A look at the increasing demographic representation within behavioral medicine

Abstract

Meeting the behavioral medicine research and clinical needs of an increasingly diverse United States population is an issue of national concern. We examine the trends in the demographic representation of the behavioral medicine scientific workforce through an analysis of the training grants funded by National Institutes of Health for the field of behavioral medicine from 1980 to 2018. We report the topics of these training grants, and we depict the demographic representation of the training leaders. We provide the demographic representation of the trainees, and of the first authors of publications reported within those training grants. Finally, we report the topics addressed in these behavioral medicine publications, to determine if topic diversity increased as the behavioral medicine scientific workforce diversified. Visualizations are presented that tell a story of how we have, and have not, advanced representation within the field of behavioral medicine. Best practices for launching future successful behavioral medicine scientists are then presented, to ensure optimal representation and diversification occurs in our workforce, our science, and our delivery of our clinical care.

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