APA Services praised the Draft National Institutes of Health (NIH) Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity (COSWD) Strategic Plan for FY 2022–26. Reflecting APA’s commitment to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA), APA applauded COSWD’s comprehensive and thoughtfully drafted strategic plan (PDF, 282KB) designed to allow the United States to benefit from all its talent when it comes to federally supported research. In addition, the association emphasized its long-standing position (PDF, 519KB) that these factors are critical to advancing biomedical, behavioral, and psychological research supported by NIH.
The COSWD strategic plan recognizes the value of a diverse workforce, viewpoints, and experience. This recognition includes the importance of diversity in all forms required to advance the NIH mission “to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.”
APA commended the plan’s attention to the need for multifaceted approaches to effect change at a meaningful scale and its plan to address a range of talent life cycle stages, including focusing on various career stages. At the same time, APA urged COSWD to personalize NIH’s outreach to marginalized stakeholder groups to ensure effective outreach.
NIH is also developing an NIH-wide strategic plan for DEIA, to include input from NIH’s institutes, centers, and offices, and is seeking comments on the proposed framework for the strategic plan. APA will provide comments to the plan, and we invite psychologists’ input. The deadline for contributing to the APA response is March 25, 2022. Submit suggestions and recommendations for the NIH RFI online.
For more information, contact Angela L. Sharpe, MG.