In our view, more fundamental changes are needed — both top-down and bottom-up. Funding agencies should develop financial incentives for the creation of diverse cohorts of study participants. One way for them to do this would be to prioritize grant requests that propose investigations in populations of non-European (and especially of African) ancestry. Given limited budgets, this may need to happen hand in hand with a reduction in the funding of research on existing cohorts of European ancestry for traits and diseases that have been relatively well characterized. (Around 850 genetic associations with height have now been reported by roughly 30 independent GWAS — the vast majority of which have been conducted using individuals of European ancestry.)
