Table 4.

Recommendations for immediate action to increase NIH support of criminal justice health research

Recommendation	Targeted Outcome
Call for and fund efforts to identify current and former prisoners in existing national health data sets	Use existing nationally representative data sources, many of which include current and/or former prisoners but do not code incarceration status or history, to better understand the relationships between exposure to incarceration and numerous health factors
Include correctional healthcare settings in solicitations for investigator-initiated research across the 28 centers and institutes included in the health disparities research strategic plan	(a) Incentivize the medical research community to consider how incarceration may factor in health disparities in their primary area of research (e.g. disproportionately high rates of cardiovascular disease among African-American prisoners) (b) Generate new partnerships between universities and criminal justice health systems (e.g. jails, prison, local departments of public health, and state departments of correction) focused on improving the care of prisoners in-custody and post-release
Include IOM guidelines for the safe and ethical conduct of criminal justice health research in all relevant funding solicitations	Reduce barriers to criminal justice health research by dispelling the misconception among medical researchers that research with current and former prisoners is necessarily high risk, administratively daunting, or ethically challenging
Establish training and career development awards to support health researchers interested in the roles that incarceration and criminal justice policy play in health and health disparities	Leverage growing interest in the public health implications of U.S. criminal justice policy to develop a new generation of healthcare leaders working at the intersection of health and criminal justice
Highlight existing efforts and innovation in criminal justice health research	Draw attention to the important work healthcare researchers are doing to address policy challenges and improve care in the field of criminal justice health