The Burroughs Wellcome Fund in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, has announced the 2019 winners of its Physician-Scientist Institutional Award.

According to BWF, only 1.5 percent of the physician workforce in the United States is engaged in research. Launched in 2018 in the United States and Canada to address the shortage of physicians engaged in research, the program awards $500,000 annually over five years to five institutions to create programs that address training gaps and other issues in the physician-scientist pipeline.

The second cohort of recipients announced by the fund include Texas A&M University, whose Health Science Center College of Medicine and College of Engineering, in partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital and Research Institute and Texas Medical Center, will use the funds to establish an Academy of Physician Scientists; the University of California, Los Angeles, which will develop a leadership structure and program that provides an additional two years of research time and support to fellows, with a focus on women; the University of Chicago, where the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Early Scientific Training to Prepare for Research Excellence Post-Graduation (BEST-PREP) initiative is using evidence-based interventions to remove barriers in medical school that discourage entry into research careers in basic and translational science; Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, which will use the funds to establish a new Division of Medical Sciences to bring together and oversee physician-scientist training and enhance the training of MD-only physician-scientists interested in basic research; and Weill Cornell Medicine, which will create a centralized program to equip academic clinical departments to train MD-only physicians for full-time careers in laboratory investigation.

"Our mission at the fund is to provide funding for areas that are underserved in the research enterprise," said BWF president John E. Burris. "These programs will serve as models to other institutions on how to establish the new generation of physician-scientists."