​Summary: The biomedical/behavioral sciences lag in the recruitment and advancement of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. In 2014 the NIH created the Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), a prospective, multi-site study comprising 10 Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) institutional grantees, the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) and a Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC). This article describes baseline characteristics of four incoming, first-year student cohorts at the primary BUILD institutions who completed the Higher Education Research Institute, The Freshmen Survey between 2015–2019. These freshmen are the primary student cohorts for longitudinal analyses comparing outcomes of BUILD program participants and non-participants.

Authors studied ten colleges/universities that each received <$7.5mil/year in NIH Research Project Grants and have high proportions of low-income students. This study consists of first-year undergraduate students who participated in BUILD-sponsored activities and a sample of non-BUILD students at the same BUILD institutions. A total of 32,963 first-year students were enrolled in the project; 64% were female, 18% Hispanic/Latinx, 19% African American/Black, 2% American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 17% Asian, and 29% White. Twenty-seven percent were from families with an income <$30,000/year and 25% were their family's first generation in college.

Findings: Primary student outcomes to be evaluated over time include undergraduate biomedical degree completion, entry into/completion of a graduate biomedical degree program, and evidence of excelling in biomedical research and scholarship.

The DPC national evaluation has identified a large, longitudinal cohort of students with many from groups historically underrepresented in the biomedical sciences that will inform institutional/national policy level initiatives to help diversify the biomedical workforce.