The Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab is an institution-wide intervention that advances the goals of the NIH Institutional Excellence in DEIA in Biomedical and Behavioral Research Prize Competition. By describing specific and replicable interventions that have tangibly improved the culture around inclusion of sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals at this institution, this lab hopes to help other institutions adopt and adapt similar models that can be effective across a range of institutional contexts and DEIA target populations.  

The state of diversity prior to the intervention is poor, limited, and uncertain, in large part due to the inherent invisibility of SGM status at most research institutions, including the NIH. What research does exist clearly demonstrates that SGM investigators and researchers examining SGM-related health topics face interconnected challenges related to marginalization within one’s discipline and institution, lack of institutional support, limited job security, and difficulties in accessing NIH support for SGM research and SGM-identified researchers. Existing research also clearly demonstrates the underrepresentation of SGM individuals in behavioral and biomedical research fields specifically and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields more generally. These barriers reduce what is known about the health of SGM populations and cause SGM researchers—who are themselves disproportionately likely to be inclined to study SGM populations due to lived experience—to leave research careers.  

The intervention is the creation in 2017 of the Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab in response to a university-wide effort to recognize that progress on major societal problems would require multiple disciplinary perspectives working together to produce new and novel research. The Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab has four overarching goals. These include:  

1. Advancing SGM research by building trans-disciplinary networks.
2. Improving training and retention of scholars in SGM research.
3. Diversifying the undergraduate and high school student pipeline in SGM research.
4. Enhancing and scaling DEIA efforts on SGM inclusion at the institutional level.

To meet these goals, key components of the intervention include the following:

1. Enhanced financial support for postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate trainees in SGM health research.  
2. Creation of a hybrid weekly Work in Progress research meeting that includes professional development opportunities related to grant-writing, communications, and publication processes.  
3. Co-locating a community of scholars to reduce barriers to collaboration and build a sense of community among investigators, trainees, and community members with shared interests in SGM health research.  
4. Partnering with allied DEIA offices and organizations to represent SGM perspectives and advance shared interests.  
5. Working actively with the NIH Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office to advance SGM inclusion efforts.

The outcomes of the intervention align with the LGBTQ+ Policy Lab’s goals. SGM research has significantly advanced by dramatically increasing the number of SGM-related publications, SGM-identified researchers, and externally funded projects on SGM health. The lab has also increased the interconnectedness of scholars at this institution researching SGM health and the impact of this scholarship through translation and outreach. Regarding training and advising, the LGBTQ+ Policy Lab has trained a network of scholas with a 100% placement and retention rate in research careers in SGM health. This was accomplished through dedicated professional development efforts and an innovative ladder mentoring model. The lab has actively diversified the pipeline by incorporating undergraduates in numerous research projects and weekly seminars, resulting in multiple peer-reviewed coauthored publications, offering undergraduate courses on SGM topics, and conducting outreach to high school students. Finally, this lab has partnered actively with Vanderbilt University on a broad range of SGM-related initiatives, task forces, and faculty recruitment and retention activities. These efforts are inherently interconnected and have been highly successful at retaining SGM-identified scholars and researchers studying SGM health within a challenging local environment.