Engaging Peer Mentors for Opportunity, Well-Being, and Equity Realization—A Leadership Intervention for Women in Academic Medicine

Abstract

Background:

The underrepresentation of women in senior positions persists in academic medicine. Data-driven strategies are needed to catalyze advancement.

Methods:

We designed a novel, National Institutes of Health-funded intervention—Engaging Peer Mentors for Opportunity, Well-Being, and Equity Realization (EMPOWER) to be evaluated in a randomized study. This educational innovation was modeled on the Leadership Learning Model Framework developed for the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM)® program and integrated existing research and multidisciplinary content expertise. EMPOWER strives to support the career advancement of women faculty by cultivating fundamental leadership competencies implemented within a peer mentorship framework. Early outcomes surrounding perceptions, feasibility, as well as engagement are described.

Results:

We share the EMPOWER curriculum implemented among a national cohort of women clinician-scientists within a broader randomized trial design; 94 consenting participants were assigned to the intervention. Many participants (68%; n = 54) found EMPOWER valuable or very valuable for their personal or career development. It was easy or very easy for 79% (n = 63) of participants to access the online educational materials, and 61% (n = 49) attended all or almost all of the peer circle meetings.

Conclusions:

We describe EMPOWER, a novel, potentially scalable, virtual intervention, to address the unmet needs of women faculty in academic medicine at the pivotal transition to leadership. The EMPOWER intervention was feasible, and we report early lessons learned from its development. Future evaluation will include qualitative analyses and comparison of outcomes between program participants and control subjects.

Introduction

Given the persistent underrepresentation of women in senior positions and elusive progress toward gender diversification in leadership roles, academic medicine needs intentional interventions to accelerate advancement of women faculty,^1–6 particularly in the critical mid-career transition window.^7,8 Qualitative studies focused on understanding the unique needs of women faculty at this pivotal career stage have identified barriers such as gender differences in work–life integration, exclusion from professional networks, unfair bureaucratic processes, and lack of adequate leadership training,^9,10 all of which can significantly hinder career advancement.

Research has demonstrated that participation in leadership development programs increases eligibility for promotion, knowledge of leadership and organizational theory, and self-efficacy surrounding strategic vision, financial management, leadership attainment and competency, communication, networking, conflict management, and career building.^11,12 Furthermore, participation enhances the ability to recognize and remedy structural sources of bias to yield benefits far beyond the career success of individual program participants.¹¹ While leadership development programs have focused on supporting mid-career women faculty at the local institutional^13–15 and national levels,^16,17 scalable interventions targeting large segments of the workforce have yet to be defined and tested.^11,18,19 Accordingly, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has highlighted the need for targeted, data-driven interventions to catalyze the advancement of women in academic medicine.¹

The value of selective programs, such as the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM)® program¹⁷ or the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Mid-Career Women Faculty Leadership Development Seminar,¹⁶ is apparent, but the scale of need far outpaces these few programs’ capacity. Individual institutions have responded by implementing internal programs,^13–15 but these too are resource-intensive, limiting scalability.

With support from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grant, the study team developed a program—Engaging Peer Mentors for Opportunity, Well-Being, and Equity Realization (EMPOWER)—a novel, potentially scalable, virtual peer mentorship educational leadership intervention for mid-career to senior faculty, to be evaluated in a randomized study. EMPOWER was developed in partnership with and informed by the ELAM® program,^17,20,21 along with further relevant literature^18,21–24 and content expertise.^25,26 Herein, we describe the EMPOWER intervention, participants, curriculum, evaluation design, feasibility, early outcomes, and potential for larger scale impact. Additional evaluation results, including comparisons of participants randomized to the intervention versus control arm, will be presented in subsequent articles.

Materials and Methods

Setting and participants

EMPOWER is a national leadership development intervention for women clinician-scientists at academic institutions. Participants were invited from a national cohort of medical faculty, which comprised women survey respondents who received new NIH K08 or K23 career development awards from 2006 to 2009 and remained in academic positions in 2022. This cohort, built upon our prior longitudinal survey work,²⁷ is uniquely informative given relative homogeneity in high aptitude, motivation, and early-career structured mentoring.²⁸ Its constituents are now more advanced in their careers, rendering this mid-career to senior cohort,^9,10 particularly suited for testing an intervention developed to promote career advancement at their critical and understudied career stage.

Curriculum development

Recognizing that impact is a product of both reach and effectiveness, we assembled a study team that included scholarly experts in academic gender equity, along with leaders and individuals who had participated in other leadership development programs. Together, the team identified the highest impact components of existing programs and incorporated them into the EMPOWER curriculum to support scalability and agility in variable organizational cultures.

Curricular materials were influenced by existing strategies and materials developed by ELAM®,^17,20,21 the University of Michigan ADVANCE Program,²⁹ the AAMC,³⁰ and contemporary insights surrounding causal mechanisms identified in our mixed methods observational study,^9,10,31 along with further relevant literature^{18,21,22–24} and content expertise.^25,26 The curriculum imparts skills for developing goal-oriented leadership plans (Supplementary Data S1), negotiating to optimize outcomes (Supplementary Data S2), embracing sponsorship and graceful self-promotion for career advancement (Supplementary Data S3), and implementing work–life integration strategies (Supplementary Data S4). These four essential competencies were presented in dedicated modules, each comprised three sessions. The curriculum was designed to be administered to participants asynchronously through course modules delivered on Canvas, an online instructional platform. It was paced using monthly peer mentorship circle meetings, with defined expectations (Fig. 1) and assignments devoted to specific topics. Didactic, simulation, and reflective discourse embedded within the structured curriculum comprised further learning activities (Table 1). Lessons learned were applied at the participants’ institutions; experiences and outcomes were then comparatively evaluated within peer mentorship circles (Fig. 1).

FIG. 1.

The EMPOWER leadership development process to support career advancement for women in academic medicine.³² The learning process objective for EMPOWER is to drive culture change by promoting competency, community, and visibility. Adapted from the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM)® Leadership Learning Model.^20,21 EMPOWER emphasizes four fundamental areas in leadership development for women in academic medicine—leadership effectiveness, negotiation, strategic career advancement, and leading in life (work–life integration). Learning activities include didactic, simulation, and reflective discourse with peers embedded within a structured curriculum (Table 1). Participants apply the imparted skillsets locally at their home institutions and then comparatively assess experiences and outcomes within their peer mentorship circle. Key peer mentorship circle features and expectations included the following: (i) establishing a safe and supportive environment for mutual learning; (ii) progressive discourse toward knowledge building; (iii) embracing collaboration, respectful inclusion, and collective identity; and (iv) facilitative circle leadership with an emphasis on peer mentorship and using collective group knowledge.

Table 1.

EMPOWER Curriculum Overview³²

Learning modules	Description
Module 1: Leadership effectiveness	•Best practices and rules of engagement •Sharing personal stories to build rapport •Meeting observation exercise •Personal leadership action plan
Session 1	Faculty advisor/facilitator ensures that rules of engagement are set. Participants present their personal stories and articulate their expectations for the peer mentorship circle.
Session 2	Participants engage in reflective dialogue concerning women in leadership positions and their own leadership aspirations. They attend a meeting in their regular place of work, record their observations to inform their own leadership styles, and discuss with peers.
Session 3	Participants share their leadership action plan. They seek feedback from and offer support to their peers as they discuss their leadership development goals for the future.
	Assignment: Identify an important change to lead (e.g., organizational, national) and provide an actionable plan using a specific framework.
Module 2: Negotiation	•Discussion of past experiences with and plans for future negotiation •Review of negotiation tactics and skills described in the book, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It.25 •Simulated negotiation role-play activity •Outline of strategic approach for future negotiation
Session 1	Participants consider the importance of negotiation to career advancement in academia and reflect on their successes, challenges, and future aspirations, particularly as women in academic medicine.
Session 2	Participants meet as dyads to engage in a role-play negotiation activity of a package negotiation (dean and prospective department chair) and discuss lessons learned.
Session 3	Participants outline a strategic approach to negotiation, including specific tactics and strategies, to increase their chances of success.
	Assignment: Strategically plan and outline a negotiation to address an identified need.
Module 3: Strategic career advancement	•Sponsorship self-assessment •Leadership interviews •STAR (situation/challenge, target/task, action, results) statement
Session 1	Participants complete a self-assessment of the sponsorship they are currently receiving and discuss their plans to optimize sponsorship in their professional life.
Session 2	Participants interview an institutional leader to gain an insider’s view of organizational dynamics and share their observations with their peers. They consider how to incorporate what they have learned to further expand their social network and opportunities for professional development.
Session 3	Participants identify (and overcome) barriers that might contribute to discomfort with self-promotion. They practice presenting their STAR statement to their peers so that they are better prepared to share their accomplishments with others.
	Assignment: Prepare a STAR statement to promote accomplishments, capabilities, and impact with others.
Module 4: Leading in life	•Assessment of values, goals, and priorities in the four domains of life—work, family, self, and community •Review the exercises described in the book, Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life,26 to learn how to achieve success across all four domains •Work–life integration promoting experiment
Session 1	Participants consider whether their work–life integration experiences are authentically aligned with their values and goals. They assess the relative importance of work, home, community, and self in comparison to how much time and attention is focused on each of these domains.
Session 2	Participants discuss key stakeholder expectations in the four domains of their life, reflecting on whether and how these relationships fit together as a whole. They consider how to produce a more unified system of work–life integration.
Session 3	Participants present their work–life integration promoting experiments and reflect on any early impact of their efforts. They debrief the peer mentorship intervention overall.
	Assignment: Outline a work–life integration promoting experiment to implement.

Intervention development

EMPOWER seeks to address the identified need for interventions targeting women faculty at the critical transition to seniority in their biomedical research careers in 1-year intervention for women who began their careers as mentored clinician-scientists and are now established academic faculty members. We designed and implemented EMPOWER based on insights from our prior work,^9,10,31 relevant literature,^18,21–24 content expertise,^25,26 knowledge of current programs, and an adaptation of the Leadership Learning Model Framework developed for the ELAM® program^20,21 (Fig. 1).

The EMPOWER Learning Cycle promotes competency, community, visibility, and culture change surrounding gendered dynamics of leadership and career advancement at both the individual and structural levels (Fig. 1). Participants were provided with the curriculum and convened monthly via videoconference with their peer mentorship circles to augment accountability by completing key curricular assignments. The peer mentorship circles also sought to promote objective-driven leadership purpose, identity, and skill development, together with a senior faculty advisor recruited from ELAM® to facilitate and offer expert support. Faculty advisors met for facilitator orientation³³ before the start of the intervention and were granted preliminary access to the curricular materials for review.

Randomization and peer circle assignments

The University of Michigan Institutional Review Board approved this intervention as part of a randomized trial to evaluate its impact. Eligible respondents who agreed to participate (N = 187) were randomized 1:1 between intervention and control arms in August 2022. Balance was evaluated for covariates (race [white versus other], sexual orientation [heterosexual versus other], grant funding, academic rank, and number of publications). Initially, 94 individuals consented and were randomized to the intervention (Table 2) and received the yearlong leadership development curriculum (Supplementary Data S1, S2, S3, and S4) embedded within a peer mentorship framework. The 93 individuals randomized to the control arm received only a portion of reading materials—two books on negotiation and work–life integration.^25,26 The study team assigned peer mentorship circles to participants in the intervention arm based upon the following criteria, in the order of importance: equal circle size, no participants from the same institution, no participants from the same specialty classification, and participants from the same or adjacent time zone. There were 14 circles of 6 and 2 circles of 5 participants. All circles comprised participants from unique institutions. Fourteen of 16 peer mentorship circles comprised participants from the same or adjacent time zones; 8 circles had members with nonoverlapping specialties and 8 circles with a single overlap by specialty.

Table 2.

Characteristics of Those Assigned to the Intervention

	N = 94
Academic rank, no. (%)
Professor	45 (47.87)
Associate professor	46 (48.94)
Assistant professor or other	3 (3.19)
Specialty, no. (%)
Medical	32 (34.04)
Women/children/familya	28 (29.79)
Basic sciences or non-MD	23 (24.47)
Hospital-based	7 (7.45)
Surgical	4 (4.26)
Region, no. (%)
Midwest	13 (13.83)
Northeast	37 (39.36)
South	13 (13.83)
West	31 (32.98)
Race and ethnicity, no. (%)
White	62 (65.96)
Asian	28 (29.79)
Underrepresented in medicineb	4 (4.26)
Marital status
Married or have domestic partner	84 (89.36)
Single, divorced, or widowed	10 (10.64)
Parental status
A parent	87 (92.55)
Not a parent	6 (6.38)
Missing or not reported	1 (1.06)
LGBTQ+ status
Cisgender and heterosexual	89 (94.68)
LGBTQ+	4 (4.26)
Missing or not reported	1 (1.06)
Weekly hours of clinical work, {no.} median [IQR], hours	{90} 10.56 [3.50–18.00]
Satisfaction with mentoring received in career, no. (%)
Yesc	66 (70.21)
Nod	25 (26.6)
Missing or not reported	3 (3.19)
Reliance on peer mentorship in career, no. (%)
Yese	54 (57.45)
Nof	37 (39.36)
Missing or not reported	3 (3.19)

^a Clinical specialties treating women, children, and families.

^b Race and ethnicity other than Asian or non-Hispanic White.

^c Very satisfied, somewhat satisfied.

^d Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, very dissatisfied.

^e Quite a bit, very much.

^f Not at all, a little bit.

IQR, interquartile range; LGBTQ+, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus (others).

Program impact

We administered a survey between April and August 2024—1.5 years after the start of the intervention—to assess early indicators of program impact. Approval was obtained from the University of Michigan Institutional Review Board, and documentation of informed consent was waived. We emailed those who participated in the intervention an invitation to complete a 16-page online questionnaire, along with a $50 incentive. The invitation contained all study details necessary for informed consent, with the option to decline participation by not accessing the online link and/or by responding to the email. Nonrespondents were sent up to four reminders, which were administered every 1–2 weeks. Survey items and secondary outcome measures explored experiences with and perceptions of EMPOWER, as well as feasibility and engagement with the intervention (Supplementary Data S5).

Results

Participant characteristics

As detailed in Table 2, almost all of the 94 individuals who consented to participate and were assigned to the intervention arm had achieved the rank of full professor (48%; n = 45) or associate professor (49%; n = 46). They were geographically dispersed across the United States. Most were White (66%; n = 62), while 30% (n = 28) were Asian and 4% (n = 4) were underrepresented in medicine; most were cisgender and heterosexual (95%; n = 89) with 4% (n = 4) identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus (LGBTQ+). Most (89%; n = 84) were married and parents (93%; n = 87). Internal medicine and its subspecialties were the most common (34%; n = 32). At baseline, 70% (n = 66) indicated satisfaction with the mentoring they had received, and 57% (n = 54) indicated they had relied on peer mentorship before the program.

Intervention engagement

After initial assignments to peer mentorship circles, 5 participants withdrew due to scheduling conflicts, leaving 10 circles with 6 participants, 5 circles with 5 participants, and 1 circle with 4 participants. Among the 89 remaining participants, the median number of peer mentorship circle sessions attended was 9 (interquartile range [IQR] = 8–11). Almost all participants (n = 87) engaged with the online curriculum, with a median of 120 page views per participant (IQR = 67–195) and a median of 3 uploaded assignments (IQR = 0–7). The median length of time per month spent on curricular assignments and materials (e.g., readings and videos) was 1.5 hours (IQR = 1–2). Of the 89 intervention participants, 80 (90%) responded to the survey assessing early indicators of program impact. Most respondents indicated that it was either easy or very easy for them to access the online educational materials (79%; n = 63) and that they attended all or almost all of the monthly, 1-hour virtual peer circle meetings (61%; n = 49) (Table 3).

Table 3.

Program Participants’ Experiences with and Perceptions of EMPOWER, as Reported by 80 Survey Respondents

Survey item	Response, N (%)
Overall, how satisfied were you with the EMPOWER program?
Very satisfied	35 (43.75)
Somewhat satisfied	38 (47.5)
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied	4 (5)
Somewhat dissatisfied	3 (3.75)
Overall, how valuable do you believe the program was for your personal or career development?
Very valuable	22 (27.5)
Valuable	32 (40)
Moderately valuable	14 (17.5)
Slightly valuable	9 (11.25)
Not at all valuable	3 (3.75)
How easy was it for you to access the educational materials posted in Canvas?
Very easy	32 (40)
Easy	31 (38.75)
Neutral	9 (11.25)
Difficult	7 (8.75)
Very difficult	1 (1.25)
During the EMPOWER intervention, your peer circle met virtually once a month for 12 months. How many of the virtual meetings of your EMPOWER peer circle did you attend?
All/almost all	49 (61.25)
Most	21 (26.25)
About half	4 (5)
A few	4 (5)
Almost none/none	2 (2.5)
How often are you currently using the information and skills from each of the following EMPOWER learning modules?
Module 1: Leadership effectiveness
Daily	1 (1.25)
Often	24 (30)
Sometimes	40 (50)
Rarely	10 (12.5)
Never	5 (6.25)
Module 2: Negotiation
Daily	2 (2.5)
Often	18 (22.5)
Sometimes	41 (51.25)
Rarely	14 (17.5)
Never	5 (6.25)
Module 3: Strategic career advancement
Daily	1 (1.25)
Often	30 (37.5)
Sometimes	33 (41.25)
Rarely	11 (13.75)
Never	5 (6.25)
Module 4: Leading in life
Daily	3 (3.75)
Often	19 (23.75)
Sometimes	36 (45)
Rarely	14 (17.5)
Never	8 (10)
How likely are you to use the information and skills from each of the following EMPOWER learning modules within the next year?
Module 1: Leadership effectiveness
Extremely likely	16 (20)
Likely	38 (47.5)
Neutral	18 (22.5)
Unlikely	3 (3.75)
Extremely unlikely	2 (2.5)
Missing/not reported	3 (3.75)
Module 2: Negotiation
Extremely likely	20 (25)
Likely	29 (36.25)
Neutral	18 (22.5)
Unlikely	7 (8.75)
Extremely unlikely	3 (3.75)
Missing/not reported	3 (3.75)
Module 3: Strategic career advancement
Extremely likely	20 (25)
Likely	34 (42.5)
Neutral	15 (18.75)
Unlikely	4 (5)
Extremely unlikely	2 (2.5)
Missing/not reported	5 (6.25)
Module 4: Leading in life
Extremely likely	13 (16.25)
Likely	28 (35)
Neutral	20 (25)
Unlikely	9 (11.25)
Extremely unlikely	3 (3.75)
Missing/not reported	7 (8.75)
In the future, how likely are you to continue an ongoing relationship with at least one of the people you met through EMPOWER?
Extremely likely	11 (13.75)
Likely	16 (20)
Neutral	18 (22.5)
Unlikely	26 (32.5)
Extremely unlikely	9 (11.25)

EMPOWER, Engaging Peer Mentors for Opportunity, Well-Being, and Equity Realization.

Learning evaluation

Many of the survey respondents expressed satisfaction with and found value in EMPOWER, with 44% (n = 35) indicating that they were very satisfied and 68% (n = 54) reporting that it was either valuable or very valuable for their personal or career development (Table 3). Most respondents indicated that they were currently using the information and skills they acquired from the EMPOWER learning modules at least sometimes: 81% (n = 65) for leadership effectiveness, 76% (n = 61) for negotiation, 80% (n = 64) for strategic career advancement, and 73% (n = 58) for leading in life (Table 3). Most also anticipated that they were either likely or extremely likely to use the information and skills that they acquired within the next year: 68% (n = 54) for leadership effectiveness, 61% (n = 49) for negotiation, 68% (n = 54) for strategic career advancement, and 51% (n = 41) for leading in life (Table 3). About a third (34%; n = 27) indicated they were either likely or extremely likely to continue an ongoing relationship with at least one person they had met through EMPOWER (Table 3).

Discussion

In this report, we describe our early experience with developing and implementing EMPOWER—a novel, NIH-funded, potentially scalable virtual intervention designed to address a critical gap NASEM identified regarding the need for targeted, data-driven interventions to catalyze the advancement of women in biomedical careers. Given the persistent underrepresentation of women in senior positions in academic medicine, this is particularly pertinent to the field, especially at the understudied, critical, mid-career transition to leadership.¹ In light of the established need to promote faculty career development for women in academic medicine, we believe that disseminating the design of our methodically devised intervention as well as early outcomes, while we continue our longer term evaluation, supports and propels this important ongoing effort in the field. The unique collaboration with ELAM® program¹⁷ and multidisciplinary content experts offers comparative strength to a robust curricular intervention that leverages the established benefits of a peer mentorship implementation framework.

The benefits of participating in career development programs,^34,35 as well as engaging in peer mentorship,^36,37 have been demonstrated at various career stages to promote retention and leadership advancement, and therefore, it is essential to build upon such programs^11,18; however, existing initiatives have been implemented at the single-institution level or are selective courses with limited capacity.^13–17 The potential advantages of the EMPOWER intervention described herein are its resource efficiency and targeting at the level of the academic community; if successful, EMPOWER could be scaled to meet the large demand. Furthermore, EMPOWER reflects NASEM recommendations for interventions that are career stage and discipline specific to support the advancement of women in biomedical careers while importantly offering an agile framework adaptable to variable organizational cultures.¹

The findings presented here provide essential insight surrounding feasibility, engagement, and perceptions of participants. The participation rate after recruitment and intervention engagement suggests the viability of a virtual leadership development program targeted at a large segment of the academic workforce, overcoming capacity and resource constraints of existing models.^13–17 Assignment completion reflects achievement surrounding outlined learning objectives for the intervention; facilitators and barriers to completion will be explored in future qualitative work to augment learning effectiveness. Nevertheless, most participants cited active translation of lessons learned or planned future translation, suggesting effective behavioral implementation of the intervention content. Furthermore, consistent with existing literature surrounding participation in leadership development programs, many participants perceived value in this intervention for their personal or career development.^11,18 Cumulatively, these findings surrounding effectiveness³⁸ coupled with viability surrounding the national scope of implementation highlight EMPOWER’s potential impact.

On the contrary, it is equally important to note that 15% of EMPOWER participants perceived the intervention to be only slightly valuable or not at all valuable, and 44% were unlikely or extremely unlikely to continue an ongoing peer relationship. The enduring personal connections that in-person leadership courses foster are likely to be more difficult to replicate in a virtual setting; longer term follow-up will be important to determine whether peer mentoring relationships continue and whether this may limit longer term impact on career outcomes. Further analyses will also be important to explore reasons that may underlie less favorable perceptions among some participants, including limitations inherent to virtual programs, group dynamics, and the general lack of time and flexibility in academic medical careers that may impede engagement, along with more modifiable aspects of the curriculum itself.

The information we provide here and will glean from the additional evaluation work we have planned has additional limitations. The underrepresentation of women who identify as LGBTQ+ and are of minoritized race/ethnicity within the cohort we enrolled limits our ability to assess differential impact or compatibility of the intervention for participants with multiple intersecting marginalized identities. Future research will be necessary to build upon this work and to ensure that the values, experiences, and needs of participants who have faced marginalization are adequately considered. The curricular framework and design, however, are adaptable and can be tailored. We anticipate that the insights gleaned from this intervention, which we designed for the highly informative elite cohort of clinician-scientists who received early-career mentored NIH career development awards, will be helpful to the academic community more broadly. Of note, the early outcomes survey assessment described in this article is part of a larger randomized controlled trial, which also includes a qualitative study component. Qualitative analyses of interviews with a sample of participants from the intervention arm, stratified by peer mentorship circle, along with focus groups of faculty advisors, will be detailed in a separate report³⁹ to provide further insights regarding optimization of the intervention. Additionally, comparative analyses of surveys of participants and control subjects will yield important information about the impact of the intervention on experiences and outcomes, including promotions and leadership advancement, leadership self-confidence and self-efficacy, sponsorship experiences (seeking, receiving, giving), career development knowledge and skills (such as understanding and use of key concepts addressed in the curriculum), and well-being and burnout. These analyses will likely yield further lessons for how best to develop and implement similar initiatives in the future.

Conclusions

In summary, effective interventions to address gender disparities within the senior echelons of academic medicine have not been scaled or broadly adopted.¹ Progress toward diversification in leadership remains elusive in academic medicine, and the need to develop data-driven interventions to address gender disparities is urgent and compelling. The initial implementation and evaluation of the EMPOWER intervention represents an important step toward this objective with broad and consequential impact. We share details of the EMPOWER curriculum and the way we structured its peer mentorship circles herein, along with information about our planned intervention evaluation design and early outcomes, with the anticipation that it will build a foundation for additional efforts to advance gender equity in academic medicine.

Authors’ Contributions

C.M.C.: Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; writing—original draft; and critical review of the article for important intellectual content. R.D.J. and R.J.: Conceptualization and design; acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; writing—original draft; and critical review of the article for important intellectual content. N.D.S., K.S., K.C.P., D.A.T., E.A.K., E.L.F., A.J.S., I.H.S., and P.A.U.: Conceptualization and design; acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; and critical review of the article for important intellectual content. S.M.P., H.W.H., N.A.B., A.B., L.A.D., C.T.F., N.G., S.L.H., R.J.K., M.M., K.M., E.M.P., A.P., A.L.T., L.T., S.T., and P.M.W.: Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data and critical review of the article for important intellectual content. K.A.G.: Conceptualization and design; acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; statistical analysis; and critical review of the article for important intellectual content.

Ethical Approval

The University of Michigan Institutional Review Board approved the implementation of this intervention as part of a randomized trial to evaluate its impact (HUM00185660).

Disclaimer

The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences or the Department of Defense.

Previous Presentations

Jones RD, Cutter CM, Feldman EL, et al. EMPOWER: Peer Mentoring to Overcome Obstacles for Women Clinician-Scientists in Academic Medicine. Poster presented at: Learn Serve Lead 2022: The AAMC Annual Meeting; November 12, 2022; Nashville, Tennessee.

Author Disclosure Statement

C.M.C. reports a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and personal fees (payment or honoraria for lectures, presentations, speakers bureaus, article writing or educational events) from Research Consortium for Health Care Value Assessment, RAND Corporation, and Wolters Kluwer, outside the submitted work. R.D.J. reports a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (to R.J.), outside the submitted work. E.L.F. reports grants from the NIH; grants from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry; grants from the American Heart Association; grants from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; and grants from the Department of Defense, outside the submitted work. I.H.S. has received funding from the National Science Foundation for unrelated work. S.M.P. reports a relationship with ELAM®, which contributed to the development of the EMPOWER program. H.W.H. reports relationship with ELAM®, which contributed to the development of the EMPOWER program. K.A.G. reports personal fees from the University of Chicago (payments for participation on a data safety monitoring board or advisory board), outside the submitted work. L.A.D. reports personal fees from Vertex (consulting), personal fees from Abata (consulting), other from Lilly (Data and Safety Monitoring Board [DSMB]), and other from Merck (DSMB), outside the submitted work. S.L.H. reports other from Springer Publishing (textbook royalties or licenses), outside the submitted work. S.T. reports personal fees from the University of Washington (consulting fees; mock accreditation site visit) and the Medical University of South Carolina (consulting fees; External Advisory Committee), outside the submitted work. R.J. reports grants from the NIH, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and the American Cancer Society; personal fees from Hawks Quindel and Mintz Levin Law; and personal fees from the Greenwall Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the NIH, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the Physicians Education Resource, and the American Medical Association, outside the submitted work; R.J. is a former member of the Board of Directors of American Society of Clinical Oncology and chair of American Society for Radiation Oncology’s Ethics Committee. No other disclosures were reported.

Funding Information

This work was supported by grant 5R01GM139842-03 from the NIH (to R.J.). C.M.C. reports a grant from the NIH (R01GM139842), during the conduct of the study. R.D.J. reports a grant from the NIH, during the conduct of the study (grant R01GM139842 from the NIH to R.J). K.S. reports a grant from the National Institute of Health (R01GM139842), during the conduct of the study. E.L.F. reports a grant from the NIH (R01GM139842), during the conduct of the study. K.A.G. reports a grant from the NIH (R01GM139842), during the conduct of the study. R.J. reports a grant from the NIH (R01GM139842), during the conduct of the study.