Research Accountability Groups and Mentoring Minutes: The M3 Approach to Promote Public Health Infectious Diseases Research for Diverse Graduate Students

• Published in: American journal of orthopsychiatry 2019, Vol.89 (3), p.390-399
• Main Authors: Belcher, Harolyn M. E., Piggott, Damani A., Sanders, Renata Arrington, Trent, Maria
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accountability; Author productivity; Disease; Diversity; Female; Graduate Schools; Graduate Students; Health research; Health services; Human; Infectious diseases; Leadership; Male; Mentor; Mentoring; Peers; Productivity; Professional Development; Professional training; Public Health; Public Health Research; Scholars; Scientific Communication; Self-efficacy; Transformational Leadership
• ISSN: 0002-9432; 1939-0025
• DOI: 10.1037/ort0000413

Efforts to recruit and retain public health researchers should include scholars that reflect the demographics of the United States. Innovative research mentoring programs that integrate one-to-one and small group learning experiences may result in improved engagement and research productivity among graduate school scholars from underrepresented populations in public health research fields. This study analyzed leadership characteristics and research productivity of 54 graduate scholars who participated in the Dr. James A. Ferguson Emerging Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program (Ferguson Fellowship). Ferguson Fellows participated in 9-week research experience before and after implementation of a multimodal mentorship (M3) designed to support submission of research abstracts to national scientific conferences. M3 strategies included: (a) weekly research content mentoring, (b) myIDP, (c) professional development (process) mentoring, and (d) Research Accountability Groups. Overall, transformational leadership characteristics improved following completion of the Ferguson Fellowship (M = 3.71, SD = 6.37), t(33) = 3.39, p < .01. Transformational leadership characteristics of Ferguson Fellows who received M3 improved significantly (M = 3.88, SD = 6.63), t(24) = 2.93, p < .01 during the program. Fellows who received M3 had almost 4 times (OR = 3.88; 95% CI [1.21, 12.47], p < .05) higher odds of submitting research to scientific meetings compared to their peers who did not participate in M3. Providing process mentoring and research accountability groups were associated with increased research self-efficacy. Graduate scholars from underrepresented populations may benefit from multimodal mentoring strategies that provide scholars with individualized research and professional development support based on the scholar's needs. Public Policy Relevance Statement Increasing the number of researchers from populations currently underrepresented in the biomedical and public health fields is critical to the reduction of health disparities, in part because they are likely to examine culturally relevant questions and employ innovative research designs. Weekly individualized mentoring and group research accountability sessions designed to complement research training may increase research productivity and transformational leadership qualities necessary for graduate scholars from underrepresented populations to successfully pursue research careers.