Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Programs

The Summer Health Professions Education Program is a summer enhancement program designed to help students compete for medical and dental school acceptance. Applicants may come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, racial and ethnic groups that historically have been underrepresented in medicine, or parts of the country (such as rural areas) where residents historically have been underrepresented in medicine and dentistry.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has discontinued the Clinical Scholars Program, the Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program, and the Scholars in Health Policy Research Program.  In their place, new initiatives will be put into place.  For more information, see the Foundation’s 2015 press release about the Health Leadership programs.  Further information about these and other programs may be found at the The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s website. The Foundation has more than 70 national programs in health and health care.

Other Organizations

The American Society of Hematology’s Minority Medical Student Award Program (MMSAP) supports research experiences in hematology for medical students, including a travel allowance and stipend.

The Minority Resident Hematology Award Program (MRHAP) of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) is the newest program on ASH’s Minority Recruitment Initiative  longitudinal pathway. MRHAP is designed to provide support for underrepresented minority resident physicians in an internal medicine, pathology, or pediatric residency program in the United States or Canada to conduct hematology focused research.

Check ASH’s page on Medical Student, Resident, and Graduate Student Awards for other opportunities.

Grantsnet is a free, searchable database of biomedical funding sources, developed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Research training opportunities within the National Institutes of Health are listed at http://grants.nih.gov/training.

The Association of American Medical Colleges states its commitment to increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in medical education and lists opportunities on its “Diversity & Inclusion” page.

Herbert W. Nickens, M.D., Medical Student Scholarships are given to outstanding students entering their third-year of medical school who have shown leadership efforts to eliminate inequities in medical education and health care and demonstrated leadership efforts in addressing educational, societal, and health-care needs of minorities.

The Office of Minority Health is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Check Funding Resources for a list of and links to funding opportunities.

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Division of Training, Workforce Development, and Diversity (TWD) administers research and research training programs aimed at increasing the number of minority biomedical and behavioral scientists as part of the National Institutes of Health.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is charged with supporting research designed to improve the quality of health care, reduce its cost, and broaden access to essential services. This website includes a listing of funding opportunities.

The Sloan Foundation‘s program “Increasing PhDs for Underrepresented Minorities” recruits faculty to mentor doctoral students in mathematics, science, and engineering.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund supports biomedical research and education.

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation gives support to young investigators for basic and patient-oriented cancer research.

The American Gastroenterological Association supports research in digestive diseases.

The Distance Learning Center strives to increase the number of underrepresented minorities (African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians and Mainland Puerto Ricans) in science, technology, engineering, math and medicine (STEMM) through its STEMM Prep Project, aimed at middle through high school students.

Also, be sure to investigate research programs of such organizations as the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association.

The NIH Loan Repayment Program is at http://www.lrp.nih.gov.

PRIDE (Programs to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research) is an all-expense-paid Summer Institute, research education and mentoring initiative sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). This Summer Institute initiative addresses the difficulties experienced by junior investigators and transitioning postdoctoral scientists in establishing independent academic research careers and negotiating through the academic ranks. The primary outcome of this program is to increase the number of scientists and research-oriented faculty who are from backgrounds currently under-represented in the biomedical sciences and those with disabilities, by preparing them to successfully compete for external funding for scientific research in heart, lung, blood, and sleep (HLBS) disorders.