The National Institutes of Health has been quietly overhauling several of its diversity-oriented grant programs, largely to avoid lawsuits accusing it or its grantees of discriminating against white or Asian-American researchers.

The agency still operates some programs that award grants only to members of certain racial or ethnic minorities. But NIH officials said the agency planned, in the long term, to open all the programs to applicants who have disabilities or are deemed disadvantaged, regardless of their race.

"We have basically broadened the diversity tent to include a number of other groups," said Norka Ruiz Bravo, the NIH's deputy director for extramural research.

NIH officials declined to provide details about such programs or discuss specific changes being made to them until last month, after The Chronicle obtained written descriptions of several of the programs through the Freedom of Information Act.

In subsequent interviews and e-mail exchanges, NIH officials said that their agency's steering committee decided to expand the eligibility criteria of its diversity-oriented programs when it met last June, and changes in the programs are now under way.

The agency announced new eligibility rules in November for one of its largest diversity programs, which provides colleges and other grant recipients with supplemental funds to recruit minority scientists and support their work.

Ms. Ruiz Bravo said the agency expects to make similar changes in the eligibility criteria of other programs as their current grant cycles expire and as the NIH renews the programs and issues updated announcements regarding the awards and who can apply.

Ms. Ruiz Bravo said the agency had decided to let existing programs "run their natural course" because making changes in them midstream would have seemed "like going back on something that we had already put out there."

"It is a more thoughtful or humane approach, rather than pulling the rug out from anyone who has applied for, or is applying for, one of these programs," she said.

Debating the Cure

The changes being made in NIH minority programs are partly a response to the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2003 rulings in two lawsuits against the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In those decisions, which involved the admissions policies of Michigan's law school and chief undergraduate program, the court held that colleges can consider applicants' race for the sake of fostering diversity on campuses, but must treat such applicants as individuals and avoid giving their race too much weight.

Another major provider of federal grants to scientists on college campuses, the National Science Foundation, had ceased to operate race-exclusive programs back in 1998, in response to a lawsuit by a Clemson University student that challenged the legality of an NSF research fellowship for minority graduate students. The NSF chose to settle the suit after concluding that the fellowship program had been rendered legally impermissible by a 1995 Supreme Court decision, Adarand Constructors v. Pena, which held that race-based policies must be "narrowly tailored" and serve a compelling government interest.

"The Michigan cases, as a practical matter, had no effect on our programs," said Lawrence Rudolph, the NSF's general counsel.

The NIH continued to award grants based on race, but had appeared to be reconsidering that practice in the months leading up to the Michigan rulings, as organizations critical of affirmative action mounted a campaign to rid colleges of race-exclusive programs, and the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights signaled that such programs were unlikely to pass muster with its lawyers.

When Indiana University's Cancer Center, in Indianapolis, was challenged over a minority summer-research program financed by the NIH, the agency responded by giving Indiana and other grantees the option of applying the term "underrepresented minority" to subsets of the nation's white and Asian-American population that produce relatively few cancer researchers, such as those who are from low-income backgrounds or whose parents did not complete college.

Colleges throughout the nation interpreted the Supreme Court's Michigan rulings as leaving their race-exclusive programs vulnerable to legal challenge. They responded by opening the programs to other groups, like students who were economically disadvantaged or had demonstrated a commitment to promoting diversity.

At the NIH, officials became caught up in a debate over how to change the eligibility criteria for minority programs to shield them from legal challenge, according to Clifton A. Poodry, director of the Minority Opportunities in Research Division in the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences. In an interview last week, Mr. Poodry said that some NIH officials had wanted to shift the programs from serving members of minority groups to serving those deemed "disadvantaged," but others, including himself, felt that such an approach "was wrongheaded," partly because it seemed to equate minority status with disadvantage and partly because disadvantage is hard to define.

"It is a Pandora's box," Mr. Poodry said. "Are you disadvantaged if you come from a broken home? Are you disadvantaged because you come from the suburbs, where you have not been able to experience the richness of life that others have?"

Given the charged nature of the debate and the threat of litigation over the programs, NIH officials were hesitant to talk publicly about the agency's minority programs and the changes being contemplated, Mr. Poodry said.

Redefining Diversity

The change in the minority research supplement program, announced in the fall, represents the compromise reached by NIH officials. The agency's steering committee chose to merge that program with another that gives grant recipients funds to recruit, and support the work of, researchers with disabilities. In addition to those two groups, the new, merged program offers grant recipients financial incentives to employ researchers "from disadvantaged backgrounds."

Included in the program's "disadvantaged" category are researchers whose family incomes fall below federal low-income thresholds, as well as those who come from environments, such as certain rural or inner-city communities, that can be shown to have recently and directly inhibited their efforts to obtain "the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to develop and participate in a research career."

The NIH's announcement of the program change notes that grant recipients will have a much easier time showing that recent disadvantage has affected a high-school or undergraduate student than someone at the graduate-school level or above.

Ms. Ruiz Bravo said that the NIH plans to use the supplement program's new three-pronged diversity definition as a model in revising the eligibility criteria for other minority programs.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request asking for information on any NIH programs that "as of January 1, 2003, had eligibility requirements pertaining to race or ethnicity," the NIH produced records of four, none of which has yet undergone change. They were a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute award for underrepresented minority faculty members; a National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke award for minority scholars in the neurosciences; a National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases grant program for investigators from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups; and a program, jointly operated by several NIH institutes, that provides financial support to minority doctoral candidates writing dissertations on the social, legal, or ethical implications of genetics research.

A subsequent search of the NIH Web site found descriptions of four other programs that continue to have similar race-based eligibility criteria. They are a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute short-term training award for minority students; an NIH award for new minority faculty members; and two programs that provide minority students with funds to attend national scientific meetings.

David R. Burgess, a professor of biology at Boston College who served on an advisory committee to the NIH director until last fall, said he had found that the directors of the agency's minority programs "feel challenged and under increasing scrutiny," and he worries that the agency is losing sight of the need to promote racial diversity in the health-care work force and to tend to minority health problems.

Vanessa Northington Gamble, who is the director of Tuskegee University's National Center for Bioethics and has extensively examined minority health issues, said she was concerned that the changes being adopted by the NIH will erode minority gains in the health-care professions, and could lead members of minority groups, people with disabilities, and the disadvantaged to "feel they are in competition with each other."

Stephen B. Thomas, director of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Minority Health, said such competition would be avoided if the NIH programs received adequate funds. "I applaud the effort on the part of NIH to open up opportunities for all groups that are systematically discriminated against, for whatever reason," he said.

Copyright © 2005 The Chronicle of Higher Education