Duke Awarded NIH Grant to Prep Students for Grad & Medical Programs
Johnna Frierson, PhD
Duke has been awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a one-year postbaccalaureate program for students interested in pursuing a PhD or MD/PhD in the biomedical sciences and basic sciences. The $1.2 million, five-year grant establishes the Duke Preparing Research Scholars in Biomedical Sciences Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PRIME-PREP), which will provide an immersive paid research experience for students from backgrounds historically underrepresented in science and medicine.
Duke PRIME-PREP will begin in July 2023 with seven scholars. Over 12 months, the scholars will gain lab experience, receive professional development, and have the opportunity to be mentored by Duke researchers from all sciences, both within Duke University School of Medicine and Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. The program will also provide funding for travel to conferences.
Applications for Duke PRIME-PREP are now open. The deadline to apply is Feb. 17. The program is open to students from any university, including Duke. Applicants must have earned a baccalaureate degree in the biomedical or behavioral sciences within the last 36 months and must belong to underrepresented groups in these sciences as defined by the National Institutes of Health.
The aim of the program is to prepare scholars to apply to graduate programs or medical school. “The main benefit to the students is the program gives them time to pause before going into a PhD or MD/PhD program and gain insight into what's necessary to be successful, to strengthen any skills in areas where there is room for growth and development, and to be connected with research mentors,” said Johnna Frierson, PhD.
Frierson is one of three co-principal investigators of the program who will also serve as mentors. The other co-principal investigators are Gerard Blobe, MD, PhD, and Micah Luftig, PhD.
Gerard Blobe, MD, PhD
Blobe added that the program helps address a lack of diversity in the biomedical sciences. “We're lacking in diversity of our pipeline,” said Blobe, a professor of medicine and pharmacology and cancer biology. “The PRIME-PREP program helps individuals who clearly have the potential to succeed in graduate school, but just don't have the depth of experience.”
According to Blobe the program will also give students time to determine if they want to pursue a degree in the biomedical sciences “as well as offer extra preparation to make sure that they're going to be competitive, both in terms of application and in terms of completing their graduate program.”
Duke PRIME-PREP will also offer a sense of belonging, which can be especially meaningful for students from historically underrepresented groups, Frierson said.
“That affirmation of their abilities, affirmation of belonging, and their potential in the scientific community is a really important component of retention, and continuing to advance in training,” said Frierson, who also is associate dean of equity, diversity, and inclusion for the basic sciences.
The opportunity to gain experience conducting research is a particularly attractive aspect of the program.
“Every year a lot of our graduate programs get applications from individuals who are clearly bright but have not necessarily had the research experience opportunities,” Blobe said. “We provide them an in-depth mentored research experience in a biomedical field of their choosing.”
Micah Luftig, PhD
Luftig said the program will give the students ample time to deeply explore their research interests, which isn’t always easy to achieve during undergraduate studies.
“They will have many opportunities to learn from their peers, faculty mentors, and lab mates what basic research is like and develop their own ideas about the path that they want to take in research going forward,” said Luftig, an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology. “The program is structured in a way that gives them enough time to really explore and develop those ideas.”
Leaders of the PRIME-PREP program hope the program will increase applicants to graduate and professional programs at Duke and beyond, ultimately increasing the number of scientists and leaders in STEM fields.
“It's an opportunity to us to contribute more broadly to helping to develop and nurture scientists from underrepresented backgrounds,” Frierson said. “Hopefully they come here. But even if they don't, we're contributing to the greater good.”
This article originally appeared on the Duke University School of Medicine website.
Related News
In August 2023, a team of volunteers led by Trinitia Cannon, MD (third from left), Leda Scearce, CCC-SLP, MM, MS, and Dina Abouelella, MPH, which also included Tammara Watts, MD, PhD (center) and Katharine Ciarrocca, DMD, MSEd, partnered with North Raleigh International Baptist Church and Duke Raleigh Hospital to offer head and neck cancer screenings. Dozens of families from the Cedar Creek Apartment Complex community came out for the free screenings, education, and games, and Duke Raleigh Hospital donated backpacks full of school supplies.
TheDuke University School of Medicine Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences (HNS&CS) recently launched Project CHECKERS (Community Head and NEck Cancer Knowledge, Engagement, Research and Screening) a Duke Cancer Institute-funded pilot project to bring head and neck cancer resources and education to the broader Durham community.
Led by DCI head and neck surgeon Trinitia Cannon, MD, an associate professor in the Department, the project will be the Department’s first community-based participatory research project and the first such head and neck cancer screening and cancer prevention education project in North Carolina.
Evolving Community Research
The Project CHECKERS team will use a mixed methodology, which includes traditional surveys and screenings as well as interviews and focus groups.
One of their community partners will be the Cedar Creek Apartment Complex community in North Raleigh. Many of these families are refugees — from at least seven different countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East — who speak Farsi, French, Swahili, Arabic, and other languages. They are building new lives in North Carolina, in a culture and language that is new to many of them. As is the case with many similar communities, their healthcare needs often go unmet.
The investigators believe that, compared to traditional methods, mixed-method research is an improved way to establish a community partnership, highlight gaps in the community’s knowledge and risk perception, and pave the way for successful future health interventions.
According to co-PI Nosayaba (Nosa) Osazuwa-Peters, BDS, MPH, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences, Project CHECKERS takes an important step in improving community engagement.
“Traditional research is very systematic, very top-down. The researchers have knowledge and decide what they believe the community needs. But these outside scientific experts do not know the values, the culture, the knowledge, or the risks inherent in that community,” he explained.
For example, traditional surveys restrict participants to answering either yes or no; for many people, that binary does not tell a complete story.
“Project CHECKERS will help us understand the lived experiences of people in these communities,” added Osazuwa-Peters. “We’ll learn about context, and we’ll learn to ask questions that allow community members to express themselves. We’ll get responses we would never get based on yes or no.”
Building a Partnership
Project CHECKERS kicked off this fall with focus groups and interviews with community members facilitated by Laura Fish, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in Family Medicine and Community Health, Duke University School of Medicine, and program director for the Behavioral Health and Survey Research Core (a DCI shared resource). An advisory board will provide feedback from both clinical and community perspectives.
Lessons learned from these conversations will help the team develop a knowledge and risk factor survey that will be administered during two head and neck cancer screening events with the community in 2024.
The CHECKERS team will also recruit providers outside the department to participate in these events to address other health concerns in the community such as primary care, mental health, and women’s health.
The long-term goal of Project CHECKERS is to show the benefits of tailoring head and neck cancer screening programs to the communities being served, and how that personalization can improve prevention, early detection, and overall survival in high-risk individuals who have limited access to care.
Noted Osazuwa-Peters, “The mixed-methods framework helps us understand not just whether an intervention works, but how, why, and for whom.”
Community Partners
Another plus to mixed-methods research is its appeal to community partners who might otherwise be hesitant to work with researchers.
“The design places a high value on the stories behind the numbers,” explained Cannon, “so these projects are especially attractive to community partners such as faith-based organizations, whose priority is improving practice and outcomes, more so than research and advancing knowledge.”
Project CHECKERS will provide a valuable bridge between Duke and the North Raleigh International Baptist Church (NRIBC), which ministers to a large immigrant community. NRIBC’s Pastor, Patrick Warutere, invited Duke to participate in the church’s inaugural Health and Dignity for All Fair in Raleigh in 2022. Cannon and CHECKERS co-PI Leda Scearce,CCC-SLP, MM, MS, a Duke speech pathologist and director of Community Engagement for the Department of HNS&CS, recruited nurses, medical students, and resident volunteers to provide HNC screenings for the event.
“We immediately felt a kinship with NRIBC’s Pastor Patrick Warutere and his leadership team,” shared Searce. “By the end of the day, we knew we wanted to continue to work together and set up a meeting the following week.”
Duke HNS&CS and the NRIBC team worked closely to develop the research plan and ensure that the goals and expectations of each group were aligned and transparent.
“That relationship with NRIBC has enabled us to incorporate the community’s perspectives into the development of Project CHECKERS,” said Scearce. “Our aim was to amplify the assets and expertise of the community members themselves.”
Cannon anticipates that Project CHECKERS will become a framework for future projects.
“We are looking forward to similar initiatives in hearing health for older adults, right-hemisphere stroke awareness, and more.”
Breast surgical oncologist and Mary and Deryl Hart Distinguished Professor of Surgery Eun-Sil Shelley Hwang, MD, MHS, with Oluwadamilola "Lola" Fayanju, MD, MA, MPHS, FACS, in early 2020.
Dr. Hwang was Chief of Breast Surgery at Duke at that time and Dr. Fayanju was an assistant professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology. Dr. Fayanju is currently Chief of the Breast Surgery Division at Penn Medicine.
A study initiated at Duke University School of Medicine lays bare significant racial and gender disparities in America’s surgical leadership.
Of the 2,165 faculty members included across 154 departments, men overwhelmingly claimed the top spots in surgical leadership, making up 85.9% of department chairs, 68.4% of vice chairs, and a staggering 87% of division chiefs.
What’s more a mere 8.9% of these leadership roles were filled by those from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.
While women made a modest showing as vice chairs at 31.6%, they remained underrepresented elsewhere. Many of these women and those from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups were clustered in roles linked to diversity and faculty development, which might not pave the way to top department positions.
The study in JAMA Surgery — led by Oluwadamilola “Lola” M. Fayanju, MD — stands out because the research team of surgeons, trainees, and biostatisticians looked in detail at different leadership roles and the implications these disparities have for the pipeline to department chair.
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