Supporting Family Caregivers in STEMM

By: CJ Neely
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
On November 20, 2025, the National Academies’ Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine convened a national symposium on supporting family caregivers in academic STEMM. The symposium highlighted evidence-based practices and institutional strategies to strengthen retention, advance equity, and promote workforce sustainability. It builds on the 2024 National Academies report Supporting Family Caregivers in STEMM: A Call to Action, to which FASEB provided input through a Request for Information in 2023.

The symposium opened with an overview of the report’s findings, emphasizing that caregiving is a common but under-supported experience across the STEMM workforce. Presenters highlighted data showing that caregiving responsibilities disproportionately affect women and contribute to attrition, burnout, and stalled career progression, particularly in academic medicine.

Institutional leaders from the University of California, San Francisco, described practical and structural approaches to caregiving support, including paid family leave policies, centralized leave funding mechanisms, lactation support, and voluntary leave-sharing programs. These efforts were framed as institutional investments that reduce stigma, prevent income loss, and strengthen faculty and trainee retention.

Additional sessions addressed informal caregiving and eldercare, noting that a significant proportion of faculty provide care for aging relatives and experience increased emotional and financial strain. Speakers emphasized the need for flexible policies, coordinated campus leadership, and sustainable funding models to address eldercare as a growing workforce issue.

Across sessions, presenters underscored that supporting family caregivers requires coordinated institutional and policy action rather than ad hoc accommodations. A recording of the symposium is available on the National Academies website and provides additional detail on the strategies and resources shared during the event.