SHM Converge Scientific Abstract ePoster Gallery-Career Development Grant Funding to Medicine Specialties Over Time

Pdf Summary

This study examined NIH career development (K08/K23) grants awarded to internal medicine specialties from 2015–2022 to better understand the development of physician-investigators, especially in hospital medicine (HM) and general internal medicine.<br /><br />Using NIH RePORTER data, the authors identified grants classified under internal medicine and determined investigator specialty from faculty webpages. They then compared grant counts with estimates of active and academic physicians by specialty, and used linear regression to test trends over time.<br /><br />Key findings showed large differences across specialties. General internal medicine, primary care, and hospital medicine received the fewest grants relative to their workforce size. Generalists had about seven times fewer grants per active physician than the average across internal medicine specialties. In 2019, hospital medicine had only 13 K grants, general internal medicine had 35, and primary care had 0.29 grants per 1,000 active physicians. By contrast, specialties like pulmonology/critical care, infectious diseases, and nephrology had much higher grant rates.<br /><br />Importantly, grants to hospitalists did not significantly increase over time (p = 0.31), unlike many other specialties. This suggests that HM’s growth as a clinical field has not been matched by proportional growth in research funding and career development support.<br /><br />The authors conclude that this is the first study to quantify NIH K grants across internal medicine specialties in this way. They express concern about the low number of grants to generalists, since these physicians bring important cross-cutting perspectives. The findings suggest that limited research training opportunities and the lack of dedicated funding pathways may contribute to the gap.

Asset Subtitle

Robert J. Gallo

Meta Tag

Author List David C. Chan, Robert J. Gallo

Category Research

Concept NIH K Grant

Concept Hospital Medicine

Concept General Internal Medicine

Concept Internal Medicine Specialty

Concept Grant Count

Distinguished Non-Finalist

Presenter Organization Stanford University

Presenting Author Robert J. Gallo

Track Other

Keywords

NIH career development grants

K08

K23

internal medicine specialties

hospital medicine

general internal medicine

physician-investigators

NIH RePORTER

research funding disparities

academic physicians

NIH K Grant

Hospital Medicine

General Internal Medicine

Internal Medicine Specialty

Grant Count