This application requests funding to establish a Child Health Research Career Development Award (CHRCDA) center within the Department of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital Los Angeles/Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California (USC). The objective of our program is to support the research career development of newly appointed pediatric faculty members. One or two CHRCDA scholars will be selected each year from a pool of candidates recruited from internal training programs or following national searches. Measures to attract women and minority applicants will be incorporated with each recruitment. The Chair of Pediatrics will serve as principal investigator and the PI, in concert with the Program Director, internal Advisory Committee, and recruitment officer, will administer the program. Our CHRCDA center has 30 USC senior faculty research mentors from 9 departments. All CHRCDA scholars will conduct approved research under the guidance of these faculty mentors, all of whom have active NIH funded research programs and experience in mentoring junior faculty. CHRCDA candidates will develop their research proposals with advisory committee approved mentors. A review committee chaired by the Program Director and consisting of external scientists and internal Advisory Committee members will evaluate all proposals. The resulting reviews will be provided to the full Advisory Committee who will then recommend scholars to the PI. The Program Director will provide each applicant with the written critiques and will meet with each applicant to discuss the reviews. In addition to research activities, CHRCDA scholars will also participate in a planned curriculum of formal and informal educational instruction to further enhance their research careers, including two formal courses that cover experimental design, ethics and responsible conduct of research, biostatistics, and bioinformatics, as well as in-vitro and in-vivo research techniques. Scholars also will participate in weekly research seminars and journal clubs. The training and productivity of all scholars will be closely monitored by the Advisory Committee and by the CHLA Academic Council. CHRCDA funding will allow CHLA to continue to build upon the success it has achieved in fostering research career development of pediatric investigators.
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