Ms. Stephanie De Anda, a doctoral student in the Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders received a diversity supplement award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to support her research.  Ms. De Anda completed her undergraduate work at UCSD and works with Dr. Margaret Friend on the Path to Language and Literacy project in which she is studying the effects of socio-economic status and language exposure on monolingual and bilingual children learning English and Spanish.  Diversity supplements provide funding for less than one percent of all individuals involved in NIH supported research.  Awards are competitive and are based on candidates’ career goals, prior research training, research potential, educational achievement, and interest in science.

“The NIH expects efforts to diversify the workforce to lead to the recruitment of the most talented researchers from all groups; to improve the quality of the educational and training environment; to balance and broaden the perspective in setting research priorities; to improve the ability to recruit subjects from diverse backgrounds into clinical research protocols; and to improve the Nations capacity to address and eliminate health disparities.”