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Grassroots efforts to end structural racism throughout the US National Institutes of Health

Nature Medicine volume 28, pages 223–224 (2022)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Racial inequities, rooted in US societal structures, cause disparities in every national system. While COVID-19 exposed disparities in the US healthcare system, biases within the US justice system gained national attention following the killing of Ahmaud Arbery and police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. In particular, George Floyd’s death provoked a global reckoning on issues of systemic racism and injustice, leading to protests in more than 60 countries1. In the United States, Black men face an almost 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police over their life course. This rate is the highest nationally for any group and is 2.5 times higher than for White men2. Apart from police violence, Black people in the United States experience higher rates of illness and mortality across a wide range of health conditions compared to their White counterparts3. Internationally, marginalized racial and ethnic groups have worse health outcomes than majority racial or ethnic groups4. Accordingly, the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and Center for Disease Control and Prevention have all declared racism a public health crisis, risk and threat, respectively5.

Joining the global chorus speaking out against anti-Black racism, several self-assembled Black employee groups at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US medical research agency, became involved to address ongoing workplace racial inequities. Inspired by calls for reform in the film industry and law enforcement, this assembly outlined the links between structural racism within the NIH and deficiencies in recruitment, promotion, retention and inclusiveness. Further, this assembly of Black NIH staff illustrated ways in which structural racism within the NIH, the nation’s leading biomedical research agency, was hindering its overall mission to enhance health.

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Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank the NIH Senior/Tenured Black Scientists and NIH leadership for their support, input and collaboration. We are also grateful for the support and solidarity of our CDC Friends of the 7 Acts of Change colleagues, who are tirelessly working on common goals towards racial equity in the biomedical enterprise. We acknowledge the leadership contributions of supporters of Eight Changes for Racial Equity: C. J. Smith, C. Fitzhugh, L. M. Rodríguez, K. Gibbs, I. Ofoha and J. Chinn, and the countless supporters of 8CRE who remain anonymous to protect their livelihood from backlash and retaliation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Comparative Medicine, Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Mia Rochelle Lowden

  2. Office of Programs to Enhance Neuroscience Diversity, NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD, USA

    Marguerite Matthews

  3. Office of Minority Health Research Coordination, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Robert C. Rivers

  4. Division of Cancer Treatment & Diagnosis, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD, USA

    Leah L. N. Hubbard & JoyAnn Phillips Rohan

  5. Office of Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Ericka Boone

  6. Office of Workforce Planning and Development, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD, USA

    Troy Muhammad

  7. Office of Research on Women’s Health, Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD, USA

    Eddie N. Billingslea

  8. Office of Clinical Research Training and Medical Education, Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Jennifer Simmons

  9. Surgical Neurology Branch, NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Sadhana Jackson

Authors
  1. Mia Rochelle Lowden
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  2. Marguerite Matthews
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  3. Robert C. Rivers
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  4. Leah L. N. Hubbard
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  5. Ericka Boone
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  6. Troy Muhammad
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  8. JoyAnn Phillips Rohan
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  9. Jennifer Simmons
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  10. Sadhana Jackson
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the conceptual design, writing and revision of this manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sadhana Jackson.

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The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the US National Institutes of Health.

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Lowden, M.R., Matthews, M., Rivers, R.C. et al. Grassroots efforts to end structural racism throughout the US National Institutes of Health. Nat Med 28, 223–224 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01646-6

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