Why foster diversity in the biomedical research workforce?
Diversity is important because: • It enhances the research agenda by bringing new knowledge and varied perspectives to research questions. • It reduces inequities in opportunities for research careers. • It potentially increases and enhances research into particular populations. • It helps ensure a supply of well-qualified bioscience, clinical, and translational investigators in the research pipeline. While major academic medical centers, foundations, and federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), have provided considerable effort and dollars over the past several decades toward increasing the number of minority researchers in biomedical science, the number of underrepresented minority investigators has not reached the magnitude envisioned. The lack of diversity is especially severe with respect to blacks/African
