Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST)
The FIRST program is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund initiative to create cultures of inclusive excellence at NIH-funded institutions by:
- Implementing a set of well-integrated, evidence-based strategies.
- Evaluating their impact on prespecified metrics of institutional culture, inclusion, and diversity.
Program Goals
- Foster sustainable institutional culture change
- Promote institutional inclusive excellence by hiring a diverse cohort of new faculty
- Support faculty development, mentoring, sponsorship and promotion
FIRST Program Components
The FIRST program will fund three rounds of Cohort awards as well as a Coordination and Evaluation Center.
FIRST Cohort
Second Round of NIH FIRST Cohort Awardees Announced
Current FIRST Faculty Cohort Awardees are managed by the National Cancer Institute.
FIRST Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC)
Managed by NIMHD
Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM)
The overall objective of the FIRST Coordination and Evaluation Center at MSM is to conduct a comprehensive evaluation grounded in realist evaluation theory, by collaborating with FIRST Cohort awardees to iteratively assess the impact of key institutional culture change strategies and other innovative approaches implemented at FIRST Cohort sites to promote inclusive excellence.
“This program, if successful, will help foster research environments attractive to underrepresented scientists, who can leverage their diverse perspectives and create relevant research to advance knowledge and discovery in their fields and reduce health disparities. Diversity in the biomedical research workforce promotes innovation, leads to better science, and creates opportunities to make significant progress toward health equity.”
Page updated Dec. 18, 2023
