The UCLA CTSI is an academic-clinical-community partnership designed to accelerate scientific discoveries and clinical breakthroughs to improve health in the most populous and diverse county in the United States. An ethnic, economic and cultural mosaic, Los Angeles County provides challenges for health and disease research that few counties replicate. Our mission is to create a borderless clinical and translational research institute that brings UCLA innovations and resources to bear on the greatest health needs of Los Angeles. We are aligning our strengths to support clinical and translational science that is in full partnership with and responsive to the needs of our Los Angeles community. Our UCLA CTSI is bridging disciplinary and institutional boundaries to create transdisciplinary teams focused on the greatest opportunities as well as the greatest needs in our region. CTSA funding will accelerate our progress in achieving our transformative mission and allow the UCLA CTSI to make significant contributions to the goals of the national CTSA consortium. To accomplish our mission the UCLA CTSI has established five goals: 1) Create an academic home for clinical and translational science that integrates and builds on the many strengths of UCLA and its partners, 2) Build transdisciplinary research teams to accelerate and translate discovery to improve health, 3) Transform educational and career development programs to promote the next generation of clinician investigators and translational scientists, 4) Advance and expand strong bi-directional academic-community partnerships to ensure that new scientific discovery is relevant to community needs and, 5) Serve as a national resource for collaborative research through regional, statewide and national CTSA consortia. In transforming our research enterprise, the UCLA-CTSl is guided by core principles including team science, flexible research infrastructure and community engagement. The UCLA CTSI is built on a strong foundation of success in discovery, translational science, community engagement and health services research. Unique resources of the UCLA CTSI include close collaborations with world-leading centers, institutes, schools and programs with which we will co-fund and conduct our clinical and translational science. With institutional support in the pre-award period, the UCLA CTSI has taken significant strides to transform its approach to clinical and translational biomedical research. CTSA funding will accelerate our progress in achieving our transformative mission and allow the UCLA CTSI to make significant contributions to the goals of the national CTSA consortium.
Los Angeles County offers an ideal environment for developing effective translational strategies and faces challenges including subpopulations who are underrepresented in all phases of research. Further its fragmented health care systems require implementation, dissemination and diffusion research for scientific discovery to have a large social impact. As the US population becomes more diverse in the 21^'Century, our experiences and successes will offer a model for health improvement nationwide.
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