VA Boston Healthcare System Summer Research Program: Imaging, Computers, and AI in Medicine

Va Boston Health Care System, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

Objectives: It is evident to VA researchers that we must continue to enhance workforce diversity in order to remain in lockstep with the ever-increasing diversity of the Veteran Population that we serve. Broadly speaking, American biomedical research has neglected diversity on many levels, but recognition of this fact is causing rapid course corrections. Beyond basic ethical issues, a lack of diversity also hinders scientific progress. Evidence has been accumulating that programs that enhance diversity are beneficial to research quality and effectiveness. Research teams with diverse perspectives offer multiple viewpoints and experiences that would not be represented otherwise. Diverse voices augment innovation, creativity, critical thought, scientific rigor, and identification of scientific biases. Building on lessons-learned and trails- blazed during our own two-year experience with a Pilot Summer Research Program (SRP) Award, we now seek to establish and resource a longer term, small-format, follow-on SRP designed to promote diversity of the VA scientific workforce. We seek to accomplish this by systematically attracting undergraduate and pre-master’s students from under-represented populations into VA biomedical research. Our goals for this grant are to create, for eligible US Citizens, a 9 to 10-week undergraduate SRP for individuals from populations currently identified as underrepresented in VA research. Eligible individuals will be drawn from students enrolled in full / part time degree / certificate programs at accredited colleges, universities, community colleges, or schools of allied health professions. We aim to establish a longitudinal SRP curriculum encompassing didactic activities, one-on-one faculty instruction, exposure to clinical medicine at the VA, and immersion in an approved research project that may involve human subjects. There will be structured complementary exposure to topics such as the design and performance of translational clinical studies, data management, and biomedical engineering. Didactic lectures and seminars will be hybrid thus enabling students to tap into both local hands-on instruction as well as remote teaching occurring at other partner VA SRP sites, a model used successfully in our Pilot SRP. In addition, the program will enable students to participate in a clinical-translational research project with a VA-based primary mentor. This work is expected to culminate in an abstract submission to a national meeting, the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS), held in the Fall. Attendance and presentation of work at ABRCMS has been lauded as a major highlight by all of our students to date. This is another unique tradition made possible by the VA Pilot SRP that we would love to see continued in a Boston over the long term.