Background and purposeEffective mentorship is critical to the success of early stage investigators, and has been linked to enhanced mentee productivity, self-efficacy, and career satisfaction. The mission of the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) is to provide all trainees across the biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and social sciences with evidence-based mentorship and professional development programming that emphasizes the benefits and challenges of diversity, inclusivity, and culture within mentoring relationships, and more broadly the research workforce. The purpose of this paper is to describe the structure and activities of NRMN.Key highlightsNRMN serves as a national training hub for mentors and mentees striving to improve their relationships by better aligning expectations, promoting professional development, maintaining effective communication, addressing equity and inclusion, assessing understanding, fostering independence, and cultivating ethical behavior. Training is offered in-person at institutions, regional training, or national meetings, as well as via synchronous and asynchronous platforms; the growing training demand is being met by a cadre of NRMN Master Facilitators. NRMN offers career stage-focused coaching models for grant writing, and other professional development programs. NRMN partners with diverse stakeholders from the NIH-sponsored Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), as well as organizations outside the DPC to work synergistically towards common diversity goals. NRMN offers a virtual portal to the Network and all NRMN program offerings for mentees and mentors across career development stages. NRMNet provides access to a wide array of mentoring experiences and resources including MyNRMN, Guided Virtual Mentorship Program, news, training calendar, videos, and workshops. National scale and sustainability are being addressed by NRMN “Coaches-in-Training” offerings for more senior researchers to implement coaching models across the nation. “Shark Tanks” provide intensive review and coaching for early career health disparities investigators, focusing on grant writing for graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, and junior faculty.ImplicationsPartners from diverse perspectives are building the national capacity and sparking the institutional changes necessary to truly diversify and transform the biomedical research workforce. NRMN works to leverage resources towards the goals of sustainability, scalability, and expanded reach.

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Objective: The National Research Mentor­ing Network (NRMN) is a strategic partner­ship whose goals include remedying docu­mented disparities by race and ethnicity in the awarding of National Institutes of Health research grants. Our objectives were to offer a profile of early-career investigators who applied to NRMN’s Grantsmanship Coach­ing Programs (GCP) and test for differences in the research productivity, professional obligations, research resources, and motiva­tions of applicants from underrepresented groups (URGs) compared with applicants from well-represented groups (WRGs). We also evaluated how employment at a minority serving institution (MSI) influenced access to research resources and profes­sional obligations.Participants: 880 investigators who submit­ted online applications to join an NRMN GCP between August 1, 2015 and February 1, 2018.Methods: We used two-sample tests of pro­portions and logistic regression to explore differences in applicants’ characteristics and local research environment by group (URG vs WRG) and institution type (MSI vs Other).Results: URG and WRG applicants did not differ in grant application submission history. However, URG applicants had published fewer articles than WRG peers (9.8 vs 15.3, P<.001) and fewer articles as first/last author (4.4 vs 6.9, P<.001). URG appli­cants reported less access to core facilities to conduct research (74% vs 81%, P<.05). Investigators at MSIs reported less access to collaborators (P<.01) and departmental colleagues with federal funding (P<.001) and spent less time on conducting research (P<.001). URGs were more motivated to seek professional development support to expand their peer networks (P<.05) and advance their careers (P<.001).Conclusions: Our findings identified several points of intervention to help applicants from URGs to improve their future chances of obtaining competitive funding.Ethn Dis. 2019;29(Suppl 1): 123-128; doi:10.18865/ed.29.S1.123.

Objective: The National Research Mentor­ing Network (NRMN) is a strategic partner­ship whose goals include remedying docu­mented disparities by race and ethnicity in the awarding of National Institutes of Health research grants. Our objectives were to offer a profile of early-career investigators who applied to NRMN’s Grantsmanship Coach­ing Programs (GCP) and test for differences in the research productivity, professional obligations, research resources, and motiva­tions of applicants from underrepresented groups (URGs) compared with applicants from well-represented groups (WRGs). We also evaluated how employment at a minority serving institution (MSI) influenced access to research resources and profes­sional obligations.Participants: 880 investigators who submit­ted online applications to join an NRMN GCP between August 1, 2015 and February 1, 2018.Methods: We used two-sample tests of pro­portions and logistic regression to explore differences in applicants’ characteristics and local research environment by group (URG vs WRG) and institution type (MSI vs Other).Results: URG and WRG applicants did not differ in grant application submission history. However, URG applicants had published fewer articles than WRG peers (9.8 vs 15.3, P<.001) and fewer articles as first/last author (4.4 vs 6.9, P<.001). URG appli­cants reported less access to core facilities to conduct research (74% vs 81%, P<.05). Investigators at MSIs reported less access to collaborators (P<.01) and departmental colleagues with federal funding (P<.001) and spent less time on conducting research (P<.001). URGs were more motivated to seek professional development support to expand their peer networks (P<.05) and advance their careers (P<.001).Conclusions: Our findings identified several points of intervention to help applicants from URGs to improve their future chances of obtaining competitive funding.Ethn Dis. 2019;29(Suppl 1): 123-128; doi:10.18865/ ed.29.S1.123.

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