The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) recognizes that physician‑scientists are essential to the nation’s biomedical enterprise.1 Yet as the workforce shrinks and ages, the number of NIH‑funded physician‑scientists in the United States has fallen to roughly 8,000 and continues to decline.2 Our pipeline is vulnerable to collapse.
Founded in 1908, the ASCI actively champions and fosters the physician‑scientist community — supporting their scientific efforts, educational needs, and clinical aspirations to improve the health of all people. Since 2013, we have worked to stem workforce attrition by strategically supporting physician‑scientists at the most at-risk career stages, providing our early-career colleagues with resources and networking uniquely available through our community. More than 775 early‑career physician‑scientists — across institutions, disciplines, and backgrounds — have directly benefited from ASCI programs that provide longitudinal, community‑centered career development, including leadership workshops, publishing opportunities, professional recognition, and participation in the AAP/ASCI/APSA Joint Meeting.
Our programs are designed with a clear purpose: to identify outstanding early-career physician-scientists who demonstrate exceptional promise and are on a steep upward trajectory — and to actively support them as they reach the accomplishments and milestones that define excellence. These achievements align directly with the rigorous standards the ASCI has established for its members — standards that have long served as markers of distinction. In this way, our programs do more than provide support; they accelerate progress toward success in biomedicine and help position future generations of leaders.
A critical juncture
Today, we face an inflection point. Recent disruptions in federal funding have further compounded physician-scientist attrition, in particular for our colleagues in the pre-faculty or pre–mentored NIH-K career development award stage. Colleagues across the country are seeing physician-scientists leaving academia or research altogether — entering private practice or pursuing careers in other countries. These losses threaten innovation in medicine and the future of health care in the United States.
For more than a decade, the ASCI has invested in proven programs that meet physician-scientists at these vulnerable points in their career — providing the mentorship, recognition, and community that keep them on the path when existential challenges arise. Sustained investment is what makes the difference — for the programs, and for the investigators who depend on them.
Impact Fund goal: $20 million to endow our physician‑scientist development programs
The ASCI Impact Fund will fully endow our established initiatives — providing the stable foundation our physician-scientist development programs need to operate, independent of fluctuations in federal and philanthropic funding.
Our immediate goal is to raise $5 million to endow the Young Physician-Scientist Award (YPSA) and Emerging Generation (E‑Gen) Award programs. Endowing these programs first secures the core of our early-career pipeline, ensuring in perpetuity that they have access to proven benefits such as mentorship, recognition, and access to the ASCI community.
Your contribution to the ASCI Impact Fund is an investment in generations of mentors, innovators, and leaders impacting the biomedical enterprise long into the future.
Notes
1 National Academy of Medicine. The State of the U.S. Biomedical and Health Research Enterprise: Strategies for Achieving a Healthier America. The National Academies Press; 2024.
2 Utz PJ, et al. Translating science to medicine: the case for physician-scientists. Sci Transl Med. 2022;14(632):eabg7852. https://doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.abg7852.