Is NIH Research Funding to Medical Schools Associated with More Family Physicians?

摘要

National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to family medicine departments is very low and has an inverse association with the production of family physicians at these medical schools. Clinical and Translational Science Awards and other efforts to include primary care in NIH research priorities should be considered to increase the family medicine workforce. Despite a call for more primary care physicians to meet the demands of a growing population with multiple chronic diseases and increasing health insurance coverage, medical student interest in family medicine is steadily declining. Using NIH award amounts and the percentage of medical students entering family medicine between 2006 and 2010, we found a negative correlation between the overall NIH funding a medical school receives and the number of graduates entering family medicine (r~2 = -0.439, P < .0001; see accompanying figure).