Working Group Description

The Research Workforce and Early Career Development Working Group helps HRA members build a diverse, motivated, and committed research workforce by:

• Creating resources to facilitate funders’ learning about grant programs for early career investigators;
• Facilitating opportunities to learn how HRA members can contribute to development and enhancement of the health research workforce; and
• Identifying and disseminating practices to support development of early career investigators.

Proposed projects include:

• Creating polices and benchmarks on common issues like maternity leave, work-life balance, and career changes
• Collectively defining “early career scientist.”
• Transitioning the existing early career programs comparison Excel worksheet into a functional resource for HRA members.
• Centralizing existing resources on programmatic evaluation and identifying other useful materials for members.
• Creating a resource for HRA members to clearly see what each organization requires in reporting from grantees and create a repository of relevant forms for HRA membership reference.

Plans for 2019 were:

• Mentoring in the Research Workforce Webinar (January 22)
• Staff scientist webinar (April 2019) and potentially partner with the NAS on a workshop to discuss the role of this position in the research workforce
• Conduct survey to collect information on grantee trainings/workshops used by HRA members
  • Use data to create repository of information
• Collect information from members who have made change in order to improving diversity in programs and create resource for the group