Journal of Science Policy & Governance | Volume 18, Issue 04 | September 27, 2021

Policy Memo Competition Third Place Winner (Tie)

Policy Memo: Addressing Racial Disparities in NIH Funding 

Keywords: National Institutes of Health; funding; systemic racism; equity; STEM workforce; diversity
Executive Summary: The United States (US) must strategically invest in diversifying its biomedical workforce to retain global leadership in biomedical research and to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the US. The under-representation of minority groups in the biomedical sciences is influenced by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding process which relies heavily on peer review subject to bias. Despite recent initiatives to combat structural racism within the NIH, the NIH has done little to rectify racial disparities in funding allocation that have been known for over a decade. In this report, I evaluate current NIH proposals to reduce bias in peer review and present stronger policy options for reducing inequity in grant funding. I recommend that the NIH treat the race/ethnicity funding disparity as it did the early career investigator disparity and immediately relax paylines and simultaneously prioritize research topics that align with interests of under-represented investigators, while working to develop a modified lottery for grant funding as a long-term solution to the biases that can influence grant peer review. Policies to address disparities in grant funding will diversify the biomedical workforce and have a profound and long-term positive impact on providing equitable access to science careers, regardless of race.​

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Nicole Comfort is a 5th year doctoral student in the Environmental Health Sciences Department at Columbia University studying extracellular vesicle microRNA as biomarkers of environmental exposures and disease. She holds a BS in Behavioral Neuroscience from Northeastern University. Nicole has an active interest in science advocacy and policy, and is committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences.
 
Acknowledgements
NC is supported by the National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31ES030973).
 
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