Anna Greka

kind of the conundrum in some ways that we take you know our best and brightest you know medical students who are interested in investigation we train them and invest in them in becoming you know physician scientists but then we sort of drop them at the most vulnerable time which is usually after you know one completes their you know clinical and scientific training and they're embarking on that you know early phases of one's careers it has been found to be a very vulnerable point when a lot of people are now

you know, in their mid-30s or even kind of late 30s, perhaps with some family to take care of, you know, other burdens, you know, of sort of adulthood, if you will.

And I think when it becomes very difficult to sustain a career where, you know, one's salary is very limited due to the kind of the research component, right?

And so I think we have to invest in our youngest, you know, people.

And it is...

you know, a real issue that there's no good mechanism to do that at the present time.

So I was actually really hoping that there would be, you know, an opportunity with leadership at the NIH to really think about this.

It's also been discussed at the level of the National Academy of Medicine, where I had some role in, you know, discussing

the recent report that they put out on the biomedical enterprise in the United States.

And it's kind of interesting to see that there is a note made there about this issue and the fact that there needs to be, I think, more generous investment in the careers of a few select physician scientists that we can support.

So if you look at the numbers currently out of the entire physician workforce, physician scientists comprise less than 1%.

It's probably closer to 0.8% at this point.

And so that's really not enough, I think, to maintain...

the enterprise and the kind of the, if you will, this incredible innovation economy that the United States has had, this miracle engine, if you will, in biomedicine that has been fueled in large part

by physician investigators.

Of course, our colleagues who are non-physician investigators are equally important partners in this journey.

But we do need a few of the physician scientist investigators, I think, as well.

If you really think about the fact that I think 70% of people who run R&D programs in all the big pharmaceutical companies are physician scientists, right?

And so we need people like us to be able to work on these big problems.

And so