NIH apologizes for ‘structural racism,’ pledges change

doi:10.1126/science.371.6533.977

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DOI	10.1126/science.371.6533.977
	NIH apologizes for ‘structural racism,’ pledges change
	Jocelyn Kaiser
	2021-03-05
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins this week issued a public apology for what he called “structural racism in biomedical research” and pledged to address it with sweeping actions. NIH's long-running efforts to expand opportunities for minority researchers “have not been sufficient,” Collins wrote in the statement. “To those individuals in the biomedical research enterprise who have endured disadvantages due to structural racism, I am truly sorry.” The agency plans “new ways to support diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and will also correct policies within the agency “that may harm our workforce and our science,” he added. NIH's move is, in part, a response to last year's incidents of police brutality as well as the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black people. At a meeting last week of NIH's Advisory Committee to the Director, a working group on diversity released a report that calls for NIH to “acknowledge the prevalence of racism and anti-Blackness in the scientific workforce.” The group focused on Black people because of the country's 300-year legacy of slavery and segregation, said co-chair Roy Wilson, president of Wayne State University. NIH has faced long-standing concerns about racial bias in its funding patterns. A 2011 study known as the Ginther report found funding rates for Black researchers were 10 percentage points lower than rates for white researchers. The latest data show improvement: From 2003 to 2020, the number of basic R01 grants awarded to Black investigators rose from 52 to 166, and the success rate of Black applicants doubled to 24%, compared with 31% for white investigators. Still, that is only “incremental improvement,” said Marie Bernard, NIH acting chief officer for scientific workforce diversity. In a bid to move faster, NIH has launched an initiative called UNITE. Five internal committees leading UNITE have issued a long list of recommendations, including that NIH make public more data about the demographics of its staff and extramural grantees, appoint a diversity officer at each of its 27 institutes and centers, and improve outreach about NIH's diversity training programs. NIH is also seeking suggestions from the public for promoting racial equity. The agency also plans to spend $60 million over 5 years from the Common Fund, a pot of money in the director's office, for an initiative focused on health disparities and equity. Some awards will be reserved for minority-serving institutions. The announcements have drawn a mixed response. “Our group was very excited” by Collins's statement, says Lola Eniola-Adefeso, a chemical and biomedical engineer at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “It's the first time we're seeing that kind of language from the NIH director and NIH.” But many of the planned steps were presented “in a passive, noncommittal way,” says Eniola-Adefeso, who with 18 other women biomedical engineers wrote a recent commentary in Cell urging NIH to fund more Black scientists. Her group was disappointed that NIH has not agreed to fund Black scientists seeking R01s at the same rate as white scientists. Some observers have argued NIH could narrow the gap by funding Black scientists whose proposals receive peer-review scores that fall just outside the cutoff for funding. “That is the immediate action that is needed,” Eniola-Adefeso says. “We cannot wait for more studies. We will lose [investigators] from the pipeline which then propagates this vicious cycle.” But NIH's diversity working group noted that Supreme Court decisions make it difficult for the agency to make funding decisions based on race or ethnicity.
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/316977
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Jocelyn Kaiser. NIH apologizes for ‘structural racism,’ pledges change[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Jocelyn Kaiser.(2021).NIH apologizes for ‘structural racism,’ pledges change.Science.
MLA	Jocelyn Kaiser."NIH apologizes for ‘structural racism,’ pledges change".Science (2021).