End of RWJ postdocs?

[Lucky on timing.]

I'm a finalist for the Health and Society Scholars, and we just received a communication that our cohort will be the last one because the RWJ Foundation wants to focus on other initiatives. Did Health Policy Scholars get the same communication? (I don't even know where in the process that program is -- have you guys done your interviews? Chosen your sites? Is the matching underway, or done?)

I had debated whether to go on the market this year or next year, because I expected to be more competitive next year. I am now so, so glad that I came out this year. I'm very sorry to everyone who was in a similar position and chose the other way.

I came out of the interview process even more impressed by the program, so I feel that this is a huge loss, although of course I don't know what the opportunity cost of keeping it would have been.

[anony]

I'm a former HSSer who can confirm that ten human capital programs of RWJ are being cut, including the Health Policy Scholars program (I believe this cohort will be the last as well for them). We are all in mourning - v grateful to have been a part of it.

[Lucky.]

Ten human capital programs?! That would seem to change the landscape of social epi and related fields quite a bit. Is the sense that, after these programs have run for all this time, they've created networks and institutional changes that will now be at least partly self-sustaining? Or do you think that RWJF feels that the human capital investments haven't had as great a payoff as they had hoped?

I don't know much about how foundations work, actually, so maybe it was always intended to be this kind of a shorter-term investment, but as a naive grad student I always thought of this set of programs as a more permanent institutional investment. Even from my brief glimpse of it during the interviews, it really does seem to be a unique and wonderful contribution to population health.

[FYI]

Here's some more info from RWJF:

www.rwjf.org/en/about-rwjf/newsroom/features-and-articles/rwjf_hcfuture1.html