Linking Clinical Translational Science Award Sites to Improve Pediatric Research

Barkin, Shari

Abstract

With the knowledge that scientific discovery and application is often an inefficient process, the National Institute of Health (NIH) launched the Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) program to transform the research and training environment to enhance efficiency and quality of clinical and translational research. An explicit expectation is that the CTSA sites would discover a way to leverage these programs to create linkages and synergy across programs to conduct efficient, high quality research. Concurrently, Congress passed the NIH reauthorization act that explicitly indicated the necessity of including children's health research in these scientific endeavors. This proposal, supporting the Child Health CTSA Consortia Meeting spans for three years, with meetings that will occur in conjunction with the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting. The PAS annual meeting offers a unique opportunity to capture the largest committed group of child health scientists that exist, spanning multiple disciplines and organizations. The three objectives of the one and a half day Child Health CTSA Consortia Meeting include: 1) to bring lead pediatric CTSA institutional researchers together to share expertise that can be utilized at and across CTSA sites;2) to expand the reach of this expertise to a larger group of pediatric scientists attending the PAS meeting, many of whom belong to non-CTSA institutions and are also critical to child health research efforts;and 3) to provide a CTSA child health fellowship program, aimed at fellows and junior faculty, to promote career development in clinical and translational research. Children's health research is unique in multiple ways and requires a special perspective and expertise. Three topic areas were selected through discussions with the CTSA Child Health Oversight committee membership, representing the most experienced pediatric researchers in clinical translational research across the country. The proposed Child Health CTSA Consortia Meeting will build collaborations across both CTSA and non-CTSA sites to learn core skills in three key areas, over three years including: 1) Year one: Informatics;2) Year two: Community engagement, and 3) Year three: Life continuum research. Both senior and junior child health investigators will provide state of the art processes and applications in the three noted areas. Yearly, this will occur via an interactive workshop, CTSA child health fellow presentations, two symposia, and an abstract session.

Public Health Relevance

PROJECT NARRARIVE The proposed meeting will partner Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) child health researchers from the 46 institutional sites with leading child health scientists attending the Pediatric Academic Societies'(PAS) national meeting. This will build collaborations across both CTSA and non-CTSA sites to learn core skills that will enhance the ability to conduct quality clinical child health research.