The American Junior Investigators Association (AJIA) was created in response to the lack of an advocacy body for early career physician-scientists at the resident/fellow/junior faculty level. This entity will help design and develop national studies to help identify factors that are helpful for early career physician-scientists.
The founders of AJIA previously published a manuscript in Academic Medicine on the national study to assess impacts of COVID-19 on trainees to the faculty level and found that early career faculty were disproportionately affected and our follow up survey 1 year out showed similar stressors (in revisions in BMC Med ed). The resident/fellow and junior faculty career stages and transitioning from these stages are the leakiest part of the physician-scientist pipeline and this has been amplified by low funding paylines/stagnant NIH budget.
The survey is geared toward late stage residents/fellows and graduates of clinical training programs within the past 10 years. Your input will provide critical data necessary to advocate for junior physician-scientists and implement meaningful policy changes to reduce leakiness of the physician-scientist pipeline. No data on individuals will be reported, only summary survey results.
To take the survey, please use the link below:
www.surveymonkey.com/r/earlycareerphysci
The goal is to identify factors that have helped early career physician-scientists as well as ones that have hindered them.
Also, we usually present prelim results in summary form at the joint APSA/ASCI/AAP mtg where there are usually NIH directors, deans, dept chairs, foundation leaders (BWF, Doris Duke) present; for example, Francis Collins, foundation CEOs, CDC director, NAM president have attended our sessions as both speakers and attendees in the past, so the study results can potentially influence policy and they have done so with our national COVID 19 study.
Please complete the survey by July 1, 2024. Thank you for your help in improving the career development path and advocacy for junior faculty physician-scientists.
