Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: Racial inequity in grant funding from the US National Institutes of Health

University of California, San Diego, United States
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, United States

Jan 18, 2021

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Abstract

Biomedical science and federal funding for scientific research are not immune to the systemic racism that pervades American society. A groundbreaking analysis of NIH grant success revealed in 2011 that grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health in the US by African-American or Black Principal Investigators (PIs) are less likely to be funded than applications submitted by white PIs, and efforts to narrow this funding gap have not been successful. A follow-up study in 2019 showed that this has not changed. Here, we review those original reports, as well as the response of the NIH to these issues, which we argue has been inadequate. We also make recommendations on how the NIH can address racial disparities in grant funding and call on scientists to advocate for equity in federal grant funding.

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Michael A Taffe

Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, United States

For correspondence
mtaffe@health.ucsd.edu

Competing interests
Reviewing editor, eLife

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9827-1738
Nicholas W Gilpin

Department of Physiology, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, United States

For correspondence
ngilpi@lsuhsc.edu

Competing interests
Owns shares in Glauser Life Sciences, Inc., a company with interest in developing therapeutics for mental health disorders. There is no direct link between those interests and the work contained herein.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8901-8917

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No external funding was received for this work.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.