From Leaky Pipeline to Irrigation System: Minority Education Through the Lens of Community-Based Participatory Research

Abstract

Background Higher education has long made efforts to increase underrepresented minority participation in biomedical research and health fields. However, relatively few minority trainees complete advanced degrees or proceed to independent research careers, a loss referred to as the “leaky pipeline.” Minority trainees may take alternate pathways to climbing the academic ladder, exiting to pursue multiple disciplinary or community-serving roles. Objective The authors propose a model for understanding minority departures from the education pipeline as a basis for nurturing careers that support community goals for health. Methods Concepts of the traditional pipeline training model are compared with a model that aligns with CBPR principles and practices. The article describes an irrigation model that incorporates informal learning from academic and community knowledge bases to prepare trainees for CBPR and interdisciplinary research. Students serve as agents that foster individual, institutional and social change needed to address health problems while attending to root causes of disparities. Conclusions Viewing minority students as agents for community engagement allows institutions to reassess the role training can play in diversifying participation in higher education and research. An irrigation model supports development of an infrastructure that optimizes success at all post-secondary levels, and enhances CBPR capacity wherever trainees live, work, and learn. Linking formal education to informal learning in context of community-based participatory research experiences can also reduce community mistrust of research while nurturing productive research partnerships with communities to address health disparities.

Research Apprenticeship and Its Potential as a Distinct Model of Peer Research Practice

“…James et al (31) argue in favor of expanding the current pipeline model for minority participation in biomedical research and health care to include success at all post-secondary levels (in addition to graduate, professional, and post-graduate endpoints). Successful completion of a research apprenticeship would become an alternative endpoint within such an expanded view.…”

“…Members of marginalized minority communities face daunting barriers to the pursuit of post-secondary education(15,31). However, intrinsic lack of capacity is not one of them.…”

Facilitating admissions of diverse students: A six-point, evidence-informed framework for pipeline and program development

“…It typically involves multiple different interventions, in which students’ participation is tracked, encouraged, and nurtured. It also entails a commitment to sustainable community engagement, with the active seeking of design and delivery input from the community that it aims to serve and a conscious cultivation of relationships with community institutions such as schools and government [35]. …”

The Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute: Reflections on an Ongoing Experiment

“…It also led to the adoption of a more precise and ethically sensitive nomenclature for the populations studied in those projects and in subsequent genetic variation studies. More recent studies of novel approaches to community-based participatory research (50,55) are serving as a model for genomics research conducted with Native American tribes and with other groups whose relationship to genetics and genomics research historically has often been contentious.…”