U joins effort for diversity among medical researchers

The University of Minnesota will help anchor an unprecedented federal effort to diversify the field of biomedical research, part of a broader effort to narrow the nation's health "disparities" and improve care for underserved and minority ­Americans.

The National Institutes of Health said last week it will award $31 million this year to more than 50 institutions — and $240 million over the next five years — to recruit a more diverse bench of researchers to medical and biomedical professions. The U will receive a proposed $20 million of funding over five years through the program.

The nation's wide and stubborn health disparities might improve if researchers were to ask new questions about different health threats, said Dr. Kolawole S. Okuyemi, a U professor who will serve as one of several principal investigators on the grants.

"People tend to do research in what they've been exposed to," said Okuyemi, who heads the U's Program in Health Disparities Research. "Part of why we have health disparities is because we don't have enough people to ask relevant questions."

The U will serve as the Midwest hub of a nationwide consortium creating mentorship and training opportunities for the targeted groups.

Nationally, the initiative could benefit several hundred potential research candidates in the first year alone, Okuyemi said.

Minnesota is known for its high-quality health care, but a report to the Legislature this year found the state has some of the widest ethnic health disparities in the nation. Black infants in Minnesota are more than twice as likely as white infants to die before their first birthday. American Indian high school students are twice as likely to consider suicide as their white classmates. Hispanics are three times as likely to be uninsured as whites.

Joann Usher, executive director of Rainbow Health Initiative in Minneapolis, welcomed the NIH initiative.

Usher said her organization has found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, as a group, use alcohol and tobacco and have mental-health problems at more than twice the rate of their heterosexual counterparts. A recent survey found bisexual 9th and 11th grade girls attempted suicide at six times the rate of their peers; bisexual boys attempted suicide at eight times the rate of their peers.

"As with many other underrepresented populations in [medicine], it's important to have that voice present … because it's still very unusual for research projects to ask questions about gender identity and sexual orientation," she said.

The NIH initiative has three components. One will develop a set of experimental training awards for candidates from less research-intensive schools, including historically black colleges and universities. A second group of institutions, including the U, will provide research and mentorship support in urban and rural settings. A third, housed at the University of California-Los Angeles, will coordinate and assess the activities.

"The biomedical research enterprise must engage all sectors of the population in order to solve the most complex biological problems and discover new ways to improve human health," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said in announcing the awards.

"Many people of diverse backgrounds do not graduate" from college, Okuyemi said. "So one of the metrics is a higher graduation rate within the groups, and increasing the number that go to graduate school, and complete graduate school, and ultimately will become faculty, writing grants and getting tenure."

Okuyemi, originally from Nigeria, said people like him didn't have good mentoring. Many quit. He said he wishes such a program had existed when he was younger.

"Clearly, one thing I can tell you is that … talent is universal," he said. "But opportunity is not."