We strive to produce new knowledge and innovative interventions that will increase the likelihood that outcomes will be advantageous for underrepresented and under-resourced populations and will result in increased utilization of services to ultimately reduce health disparities.
This includes:
- Numerous faculty in our department prioritize race, justice, and/or equity within their scientific portfolios. Examples of current NIH funded research projects that are led by our psychiatry faculty and will impact DEI include:
- A mixed methods approach to understanding obesity risk among sexual minority women
- Psychosocial Syndemics and Multimorbidity in Hospitalized Patients with Heart Failure
- Identifying Genetic Variants Associated with Opioid Overdose Mortality
- The Developmental Psychopathology of Suicidal Ideations and Cognitions in Childhood
- Precision prevention strategy to increase uptake and engagement in lung cancer screening and smoking cessation treatment
- Ecological Momentary Assessment of Racial Microaggressions and Alcohol Use in African American Young Adults
- We have assembled a Research Subcommittee that prioritizes URiM and women membership. This committee will help evaluate the state of the field and guide the department’s research strategy moving forward. An important goal of this committee is to advance URiM researchers through targeted recruitment for existing training grants and fostering a culturally-aware mentorship environment.
- There are numerous pilot funding opportunities across our Washington University institution that help to fund health equity research pilot projects. Examples are:
- The Just-In-Time (JIT) Core Usage Funding Program which is designed to provide quick access to funding to use any of the JIT Cores for research advancing medical knowledge that can improve human health. Two cores that advance health equity research include the Center for Community Health Partnership and Research (CCHPR) and the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2).
- The Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) invites proposals for projects related to the advancement of the CRE2 research mission and the 2020-2023 CRE2 Programmatic Themes. CRE2 will award Seed Grants of up to $15,000 per grant project. The principal aim of this program is to assist in the development of research ideas (e.g. preliminary analyses, pilot studies, conceptual schemas, archival work, etc.) that have the potential to significantly enhance scientific and cultural methodologies and to garner external research support.
- The Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity offers a limited number of Small Grants of up to $1,000 to support activities related to the advancement of the CRE2 mission, three CRE2 pillars, and the 2020-2023 CRE2
- Our Department of Psychiatry has an NIH Funded T37 Training program that provides URiM psychiatry trainees with the opportunity to conduct research that addresses health inequities especially in low resourced settings. If this is of interest to you, please contact us here.
- We encourage presenters at Grand Rounds and Research Rounds to infuse DEI into their lectures. This can be done in various ways:
- Include the Land Use, acknowledgement slide within your presentation
- Strive to include a diversity component within your presentation
- Our early career faculty are encouraged to participate in PROUD-MED (Program for Underrepresented in Medicine for Equity and Diversity), a new faculty developmental program for URiM. PROUD–MED provides research and career mentorship for advanced residents and fellows, postdocs, and early career faculty on the WUSM campus. If this is of interest to you, please contact us here.