With strong support of the respective leadership, a consortium of 3 institutions in the Washington D.C. Metro area, Children's National Medical Center (CNMC), the George Washington University (GW) and the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP), propose to create an interdisciplinary academic discipline for clinical and translational research and establish a new trans-institutional, multidisciplinary """"""""HOME"""""""" for clinical and translational research to be named 'The Washington Center for Clinical and Translational Science""""""""(WCCTS). Each institution will contribute substantial strengths to the WCCTS and acquire resources and expertise it is currently lacking through this new program.
The Specific Aims of this planning grant are: 1. To perform a detailed needs assessment (survey of investigators and trainees) at the 3 institutions to determine the barriers and required resources for efficient multidisciplinary clinical and translational research and research education. 2. To develop plans for the organization, governance, administration and evaluation of the new academic discipline, Clinical and Translational Science, and its new WCCTS """"""""Home"""""""" at CNMC-GW-UMCP. 3. To develop plans for a clinical research infrastructure in the WCCTS. To plan the expansion of the clinical research unit at CNMC and the addition of new clinical research units at GW and UMCP. 4. To develop plans for bringing translational research (Laboratory Research and Community Research) to the WCCTS, enhancing its role in multidisciplinary research. 5. To select and develop plans for core resources that are needed to support interdisciplinary translational and clinical research performed within the WCCTS.6. To develop plans for new multidisciplinary graduate degree programs (M.S. and Ph.D.) in clinical and translational science, and to plan the restructuring and integration of the existing K12 and K30 programs and a new T32 training grant. We envision the WCCTS under a trans-institutional leadership to comprise 5sections: Administration & Compliance; Clinical Research; Translational Research (Laboratory and Community); Core Resources; and Education. Based on the results of our survey and further discussion, trans-institutional working groups in each of the sections will develop plans for the respective components of the WCCTS, and their work will form the basis for a CTSA grant application. The current GCRC cores (Biostatistics/lnformatics, Neurobehavioral Genomics/Proteomics, Bioanalytical) will be transformed to serve the entire WCCTS, and new core services will be considered (Protocol Development, Bioinformatics, Neuroimaging, Cellular Physiology and Human Physiology/Nutrition). ? ? ?
