The Changing Face of Academic Surgery: Overrepresentation of Women among Surgeon-Scientists with R01 Funding

Abstract

Background There has been a recent focus on sex-based disparities within the field of academic surgery. However, the proportion of female surgeons conducting National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research is unknown. Study Design The NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results (RePORTER) was queried for R01 grants from surgery departments where the principal investigator (PI) had a primary medical degree (MD), as of October 2018. Characteristics of the PI and their respective grants were collected. Institutional faculty profiles were reviewed for PI and departmental characteristics. PIs were stratified by sex and compared using standard univariate statistics. Results There were a total of 212 R01 grants in surgery departments, held by 159 PIs. Of these, 26.4% (n=42) of R01-funded surgeons were female, compared to the reported 19% of academic surgery female faculty (as reported by the Association of American Medical Colleges, p=0.02). Women with R01 grants were more likely to be first-time grant recipients with no concurrent or prior NIH funding (21.4% vs. 8.6%, p=0.03), and less likely to have a previous R01 or equivalent grant (54.8% vs. 73.5%, p=0.03). Women were more likely to be from departments with a female surgery chair (31.0% vs. 13.7%, p=0.01) or a department with over 30% female surgeons (35.0% vs. 18.2%, p=0.03). Conclusion Though female surgeons remain a minority in academic surgery, they hold a greater than anticipated proportion of NIH funding, with a high number of first-time grants, forming a crucial component of the next generation of surgeon-scientists.