The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Leadership and Diversity Training Program (LDTP): Harnessing Mentorship to Diversify Organizational Leadership

In the 21st century, exercise-related fields face the daunting challenge of addressing inactivity and chronic disease epidemics driven by vast sociodemographic disparities related to gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and disability status. The underrepresentation of scientists and practitioners from communities with the lowest physical activity and highest chronic disease rates makes responding more difficult and diversifying the field to focus on relevant perspectives a priority. For over a decade, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the world’s largest physical activity-focused professional organization, has engaged in a variety of efforts to diversify its membership and leadership. These efforts are summarized here, along with progress, lessons learned, and future plans

Additional file 2: Figure S2. of Multi-platform assessment of transcriptional profiling technologies utilizing a precise probe mapping methodology

Overall average absolute fold-change comparisons across platforms with entire set and transcript pattern (TP) defined subset data, with a focus on the effect of Affymetrix “Signal Space Transformation” (SST) algorithm on the overall platform fold-change magnitude. The SST, in conjunction with the regular robust multiple-array average normalization method (SST-RMA, the dark blue bars), was able to improve the fold-change in the HTA2.0 arrays, and provided a 2-5x greater fold-change estimates overall, as compared to conventional data processing method (regular RMA, the light blue bars). (TIFF 491 kb

Additional file 1: Figure S1. of Multi-platform assessment of transcriptional profiling technologies utilizing a precise probe mapping methodology

Box-Whisker plot for illustration of fold-change variability in each platform. (A) and (B) are for fold-change data in the 4 sample titrations in entire set and transcript pattern (TP) defined 7,034 RefSeq genes subset data, respectively; (C) and (D) are for fold-change data at overall platform level in the entire set and TP-defiend subset data, respectively. The frame boxes are the inter-quartile range (i.e. 25 % to 75 %). (TIFF 867 kb