Enhancing Diversity in Biomedical Data Science

The gap in educational attainment separating underrepresented minorities from Whites and Asians remains wide. Such a gap has sig­nificant impact on workforce diversity and in­clusion among cross-cutting Biomedical Data Science (BDS) research, which presents great opportunities as well as major challenges for addressing health disparities. This article pro­vides a brief description of the newly estab­lished National Institutes of Health Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) diversity initiatives at four universities: California State University, Monterey Bay; Fisk University; University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus; and California State University, Fullerton. We em­phasize three main barriers to BDS careers (ie, preparation, exposure, and access to resources) experienced among those pioneer programs and recommendations for possible solutions (ie, early and proactive mentoring, enriched research experience, and data sci­ence curriculum development). The diversity disparities in BDS demonstrate the need for educators, researchers, and funding agencies to support evidence-based practices that will lead to the diversification of the BDS workforce. Ethn Dis. 2017;27(2):107-116; doi:10.18865/ed.27.2.107.