The rapid changes that have occurred in GI surgery over the past decade have created a unique opportunity for the creation of new knowledge, and yet our training programs have not appropriately adapted to this changing reality. This T32 Program has been designed to train the next generation of academic GI surgeons through a broad focus on the various investigative fields that can be applied to GI surgical disease. The enormous resources and talented personnel in the Harvard Medical School community have been leveraged to create a unique environment for the research training of our future academic GI surgeons. First funded in 1997 as a collaboration between the Departments of Surgery at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the former Beth Israel Hospital, this program has been expanded to include investigators from all four major teaching hospital affiliates of Harvard Medical School (CH, BIDMC, BWH, MGH). It is clear that a major impediment to promoting and maintaining high quality GI surgical research has been the silo effect, whereby investigators from various disciplines function as independent entities with little or no interaction. Accordingl, this T32 program is comprised of three research tracks: (1) Basic Science, (2) Clinical Research/Outcomes and (3) Surgical Technology/lnnovation. The Program has been designed to bring surgeon-scientists together from these three different investigative disciplines, establishing a unique environment for collaboration and interaction. The Training Program Executive Committee (Hodin, Goldstein, Tseng, Tavakkoli, and Puder) will oversee the selection of trainees, designation of preceptors, prescription of formal coursework, and participation in programs teaching ethics and the responsible conduct in research. The Program is open to surgical residents or fellows in accredited U.S. Residency Programs and a pro-active process is in place to seek applications from individuals belonging to under-represented minority groups. This T32 Program is therefore designed to provide intensive, coordinated research training with the goal of preparing individuals to become independently funded investigators in the field of alimentary tract surgery.
Surgeons play a major role in the treatment of gastrointestinal (GI) diseases and it is imperative that surgeons remain at the forefront of the creation of new knowledge in the field. Given the rapidly changing approaches to biomedical research and the difficult funding environment, this T32 Program has been designed to provide the skills and experience to young surgeon-trainees so that they can pursue successful careers in surgical investigation
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