WASHINGTON – In a move to strengthen the contributions of minority researchers to biomedical and clinical research, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced several new efforts to increase scientific career opportunities for under-represented minorities.
“By opening up more opportunities in VA research to minority health care professionals, we’re ensuring that veterans will continue to be served by the best this country has to offer,” said Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. Leo S. Mackay Jr.
With an overall goal of enhancing research opportunities for minorities and increasing funding for minority-serving institutions, the initiative calls for three new mentoring programs:
- Supporting institutional collaborations between VA and minority-serving institutions, involving students and faculty from these institutions partnered with VA mentors.
- Providing applied training in research on VA-funded projects to participants ranging from high school students and college undergraduates, to graduates and pre-doctoral students.
- Offering a supportive career path for mentored research within VA for people who have completed their clinical fellowships or doctoral training within the last two years. The program provides a full salary to awardees for three years.
Mackay noted that VA’s new mentor programs are modeled after successful programs offered by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The mentoring programs will partner VA medical centers with historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, and other institutions with sizeable concentrations of Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, native Hawaiians and Alaska natives.
Projected to cost about $6 million annually, the program is scheduled to begin in April 2004.
“We believe VA research programs can be enhanced nationally by engaging the leadership of minority-serving institutions, foundations, professional societies and the VA research community,” Mackay said.
For more information about the program, visit the website at www.va.gov/resdev.
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