Affirmative Action Ban Looms as Biomedicine Strives to Diversify

The fate of a Supreme Court case on the use of race in university admissions could upend decades of efforts to diversify and reverse a shrinking biomedical research workforce, researchers and academic medicine leaders said in interviews.

The nation’s biomedical research workforce faces shortages among physician-scientists along with underrepresentation challenges. NIH has been trying for years to come up with grants and programs to encourage investigators early in their career.

And now, with indications from the conservative majority on the court that they could end affirmative action policies during arguments challenging these programs at the University of North Carolina and ...