摘要：The National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies have initiated various programs aimed at enhancing diversity in the workforces for health care delivery and biomedical research. These programs have resulted in improvements in research infrastructure and moderate successes in increasing, retaining, and strengthening the pool of underrepresented minority students and junior faculty at resource-poor institutions serving minorities. We discuss some of the barriers and obstacles confronting such institutions, and the enablers and facilitators that may ameliorate or overcome such barriers. Although our analysis is drawn from lessons learned at an institution serving a largely Asian and Pacific Islander population, analogous situations may be found for other institutions serving minorities. The University of Hawaii at Manoa, the westernmost grantee of the National Center for Research Resources' Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) program, serves mostly Asians and Pacific Islanders. It is also the sole US institution of higher education designated by the Carnegie Institute as actively engaged in biomedical and biobehavioral research and training in the Pacific Basin region. Because of the distance separating the university from research-intensive universities on the US mainland, it faces unique challenges. At the same time, Hawaii's comparatively small size, its ethnically diverse population, and limited out-migration provide unparalleled opportunities for conducting prospective, population-based, longitudinal-cohort, and clinical and translational studies on a wide array of ethnic and racial disparities in health. Historically, low numbers of minority students in medical schools and bioscience graduate programs, insufficient awareness of research career opportunities, lack of culturally appropriate mentors, and a paucity of successful role models have contributed to the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in medical research faculties. 1 In an effort to expand the capacity for biomedical and biobehavioral research at institutions serving minorities and to enhance the diversity of the health professions' workforce, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding agencies (such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) have initiated programs aimed at increasing, retaining, and strengthening the pool of underrepresented minority students and supporting junior faculty. These programs have also provided general counseling and curricula that enhance premedical students' chances of being admitted to medical school, as well as funds to improve the research infrastructure. 2 Here, we discuss some of the barriers and obstacles confronting institutions serving minorities and the various enablers and facilitators that may ameliorate and overcome such barriers. We place primary emphasis on factors relating to the institution, faculty, mentoring, training, local community, and local economy. Although our analysis is drawn from lessons learned at the University of Hawaii, many of these insights may be pertinent to other institutions serving minorities.
