Dr. Ernest Gonzalez Awarded NIH Loan Repayment

Assistant Professor Ernest Gonzales has been awarded funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Loan Repayment Program for Health Disparities Research (LRP HDR) to support his ongoing research on factors and interventions to reduce health disparities among older adults.

Dr. Gonzales, who is co-lead of the Grand Challenges for Social Work Advance Long and Productive Lives challenge said, “I am grateful to the NIH for relieving the pressure of my educational debt so that I can focus on developing scholarship to inform policy and programs that enrich the lives and well-being of diverse older adults and their communities everywhere.”

The competitive LRP HDR program was established by Congress to incentivize qualified health professionals to engage in research addressing health disparities. It repays up to $35,000 annually of a researcher’s qualified educational debt in return for a commitment to engage in NIH mission-relevant research.

In addition to receiving LRP HDR funding, Dr. Gonzales was appointed the NIH's Loan Repayment Program Ambassador to NYU. As such, he identifies potential eligible applicants to the LRPs within the University's scientific community and shares information about the LRPs with them.