Letter to the White House on the selection of a new NIH Director

Community Engaged Research approaches, practices and science is leading the way to transformative change.

Equity and community impact of health policies must be prioritized.

Associate Professor, Public Health, University of North Carolina Greensboro

I agree and urge that candidates being considered for Director of the NIH, demonstrate the skills, experience, and knowledge expressed in the letter.

It is important that NIH support the community-based work as much as they do the researchers. Community-based organizations often lack the infrastructure or appropriate staffing to conduct research, and researchers do not seek them out, not at the stage of project development, not being involved in the implementation and certainly not getting access or being fully integrated into the evaluation processes. A key role NIH could play is to assist in matching researchers with CBOs, or insisting in this kind of collaboration as part of the process of funding applications.

Chair/Professor Department of Family and Community Medicine Penn State College of Medicine

Vice Chair of Research, Department of Family Medicine, Medical College of Georgia

Associate Professor, Department of OB-GYN, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Senior Research Scientist, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation

Professor and Head, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago

Family medicine clinician researcher, Duke University

We need community and patient partners on our research teams.

Please support this nomination.

Emeritus Professor, Duke School of Medicine Adjunct Professor, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health PI, The Practical Playbook (TM)

Sending a recent OBSSR report on behavioral science in NIH - a closely related 'gap' area as well.

MPH, MSEd, CLC, CHES | PhD Candidate in Public Health at the University of Montana | Cultural Epidemiologist at All Nations Health Center

If this is not considered, the perpetuation of inequity of competent and comprehensive care is a weaponized attack on all people of color.

thanks for doing this!!

As an academic committed to working with community members through community-engaged and participatory research collaborations, I support this petition. I believe that there is a huge need and opportunity to appoint leaders across major federal entities that fund important research efforts with vulnerable groups and in historically underserved communities. Far too often, community-engaged research is misunderstood and devalued at the federal level and as a result, research is often conducted on people and communities, instead of in collaboration and partnership with them. Respectfully, Shane R. Brady, PhD, MSW Associate Professor

Professor Emerita, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill