Perspectives on National Institutes of Health Funding Requirements for Racial and Ethnic Diversity Among Medical Scientist Training Program Leadership

Abstract

Since 1964, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has funded the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) MD-PhD program at medical schools across the US to support training physician-scientists. Recent studies have suggested that MSTPs have consistently matriculated more students from racial and ethnic backgrounds historically underrepresented in science than MD-PhD programs without NIH funding; however, the underlying basis for the increased diversity seen in NIH-funded MSTPs is poorly understood. To investigate how administrators and faculty perceive the impact of MSTP status on MD-PhD program matriculant racial and ethnic diversity. This qualitative study used a positive deviance approach to identify 9 high-performing and 3 low-performing MSTPs based on the percentage of students underrepresented in science who matriculated into the program between 2014 and 2018. This study, a subanalysis of a larger study to understand recruitment of students underrepresented in science at MSTPs, focused on in-depth qualitative interviews, conducted from October 26, 2020, to August 31, 2022, of 69 members of MSTP leadership, including program directors, associate and assistant program directors, and program administrators. The association of NIH funding with institutional priorities, programs, and practices related to MD-PhD program matriculant racial and ethnic diversity. The study included 69 participants (mean [SD] age, 53 [10] years; 38 women [55%]; 13 African American or Black participants [19%], 6 Asian participants [9%], 12 Hispanic participants [17%], and 36 non-Hispanic White participants [52%]). A total of 51 participants (74%) were in administrative roles, and 18 (26%) were faculty involved in recruitment. Five themes emerged from the data: (1) by tying MSTP funding to diversity efforts, the NIH created a sense of urgency among MSTP leadership to bolster matriculant diversity; (2) MD-PhD program leadership leveraged the changes to MSTP grant review to secure new institutional investments to promote recruitment of students underrepresented in science; (3) MSTPs increasingly adopted holistic review to evaluate applicants to meet NIH funding requirements; (4) MSTP leadership began to systematically assess the effectiveness of their diversity initiatives and proactively identify opportunities to enhance matriculant diversity; and (5) although all MSTPs were required to respond to NIH criteria, changes made by low-performing programs generally lacked the robustness demonstrated by high-performing programs. This study suggests that NIH funding requirements may be a powerful incentive to promote diversity and positively affect representation of students underrepresented in science in the biomedical scientific workforce.