle of Higher Education's Vimal Patel covers the inception of the National Research Mentoring Network as an NIH response to the call to create a more diverse workforce among academic researchers across the NIH-funded biomedical sciences. With quotes from NRMN's Drs. Angela Byars-Winston and Jamboor Vishwanatha, notes about the research of NRMN's Dr. Rick McGee, and perspectives from brief interviews of an NRMN mentor and a mentee.
NRMN congratulates Dedra Buchwald and Spero Manson on the announcement of their receipt of a new federal grant to create one of two Transdisciplinary Collaborative Centers for Health Disparities Research on Chronic Disease Prevention. The grant was announced in late August by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, part of the National Institutes of Health.
Jeffrey Mervis of Science explores the challenges NRMN has faced since its initial inception.
"Diversity advocates have long believed that mentoring holds the key to increasing minority participation in U.S. science. But the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), part of a 10-year, half-billion-dollar initiative launched in 2014 by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to enhance the diversity of the biomedical workforce, has gotten off to a rocky start... NIH officials admit that 4 decades' worth of programs aimed at removing obstacles to participation by underrepresented groups haven't moved the needle very much. And NRMN's supporters are worried that NIH may also end the network prematurely if it falls short of some short-term, quantitative goals."
AIDS and Behavior Volume 20, Issue 2 Supplement, September 2016, "Securing the Future: Mentoring to Diversify the Biomedical HIV Research Workforce" describes the framework for the promotion of mentoring, as well as the evaluation of mentor training efforts, being implemented by the Diversity Program Consortium and in particular through the NRMN Mentor Training Core. Features include work by Hannah A. Valantine, Richard McGee, Christine Pfund, Angela Byars-Winston, Janet Branchaw, Spero M. Manson, and others from the NIH-funded Consortium.
In the CBE-Life Sciences Edution September 1, 2016 issue, numerous articles with authorship contribution from faculty across the Consortium aim to explore the issues critical to broadening the participation from underrepresented scientists in the biomedical research workforce and life sciences in general.
In late July of 2016, the Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities, in collaboration with the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities, released a report entitled Increasing Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce: Actions for Improving Evidence. The report was the result of working groups that more than 70 experts across 28 universities and collectively developed the recommended actions for improving evidence. Members of the groups were nominated by their university presidents and chancellors, and included leaders of the institution’s research enterprise as well as content experts in areas such as organizational change, talent development, and recruitment. Among these were several prominent faculty who are leading initiatives at NRMN and across the Diversity Program Consortium.
NRMN Principal Investigator Kola Okuyemi, MD, MPH, director of the Program in Health Disparities Research and professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota, recently received a $1.5 million renewal grant to educate researchers to reduce cancer-related health disparities among underserved populations.
Byars-Winston, Branchaw, Pfund, Leverett, Newton, Culturally Diverse Undergraduate Researchers’ Academic Outcomes and Perceptions of Their Research Mentoring Relationships, International Journal of Science Education, September 2015
Pfund, Spencer, Sorkness, Asquith, House, Miller, Building National Capacity for Research Mentor Training: An Evidence-Based Approach to Training the Trainers, Life Sciences Education, March 2015
