The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has issued grants totaling $5.4 million to 10 medical schools to establish a Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists within each of their institutions. Each school will receive $540,000 over five years to provide stronger institutional support and supplemental funds for early-career physician scientists to maintain productivity during periods of excessive extraprofessional demands.
DDCF launched the Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists (the Fund) to build upon a growing momentum in the medical research field toward supporting young physician scientists through phases of intense, extraprofessional career obstacles. Studies have revealed that up to 44 percent of young physicians with full-time faculty appointments at academic medical schools leave their posts within 10 years. Furthermore, while women enter academic medical centers at about the same rate as men, they make up only 19 percent of faculty at the full professor level. The causes of this disparity are varied and complex, but one contributing factor is the load of transitory but significant outside responsibilities such as childcare, elder care or family illness that may arise and preclude the career growth of many young faculty members, particularly women.
“As a foundation committed to fostering the careers of physician scientists in academic medicine, we sought a way to retain promising early-career faculty during times they are most challenged by caregiving demands,” said Betsy Myers, program director for Medical Research. “We look forward to partnering with the 10 awardee institutions on this crucial effort and hope that their work inspires the academic community to adopt similar models for their own faculty.”
Several medical schools have begun to address this issue with programs that provide financial support and resources specifically to researchers who are managing these conflicting responsibilities, and their effort has shown a return on investment in the form of retention of the scientists, promotion within academia, and attainment of new grants.
“As a female physician scientist balancing clinical care while directing a research program and parenting three teenage boys alongside my physician-scientist husband, I can attest to the critical importance of this new DDCF Fund,” said Rochelle Walensky, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, advisor to the foundation’s Medical Research Program and a recipient of a similar award at the Massachusetts General Hospital. “Extra support during the most vulnerable time of my career — the transition from fellow to faculty while raising children — allowed me to focus on building my research foundation, exposed me to a breadth of faculty with similar work – life juggling acts, and reflected my institution’s commitment to my multidisciplinary career path.”
Each medical school selected to administer the Fund will identify faculty members who will receive supplemental, flexible funds that complement and sustain their productivity on clinical research projects focused on important biomedical problems. The funds will provide the physician scientists with the extra personnel, services and /or supplies they may need to continue their projects while managing outside caregiving responsibilities. In total, over five years, the Fund will support approximately 100 researchers in building their careers.
Recipients of the grants are:
- Duke University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Medical University of South Carolina
- NYU Langone Medical Center
- University of California, San Francisco
- University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Vanderbilt University
- Washington University in St. Louis
- Yale University
Click here for descriptions of each participating institution.
