As a scientist passionate about health equity, my career options are dwindling

From ScienceMag:

“Dad, here’s your Bible. Do you think I can take 30 minutes to go to the gym? Here’s the phone in case you need me.” I was visiting my childhood home, working remotely on my postdoctoral research while I helped care for my father, who has several physical disabilities—a periodic routine to provide my mother some relief. I began to run on the treadmill, stride after mindless stride, when Fox News on the gym TV brought me back to the present. “We have 1 hour and 7 minutes left in our countdown before all agencies need to terminate all diversity-related positions!” I stopped the treadmill and saw an email from my supervisor at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) saying we needed to talk. My phone buzzed. “I’m sure you know what this call is about.”

That was it. It was only Day 2 of President Donald Trump’s new administration and I was terminated from my part-time role as a scientific diversity adviser at NIH, amid the narrative that those of us working on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) were hired without merit.

Perseverance can only take me so far.

• Troy Christopher Dildine
• Stanford University

It’s a mindset I’ve encountered throughout my training. Growing up in an underresourced rural community, of mixed racial background, I did well in school and wanted to pursue higher education—though I had few examples to follow. I made it to a top university but faced and witnessed persistent dispiriting comments. “You’re only here because of affirmative action,” one fellow student said to me. I overhead a professor say to a Haitian refugee, “This is a tough class; you should consider taking something easier. Do you need me to speak Creole?” Even when such comments were not directed at me, I heard the message: People like us didn’t deserve to be there.

But amid the dejection, I also found determination. I believed I could work harder than my peers and achieve my goal: becoming a professor, studying equity, and advocating for vulnerable student populations. I also found fulfillment as a volunteer, participating in outreach and DEI-related activities, including mentoring underresourced high school students interested in the sciences and pushing for efforts to diversify faculty.

I went on to a Ph.D. studying disparities in how people feel pain and how providers assess it. Even as my research progressed successfully, I met doubters. But my hard-fought self-confidence and a carefully cultivated network of mentors helped me push toward my goal. I also created a diversity group at the NIH institute where I was doing my Ph.D., running weekly meetings and regular events to discuss DEI-related issues in medicine and support researchers from historically underrepresented groups. When I completed my Ph.D. and moved on to a postdoc, I continued my diversity work at NIH, with the blessing of my new university and NIH administrators. It felt like all the pieces were coming together—until it all began to fall apart about 2 years later, in the first week of the new administration.

First came the loss of my job as a diversity adviser. Days later came more bad news. I had spent months preparing an NIH grant proposal. But when I called the program officers, they advised me to pivot away from the health equity research I was proposing, which focused on how discrimination and stigma affect chronic pain. Such research might be less likely to be funded under the new administration, they said. I spent the 2 weeks prior to the deadline, including three sleepless nights, reworking my application to look at social isolation, stress, and psychophysiological responses as they relate to pain. I’m still holding out hope it might get funded. But I can’t ignore the fact that my updated proposal no longer speaks directly to the passions that originally spurred me to pursue a Ph.D.

Despite the narratives currently rampaging in the United States that people of color are “DEI hires” lacking merit, I am finally confident in my abilities as a scientist. However, perseverance can only take me so far. I feel fortunate to have the relative privileges I do, but I feel my chances of becoming an academic scientist are dwindling. In this transitional stage of my career, I don’t have 4 years to hunker down and wait it out.

Read More