Advancing Medical Research by Addressing Funding, Trust, and Diversity
Research funding, workforce diversity, and health equity are major challenges facing healthcare and the life sciences and standing in the way of medical breakthroughs.
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By - Medical and health research is vital to advancing evidence-based care delivery and treating existing and emerging diseases, but it faces numerous headwinds, from funding and trust in research to workforce diversity and health equity.
Research!America and its president Mary Woolley have played a significant role in guiding the research community by uniting various stakeholders such as academia, industry, patient organizations, scientific and clinical societies, and foundations. Together, they have worked toward advocating for national-level support and recognition of research, exploration, and advancement to enhance health outcomes for all.
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“There are both ideological challenges and debt ceiling challenges to the conduct of research to putting more money into it right now,” Wooley explained during a recent episode of Healthcare Strategies.
“Some of the leadership in the House actually wants to go backwards in time on funding,” she continued. “Not just freeze it, which is bad enough —that stifles progress — but to cut it. And that means progress gets cut. It’s just that simple. And of considerable concern is the discouragement to the future leaders of research, to young scientists, that the country doesn’t value medical and health research as highly anymore. So why pursue that as your profession? That’s a big concern.”
In addition to funding challenges, Woolley emphasized workforce development and diversity in the research community and the need to ensure that research studies themselves are more inclusive of the entire population, particularly those underserved and underrepresented in the past. Learning from past inequalities in research is crucial to achieving health equity.
“Our nation has become more diverse over the years,” Woolley noted. “That’s a rich resource that we haven’t yet really put to work. There’s a very strong business case for diversity of all kinds — diversity of points of view, of experience, of life experience but also career preparation. It’s critical to innovation.”
According to Woolley, change will not come overnight but become a reality through increased collaboration between the private and public sectors. Systemic changes should lead to tangible benefits for the population.
“It will raise all boats. And nobody knows for sure where the next breakthroughs are going to come from, and that’s the whole point. If we knew, then they would already have been discovered,” she concluded.
