WashU Professors Awarded Grant to Promote Research Careers Among Minority Physicians

A $1.7 million, four-year grant has been awarded by the National Institutes of Health to professors from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and the university’s School of Medicine to study the participation of physician-scientists from historically underrepresented groups in federally funded research.

Christine Ekenga, assistant professor at the Brown School, will be a co-investigator on the grant, which will be led by Dr. Donna B. Jeffe, professor of medicine at the School of Medicine. Ekenga is an epidemiologist who teaches in the Masters of Public Health Program. She said her expertise will be used to look at research outcomes from a variety of data.

“Our study will be the first to merge this data to help us better think about gender, racial and ethnic disparities in research,” she said. “It will have implications for clinical practice as well.”