The University of Kentucky (UK) Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) proposes to establish a Career Development Core to build upon the current KL2 program, which is in its fifth year of NIH support. The current program provides two to three years of release time (75% effort) and research funding support for mentored career development designed to accelerate academic growth of the next generation of clinical and translational scholars. This program has garnered strong institutional support with notable scholar productivity; in five years, two NIH-supported training slots have been expanded to six slots. All eight program graduates have each made important contributions to science through research and have successfully competed for extramural funding, seven as PIs. The current KL2 cohort consists of six scholars. The scholar program supports career development across the full spectrum of clinical and translational science, including translational, clinical, community/policy studies and novel methodology development (e.g., biomedical informatics) focusing on a broad array of health topics. Scholars and mentors represent a wide range of colleges and disciplines, including Medicine, Nursing, Health Sciences, Public Health, Education, Engineering and Arts & Sciences (Health Psychology). To build on these achievements, this new program requests NIH support for four KL2 scholars. The training of three additional institutionally sponsored early-career scholars will be integrated with these NIH-supported scholars to establish a cohort of seven scholars. The foundation of the proposed program will continue to be practical research experiences within interdisciplinary teams guided by experienced mentors. In addition, to prepare future leaders of the evolving academic discipline of Clinical and Translational Research (CTR), new efforts designed to promote program excellence are proposed. They include: 1) new Faculty Oversight and Workforce Integration Committee structures; 2) use of educational technology to develop vigorous yet efficient new competency programs designed to strengthen the foundational training for future leaders in CTR; and 3) developing a new institutionally sponsored Clinical Scientist Pipeline Program targeting residents, fellows and early career clinical faculty to provide a stronger linking of our successful undergraduate and early faculty career training programs. These initiatives are designed to accelerate the career development of future leaders of the biomedical research workforce who will be prepared to address today's complex research challenges and spearhead advances in human health.
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