NIH Office of Scientific Workforce Diversity
NIH Extramural Diversity Programs
Institutional training programs are required to demonstrate successful efforts to recruit an outstanding and diverse trainee pool. Applicants are strongly encouraged to read the Institutional Training Grant Funding Opportunity Announcements and the latest Guide Notice on NIH's Interest in Diversity for details about the groups that are currently considered underrepresented in the biomedical sciences. In addition, the training programs must describe efforts to sustain the scientific interests of trainees from all backgrounds within the program (i.e. retention). Additional information can be found on the NIH Extramural Diversity Recruitment and Retention website.
NIGMS places continued emphasis on the recruitment of a pool of individuals from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Successful recruitment of individuals from underrepresented groups requires active involvement of the program director, the training grant faculty, and institutional officials. Thus, centralized institutional efforts alone will not satisfy the requirement to recruit individuals from underrepresented groups to the training program. Some approaches that have been used by NIGMS training grant programs are presented below.
As for all diversity-enhancing recruitment, applicants are expected to establish practices tailored to their institutional and program environment. Training programs are expected to go beyond describing university efforts to provide accommodations in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) when describing the recruitment of a pool of potential trainees with disabilities. In addition to the efforts described above, the following represent examples of strategies and resources that have been used in the recruitment of persons with disabilities.
The training program must include activities designed to sustain the scientific interests of trainees from all backgrounds within a program (i.e., retention). Applicants are encouraged to consult the extramural diversity website to identify promising retention practices and use evidence-based practices for retention with the recognition that the variety of trainee backgrounds and experiences may necessitate the need to tailor retention approaches. The specific efforts to be undertaken by the training program may coordinate with trainee retention efforts of the medical school(s), graduate school(s), and/or the institution(s); however, centralized institutional efforts alone will not satisfy the requirement to retain trainees. Below are some activities used to sustain the interest of trainees from various backgrounds.