NIH Diversity Supplements for Students, Postdocs, and Faculty

The University of California Global Health Institute (UCGHI) invites you to join the movement to support and cultivate a more diverse global health workforce and a diverse scientific and academic community.

“While diversity takes work, it is in the best interest of science—and society—to create a bigger us.  Diverse teams have been shown to be more innovative and productive.”  (Maggie Werner-Washburne)

Diversify the Global Health Workforce by Increasing Awareness of Resources

The UC Global Health Institute is committed to diversifying the global health workforce by launching our first campaign to increase awareness of the National Institutes of Health Diversity Supplements, which is an underutilized resource. Of the thousands of eligible parent grants across the UC system, the number of successfully awarded supplements remain in the double digits. Since local is global, we aim to increase the submission of NIH Diversity supplements for all disciplines across UCs.

UCGHI will complement existing efforts to increase successful submissions of these diversity supplements by collaborating with SF BUILD and UCI BUILD. UCGHI aims to double the submission of NIH diversity supplements across UC by January 2022.

The University of California Can Do Better

In terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the University of California can do better. The University of California Office of the President (UCOP) recently published report “Disrupting the Status Quo” which documents the need for the University of California to do better to eliminate barriers to achieve full inclusion of racially and ethnically diverse faculty. In other words, creating an environment that enables under represented individuals to thrive at UC.

UCGHI is committed to working in collaboration with UCOP to better integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion for under represented faculty, staff, and students to succeed.

Please join the University of California Global Health Institute in promoting NIH Diversity Supplements for your students, postdocs, and faculty:

  • UCGHI will host a webinar in March 2021. Stay tuned and encourage your faculty to join.
  • Note that each NIH Institute has its own regulations and mechanisms.
  • Please distribute this to your faculty, read the RFA, and encourage supplements to be submitted.

How will we do this together?

  • NIH Diversity Supplements: The NIH PA-20-222:  “Research Supplements to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research” is an underutilized resource that allows administrative supplements to a wide variety of funding mechanisms to enhance diversity in the scientific work force. The mechanism also provides short- and long-term support for faculty members to conduct full-time research.
  • Improve the Global Health Pathway for current and future Global Health Scholars: The mechanism allows support for high school students, undergraduate students, baccalaureate and master’s degree holders, graduate and health professional students, and individuals in postdoctoral training.
  • Increase the number of successful applications across UC: We are aiming to double the number of successful applications by January 2022.