Topic choice contributes to the lower rate of NIH awards to African-American/black scientists

Abstract

Despite efforts to promote diversity in the biomedical workforce, there remains a lower rate of funding of National Institutes of Health R01 applications submitted by African-American/black (AA/B) scientists relative to white scientists. To identify underlying causes of this funding gap, we analyzed six stages of the application process from 2011 to 2015 and found that disparate outcomes arise at three of the six: decision to discuss, impact score assignment, and a previously unstudied stage, topic choice. Notably, AA/B applicants tend to propose research on topics with lower award rates. These topics include research at the community and population level, as opposed to more fundamental and mechanistic investigations; the latter tend to have higher award rates. Topic choice alone accounts for over 20% of the funding gap after controlling for multiple variables, including the applicant’s prior achievements. Our findings can be used to inform interventions designed to close the funding gap.

A decade of decline: Grant funding for researchers with disabilities 2008 to 2018

“…This result suggests that researchers with disabilities may be disadvantaged in the grant peer review process and mirrors similar research suggesting barriers to grant funding for female and underrepresented researchers. Recent research by Hoppe et al [21] suggests differences in grant success by African Americans (AA) and black researchers stem from: (1) bias during grant peer review resulting in lower impact scores or because they are less likely to be discussed, although there is conflicting data [22,23], (2) lower percentage of AA/black applicants resubmitting an unfunded application; and (3) differences in research topic choices by race. While the data provided in response to our FOIA do not facilitate investigating the reasons for lower grant success rates among applications from PIs reporting disabilities, access to data similar to that used in the analyses by Hoppe et al [21] would provide insight into the potential bias and barriers driving the differences in funding success observed in our data.…”

“…Recent research by Hoppe et al [21] suggests differences in grant success by African Americans (AA) and black researchers stem from: (1) bias during grant peer review resulting in lower impact scores or because they are less likely to be discussed, although there is conflicting data [22,23], (2) lower percentage of AA/black applicants resubmitting an unfunded application; and (3) differences in research topic choices by race. While the data provided in response to our FOIA do not facilitate investigating the reasons for lower grant success rates among applications from PIs reporting disabilities, access to data similar to that used in the analyses by Hoppe et al [21] would provide insight into the potential bias and barriers driving the differences in funding success observed in our data. The percentage of NIH applications and awards from PIs reporting unknown disability status or who withheld reporting this status declined from 2008 to 2018 (Table 1), suggesting increased disability disclosure in eRACommons, yet, this group had the lowest grant success rate over this period (Table 2).…”

‘The Problem of the Color Line’: Faculty approaches to teaching Social Justice in Baccalaureate Nursing Programs

“…Ginther, Kahn, & Schaffer (2016) found that black women and, to a lesser extent, Asian women, are less likely to receive National Institutes of Health R01 awards. African American/black scientists received lower overall scores than white scientists and were more likely to include human subjects and terms such as socioeconomic and disparity (Hoppe, Litovitz, et al, 20192019).…”

Racism and racial inequities in health care rise to the forefront

“…However, newer research, published in Science Advances, indicates that funding disparities still exist and partially attributes them to NIH bias toward funding cellular science versus community health interventions, an area for which Black scientists more often tend to seek funds. 2 Disparities also continue to persist in medical schools. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), in 2016, there were 5075 Black or African American faculty at US medical schools, amounting to approximately 3% of all faculty.…”