• Keith C Norris, Heather E McCreath, Karsten Hueffer, Stephen B Aley, Gabriela Chavira, Christina A Christie, Catherine M Crespi, Carlos Crespo, Gene D'Amour, Kevin Eagan, Lourdes E Echegoyen, Andrew Feig, Maryam Foroozesh, Lourdes R Guerrero, Kelly Johanson, Farin Kamangar, Laura Kingsford, William LaCourse, Nicole Marie-Gerardi Maccalla, Leticia Márquez-Magaña, Ambika Mathur, Kenneth Maton, Shiva Mehravaran, Danielle X Morales, Terry Nakazono, Elizabeth Ofili, Kolawole Okuyemi, Laura Ott, Audrey Parangan-Smith, Christine Pfund, Dawn Purnell, Arleigh Reynolds, Phillip J Rous, Carrie Saetermoe, Katherine Snyder, Jamboor K Vishwanatha, Amy Wagler, Steven P Wallace, and Teresa Seeman.
• BUILD Coordination & Evaluation Center, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
• Ethn Dis. 2020 Jan 1; 30 (4): 681-692.

ObjectiveThe biomedical/behavioral sciences lag in the recruitment and advancement of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. In 2014 the NIH created the Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), a prospective, multi-site study comprising 10 Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) institutional grantees, the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) and a Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC). This article describes baseline characteristics of four incoming, first-year student cohorts at the primary BUILD institutions who completed the Higher Education Research Institute, The Freshmen Survey between 2015-2019. These freshmen are the primary student cohorts for longitudinal analyses comparing outcomes of BUILD program participants and non-participants.DesignBaseline description of first-year students entering college at BUILD institutions during 2015-2019.SettingTen colleges/universities that each received <$7.5mil/yr in NIH Research Project Grants and have high proportions of low-income students.ParticipantsFirst-year undergraduate students who participated in BUILD-sponsored activities and a sample of non-BUILD students at the same BUILD institutions. A total of 32,963 first-year students were enrolled in the project; 64% were female, 18% Hispanic/Latinx, 19% African American/Black, 2% American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 17% Asian, and 29% White. Twenty-seven percent were from families with an income <$30,000/yr and 25% were their family's first generation in college.Planned OutcomesPrimary student outcomes to be evaluated over time include undergraduate biomedical degree completion, entry into/completion of a graduate biomedical degree program, and evidence of excelling in biomedical research and scholarship.ConclusionsThe DPC national evaluation has identified a large, longitudinal cohort of students with many from groups historically underrepresented in the biomedical sciences that will inform institutional/national policy level initiatives to help diversify the biomedical workforce.Copyright © 2020, Ethnicity & Disease, Inc.

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