In December 2020, under the direction of then UCSF Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Dan Lowenstein, the UCSF Office of Research’s Task Force on Equity and Anti-Racism in Research was established and charged with assessing existing campus-wide equity and anti-racism activities relevant to research across the institution. Its recommendations were published in a 2022 report on equity and anti-racism in research, which is still being utilized to turn these findings into action.
More about the report: Several principles informed this work, including community involvement and transparent community engagement; diverse Task Force composition building on prior individual, programmatic, and institutional work; and addressing anti-Black racism as a priority.
The Task Force explicitly aligned its work with existing campus efforts, including the School of Medicine’s Differences Matter Initiative and its Research Action Group for Equity, the UCSF Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute’s Community Engagement and Health Policy Program, and the UCSF Office of Diversity and Outreach.
Task Force co-chairs, Dr. Monica McLemore, Dr. Tung Nguyen, and Ms. Sun Yu Cotter convened with 21 committee members, representing our campus’s diversity, organized into seven thematic working subgroups:
- Anti-Racism in Research
- Development of Resources and Capacity
- Diversified Research Teams
- Office of Research
- Partnerships & Community Engagement
- Precision Medicine
- Resource Allocation Program (RAP) grant review process
Between biweekly Task Force meetings, working groups generated, ranked and prioritized a set of institutional recommendations comprising short-, medium-, and long-term goals. The Task Force ultimately drafted 164 recommendations. Additional recommendations were also generated that should be considered for implementation at later stages. These were widely disseminated for public comment to UCSF research faculty, staff, trainees, and community partners. This generated over 600 comments that further informed the final set of recommendations.
The key recommendations fall within four urgent topline categories:
- Establish a system of accountability on anti-racism and equity for the UCSF research enterprise
- Promote and support UCSF anti-racism scholarship
- Create and support a more diverse UCSF research workforce
- Promote and support community-engaged research.
Read the task force's report and learn more about the resulting AVCR-IDEA office.