Biomedical research training has undergone considerable change over the past several years. At its core, the goal of graduate and postdoctoral training is to provide individuals with the skills and knowledge to become outstanding scientists and expand knowledge through the scientific method. Historically, graduate school training has focused on preparation for academic positions. Increasingly, however, a shift toward preparation for a wider range of career options has emerged. This is largely because most biomedical PhD graduates do not become Principal Investigators in academic laboratories. Here we describe an National Institutes of Health Common Fund program with the major goal of culture change for biomedical research training and training that prepares individuals for a broader expanse of careers in the biomedical research enterprise. These “Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training” (BEST) awards, issued in 2012 and 2013, provided support to institutions to develop innovative approaches to achieving these goals, as a complement to traditional training. Awardees were tasked with catalyzing change at their institutions and sharing best practices across the training community. Awardees were required to participate in a cross‐site evaluation that assessed the impact of BEST activities on three main areas: (a) trainee confidence and knowledge to make career decisions, (b) influence of this added activity on time in training, and (c) ability of the institutions to sustain activities deemed to be beneficial. Here we present the fundamental approach to the BEST program and early evaluative data.

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Despite more than 30 years of intense activity to improve control--and more recently prevention--high blood pressure continues to be a major public health problem. Evidence-based reviews have identified best practices and quality improvement strategies to address prevention and control. Since the 1970s, community-based programs have been instrumental in raising awareness, increasing knowledge, and promoting changes in health behavior to improve blood pressure control. Most of these programs have emphasized the use of partnerships and involvement of community residents in conducting screening and referral activities, implementing clinical practice guidelines, and increasing healthy eating and physical activity. Many also have used health care team approaches, including the use of trained community health workers to deliver targeted, culturally sensitive heart health education, particularly related to the prevention of cardiovascular disease risk factors in general and high blood pressure in particular. Increased focus on implementation of evidence-based lifestyle and clinical management strategies coupled with community-based approaches may help increase blood pressure control rates within communities.

In 2013 and 2014, the NIH Common Fund issued its Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) awards to 17 research sites. The BEST awards focused on enabling institutions to develop innovative programs to increase biomedical trainee exposure to a range of research‐related career options through activities like coursework, workshops, and active learning experiences. The NIH outlined three goals of all BEST awardees: 1) trainee confidence and knowledge to make career decisions, 2) influence of this added activity on time in training, and 3) ability of the institutions to sustain activities deemed beneficial. Three methods were used to collect data: 1) a Data Form completed by BEST awardee institutions, including detailed tracking of all activities and participation 2) multiple surveys of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at BEST institutions, and 3) yearly teleconferences with BEST site coordinators to gather contextual information. Through all years, the activity offered most often across BEST institutions was single‐day workshops. These workshops had high trainee attendance (ex: 1749 graduate students and 821 postdoctoral scientists in Year 3 attended 377 single day workshops across the 17 sites). Interestingly, entrance survey data also suggest many trainees are familiar with broad career options (64% and 57.8% of graduate student and postdoctoral scientist survey respondents reporting familiarity with “all” or “most” of the 20 myIDP career paths). Questions were also posed to assess confidence levels related to career awareness and preparation. Over 80% percent of all graduate students and postdoctoral scientists reported being moderately, highly, or completely confident across all five questions. While many BEST graduate students and postdoctoral scientists are still in training, for those that have completed training, participation in BEST activities did not increase time in training. Overall, our data suggest trainees are generally aware of current career options beyond traditional academic research‐intensive positions. BEST awardee institutions also made great strides in collecting data on career development activities and tracking participation for thousands of trainees.