This month we launched a second round of funding through a new call for proposals, Rapid Response: Reinvesting in Racial and Indigenous Health Equity Research. These Rapid Response (RR) awards are specifically intended to support timely, actionable health equity research that has been interrupted by shifts in federal funding. Given the breadth of the issue and our limited resources, our goal is to support those who are in the most precarious situations, thereby helping to maintain the upcoming generation of racial and Indigenous health equity scholars that we are now at risk of losing. The eligibility criteria section of the CFP includes requirements as well as priorities and encouragement for certain applicant characteristics. In this blog, we’ll distinguish among these specifications and share our rationale behind some of them, as well as what we hope to achieve through our grantmaking for RR awards.
What are the specifications?
For this call, we are prioritizing funding for projects led by early- to mid-career racial and/or Indigenous health equity researchers who are within 15 years of receiving their last degree. For the purposes of the review process, a priority simply means that all else being equal when making a funding decision those projects led by an early- to mid-career PD will be more likely to be funded.
We especially encourage Project Director(s) having backgrounds and life experiences that are underrepresented on research teams, including Indigenous/Native, Black, Latiné, and other minoritized and racialized groups to apply. These characteristics will not weigh into final decision-making.
Why are we highlighting these characteristics?
This is an especially precarious time for those whose salaries and work are supported by federal research funding, particularly for organizations and researchers working toward racial and Indigenous health equity. According to Rabin and Hwang, the federal administration has stopped over 600 NIH studies examining health inequities, totaling over $400M in research funding. While approximately 40% of those have been reinstated, the administration is still fighting to withhold the terminations. Even for those who have had their federal funding reinstated, many researchers are discovering that their research is not immediately back on track. As John Pachankis of the Yale School of Public Health is quoted as saying regarding one of his reinstated grants, “The research infrastructure took years to build, was collapsed in a day, and will take months if not longer to rebuild.” In the same piece, Sarah Rahal shares that others have had their grants reinstated only to have weeks to wrap up their projects. And, that’s only for those researchers whose funding has been reinstated, which is a relatively small fraction of grants that have been rescinded. The problem is not only confined to the institutions explicitly targeted by the administration, three-quarters of responding scientists to a recent poll conducted by Nature say they are considering moving out of the US due to funding disruptions. Federal funding changes are also disrupting the career development pipeline, potentially leading many early-career researchers to leave their profession or seek employment elsewhere. We are at grave risk of losing a generation of researchers and all of the beneficial work they could accomplish, with the potential to feel this loss for decades to come.
Scholars from many disciplines, including health equity, often rely on a pathway of federal funding to support their training and professional development and progression. These award types support researchers in building a foundation for their research portfolios and developing more stable and diverse funding streams that may include additional federal grants, private foundation grants, among other types of funding. Disruptions to this pathway make it more difficult to establish a career in research. According to a recent survey, as featured in StatNews, “more than half of postdocs surveyed (54%) indicated they had been impacted by the Trump administration’s policies in its first six weeks alone, with another 27 percent stating they may have been impacted.” Anecdotally, we have also heard from numerous scholars that their training awards or other federal funding sources have been terminated.
Even before these federal funding shifts, Indigenous/Native, Black, Latiné, and other researchers of color have been and continue to be systematically underfunded through federal funding sources and under-represented in research leadership positions. Given this baseline, these federal funding shifts are likely to be disproportionately deleterious for researchers from these racial and ethnic backgrounds. In encouraging project directors with backgrounds and life experiences that are underrepresented on research teams we hope to signal the value we place on diversity of perspectives and leadership and create a welcoming and supportive environment, especially for people who are often marginalized in the research field.
How will the preferences be applied?
All applications will be reviewed with the same eligibility and selection criteria, as listed in the call for proposals. If resources allowed, we would fund every project that meets both the eligibility and selection criteria. However, we anticipate receiving many more applications than we are able to fund. So, all else being equal with regards to the stated criteria, reviewers will take priorities into consideration with an eye toward supporting the people and projects that are in the most precarious positions. We may also try to balance the portfolio of grants across geography, type of institution, and other factors that will help shape a fair and diverse group of grantees.
What do we hope to achieve?
As many can attest, the work of a health equity researcher is far from glamorous. To do the work well and establish a stable career in the field requires dedication, passion, planning, and continuous learning, combined with flexibility and tenacity. Pulling the rug out from under researchers by cutting their funding has cascading impacts - derailing careers and educational pathways, reducing stability of organizations that rely heavily on federal funds for expenses such as overhead costs, and curtailing critically important work with the potential to advance population health equity and racial and Indigenous justice.