New NIH Group to Assess Biomedical Workforce

The National Institutes of Health this week announced additional details about its newly established working group to assess the US biomedical research workforce, which Deputy Director for Extramural Research Sally Rockey alluded to in a January Rock Talk blog post. In statement, Director Francis Collins said that "the working group will help lay the foundation for ensuring that we have the biomedical workforce we will need to usher in the next generation of scientific discoveries." The new 12-member group, which in addition to NIH's Rockey includes executive from across academia and industry, "will gather input from the extramural community, including students, postdoctoral fellows, investigators, scientific societies, and grantee institutions" in order to "develop a model for a sustainable and diverse US biomedical research workforce," the agency says. The working group aims to address questions such as "What is the right size of the workforce?" and "What are the appropriate types of positions that should be supported to allow people to have successful careers and to continue to advance biomedical and behavioral sciences?" NIH says.