As a major part of the overall goal to improve the health of children, the Department of Pediatrics of the University of Alabama School of Medicine (UASOM) has proposed a comprehensive plan for the mentored training of outstanding young pediatric physician scientists in translational biomedical research. This training program will be implemented through the Child Health Research Center (CHRC) and will take optimal advantage of the existing integrated basic and translational research capacity of the UASOM. The CHRC will focus its training in four key areas of research in child health: (1) infectious diseases and immunology, (2) diseases associated with lung injury, (3) neurodevelopmental diseases, and (4) genetic diseases. These areas have been selected because of their importance in child health and because the resources available within the UASOM will foster an outstanding mentored training experience in these areas of biomedical research. The proposed CHRC will build on our previous success in the training of pediatric physician scientists by refining the organization of our training program, including implementation of formal curriculum in translational research. In addition, the CHRC has incorporated a series of internal and external mechanisms of evaluation to insure all facets of the CHRC, extending from the leadership to the CHRC scholar, meet the objectives of the projected training program. Our overall goal is to institute and maintain an optimized mentored training program for the development of pediatric physician scientists who will be expected to transition into academic careers as independent investigators in translational biomedical research in child health. The significance to public health derives from the relevance of the four key areas of research to child health. In addition, we anticipate that well-trained pediatric physician scientists will have long, productive academic careers with many opportunities to disseminate scientific information and impact the future generations of pediatricians.
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