DEI Community Call: NASEM Report on Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Research

2/20/25 1-2PM ET - Online via Zoom - Webinars

In biomedical research, race and ethnicity are used to track health disparities or to recruit diverse groups of participants. However, they can also be used in ways that reinforce harmful assumptions or stereotypes. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine were tasked with establishing an ad hoc committee to assess the use of race and ethnicity in biomedical research. The resulting report presents recommendations to guide scientific community in deciding if, when, and how to use race and ethnicity.

During this community call, authors of the report will share their findings and implications for nonprofit funders.

Speakers:

Carmen Guerra, MD, MSCE, Committee Member, University of Pennsylvania

Carmen Guerra, M.D., M.S.C.E., is the Ruth C. and Raymond G. Perelman Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Vice Chair of Diversity and Inclusion for the Department of Medicine, and the Associate Director of Diversity and Outreach for the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) where she leads Community Outreach and Engagement, including a Genentech-funded Cancer Clinical Trials Ambassador Program that promotes clinical trial awareness through peer-to-peer education. A general internist trained in epidemiology and a health equity researcher, Dr. Guerra has designed and evaluated interventions to increase access to cancer screening and cancer clinical trials for underserved populations. Dr. Guerra serves on the American Cancer Society’s Guideline Development Group and is an author of the American Cancer Society’s current colorectal, cervical, and lung cancer screening guidelines as well as the current HPV vaccination guidelines. In recognition of her contributions, Dr. Guerra received the American Cancer Society’s St. George Medal in 2017, the Association of Community Cancer Centers Research Award in 2022, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology Excellence in Health Equity Award in 2023. She is also a member of the advisory board of Guardant Health, a company developing blood tests for colorectal cancer, and is the US Deputy Chair of the Health Equity Workgroup of the Multicancer Early Detection Consortium.

Neil Powe, MD, MPH, MBA, Committee Member, University of California, San Francisco

Neil R. Powe, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., is Chief of Medicine at the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and the Constance B. Wofsy Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He also serves as the Chief Science Officer for the Commonwealth Fund. Dr. Powe led the National Kidney Foundation-American Society of Nephrology Task Force on Reassessing the Inclusion of Race in Diagnosing Kidney Diseases that led to elimination of race from estimation of kidney function. As member and now chair of the Journal of the American Medical Association Oversight Committee, he provided important decision making regarding a podcast on structural racism that was published in JAMA. Dr. Powe is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has served on previous National Academies consensus study committees. Among his honors are the Diversity Award from the Association of Professors of Medicine, the John M. Eisenberg Award for Career Achievement in Research and the Robert J. Glaser Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine, the David Hume Memorial Award from the National Kidney Foundation, the 2021 John Phillips Memorial Award for Distinguished Contributions in Clinical Medicine from the American College of Physicians, and the Cato Laurencin Lifetime Research Award from the National Medical Association. Dr. Powe holds an M.D. and M.P.H from Harvard, and at the University of Pennsylvania, he completed residency, was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, and earned an M.B.A.

Roland Thorpe, PhD, Committee Member, Johns Hopkins University

Roland J. Thorpe, Jr., Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society, founding director of the Program of Men’s Health Research in the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions, and director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Resource Center for Minority Aging Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Thorpe is a social epidemiologist and gerontologist whose research focuses on how social determinants of health affect health and functional outcomes among men across the life course. Dr. Thorpe serves as principal investigator (PI) on several National Institutes of Health–funded grants and is a multiple PI of the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD). Dr. Thorpe is the inaugural associate vice provost for faculty diversity at Johns Hopkins University. He is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. Dr. Thorpe earned a bachelor’s in theoretical mathematics from Florida A&M University, a master’s in statistics, and a Ph.D. in clinical epidemiology with a graduate minor in gerontology from Purdue University. He received postdoctoral training in health disparities and gerontology from the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Thorpe is a member of scientific advisory boards, including the National Center for Health Statistics Board of Scientific Counselors, and is the editor-in-chief of Ethnicity & Disease.

DEI Co-Chairs:

Kavita Bhalla, Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation
Zoë Fuchs, TSC Alliance
Lindsay Redman Rivera, Health Resources in Action