Advance Clinical and Translational Research (Advance-CTR)

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

ABSTRACT – OVERALL The universities, hospitals, government agencies and community organizations in Rhode Island are well positioned to bridge the gaps between the worlds of clinical and basic science. Rhode Island’s small size, population demographics, and organizational structure are assets and present opportunities to implement and test transformative clinical and translational research. The health care delivery environment within the state is highly conducive to clinical research due to the relatively limited number of health care systems. Further contributing to Rhode Island’s translational research infrastructure are a number of well-organized Institutional Developmental Award (IDeA) Programs, each with core facility, faculty development and collaborative research resources. But despite Rhode Island’s impressive educational institutions, streamlined clinical environment, and successful IDeA sponsored research and mentoring programs, the majority of these resources have not been coordinately focused towards developing a multi-institutional, clinical and translational research infrastructure that would serve to improve the effectiveness of clinical practice and health care policy in Rhode Island. The objective of the Advance Clinical and Translation Research Award (Advance-CTR) is to bridge these infrastructure gaps by creating an overarching, multidisciplinary, central organization to better coordinate and leverage existing resources for program management and thereby provide the infrastructure necessary to address current and future health concerns in Rhode Island. The goals of the Advance-CTR are to: 1. Educate, mentor and encourage young investigators in clinical research professional development. 2. Eliminate the obstacles that may prevent researchers from pursuing clinical research initiatives that can lead to funded research programs. 3. Bring together clinical research resources to provide a virtual home that facilitates new collaborations and enhanced efficiencies. 4. Facilitate research to gather preliminary data necessary for developing competitive research proposals. 5. Provide contemporary infrastructure for clinical and translational research including research planning and implementation, advanced biostatistics and epidemiology support and biomedical informatics. 6. Foster coordination between translational researchers at our participating entities so as to create new productive collaborations with translational outcomes. 7. Sustain a clinical translational research environment by providing the necessary management and coordination of resources. 8. Create an innovative Tracking and Evaluation program that will combine support requests with use and cost data and apply lessons learned in the CTSA program to the CTR environment. SPECIFIC AIMS - OVERALL There is a tremendous opportunity for clinical and translational research discovery in Rhode Island. Although RI is the smallest state by land area, the population of over one million is larger than six other states and among the residents, 70 percent never leave the state. This translates not only into vibrant, tight-knit communities, but into a population that serves as an excellent testbed for longitudinal, community-engaged clinical and translational research. When Advance-CTR was funded in 2016 by an IDeA-CTR award from NIGMS, we entered a research partnership with established norms and protocols for conducting research within institutions, but not necessarily between institutions. With major healthcare systems and academic research institutions only a few miles apart, we had the unique opportunity to unify and synergize cross-institutional collaborations in ways that are less feasible in larger states. This has been a central goal in the first four years of our funding, an area where we have made tremendous progress, and an area where we continue to see opportunities. The infrastructure we have established has facilitated the transformation of clinical and translational research across our partner institutions which includes two academic partners, Brown University and the University of Rhode Island (URI), and three academic health systems, Lifespan, Care New England, and the VA Providence Healthcare System. These partners contribute expertise in biological, clinical, public health, pharmacy, nursing, epidemiological, health services, mental health, and community-engaged research. Combined, our partner healthcare systems provide care to more than 75% of the Rhode Island population. Other key collaborators include the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), home of the state’s only designated health information exchange CurrentCareTm, Rhode Island’s single Department of Health (RIDOH), and the Rhode Island Public Health Institute (RIPHI). Advance-CTR uses its resources to initiate programs not previously available: pilot grants for clinical research, career development support, and biostatistical and biomedical informatics services. In less than five years, we have established Advance-CTR as a research hub and training umbrella for the RI investigator community. We created a statewide research mentoring program to enhance the ability of established investigators to foster early career investigators’ success at all five partner institutions. We have fueled cross-institutional collaborations by awarding pilot projects, mentored research awards, big data awards and grant resubmission awards to 84 investigators. We have met a critical need by providing investigators at all career levels with research design and support services that have resulted in extramural awards, publications, and ongoing, cross-institutional collaborations. In so doing, we have enhanced patient-centered research and accelerated discoveries and health innovations to the benefit of our communities and in service to our state. Nonetheless, challenges remain which we will address with new cores (Community Engagement and Outreach), new training models (Advance-R) and important community needs (COVID supplements). Advance-CTR and the Universities, hospitals, and community organizations in Rhode Island are well positioned to address these important opportunities in clinical and translational research. Whether it is through efforts to bring new discoveries from the “bench-to-bedside,” to effectively test new clinical applications, or to address health priorities among vulnerable populations, our clinical and translational research enterprise seeks to address Rhode Island’s most pressing health concerns and to improve health across the translational research continuum. In this application, the words “transformation,” and “evolution” will appear frequently. We have identified these as our “watch words” because they best embody what we have accomplished in the last four years and where we are headed. The Specific Aims of our IDeA-CTR program, drawn from the Funding Opportunity Announcement, are: Specific Aim 1: To support the enhancement of infrastructure and human resources required to address clinical and translational research needs in Rhode Island. Specific Aim 2: To strengthen clinical and translational research that addresses the broad spectrum of health challenges faced by populations in Rhode Island. Specific Aim 3: To foster and coordinate collaboration in clinical and translational research across our partner institutions in Rhode Island and with other institutions in the IDeA-CTR network. Throughout this proposal we describe our efforts and the future directions for Advance-CTR. We outline in detail the approach and metrics we will use to demonstrate our ability to continue to meet the objectives of the IDeA-CTR Program.