National Institutes of Health-Funded Institutional Training Programs in Colleges and Schools of Pharmacy

Unlike nursing and dentistry, pharmacy lacks a dedicated institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support its research and training needs, despite having many NIH-funded researchers within colleges and schools of pharmacy (C/SOPs). As a result, C/SOPs must compete across all NIH institutes for institutional (T-series) as well as individual (F-series) training grants. In 2024, the Council of Deans of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy tasked a working group with assessing C/SOP participation in NIH-funded institutional training programs. Reviewing NIH RePORTER data from fiscal year 2024, we identified 26 institutional T32 training grants awarded to 18 C/SOPs, with most funding focused on pharmacology, toxicology, and chemical biology. Examining data for the distribution of funding, we observed that 61% of training grants were awarded to schools of medicine, whereas only 1% went to C/SOPs. We identified barriers that reduce pharmacy participation, which include the absence of dual Doctor of Pharmacy/Doctor of Philosophy degree programs, in which research and clinical training are fully integrated and the time to both degrees is shortened. Other barriers include a lack of education about how to develop training programs that are competitive for NIH T32 training grants. The task force developed a set of recommendations that include the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy sponsoring a training grant-writing program and advocating for funding pharmacist-scientist training programs. This may be particularly important for pharmacy-related fields, such as pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacoeconomics, and implementation science.