Preterm birth remains the leading cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality, the rate of preterm birth continues to increase, and effective interventions to prevent preterm birth remain illusive. Investigators in the Center for Research in Women's Health at our institution have provided strong clinical research leadership in this area for 25 years. We have successfully acquired millions of dollars in federal funding to conduct clinical studies designed to improve our understanding of the pathophysiology of preterm birth as well as to test many potential interventions in prospective randomized trials. The productivity of our group has resulted in hundreds of publications in the area of preterm birth and its prevention. Our excellence in performing high quality well-designed clinical trials is widely known. Germane to this application is our particular strength and success in performing multi-center trials and providing a leadership role in research networks including the NICHD Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network in which we have been a participating institution for nearly 15 years. Indeed, UAB was ranked first in overall performance among the 14 centers in this Network in the most recent objective ranking of member institutions. Thus, we believe that we are particularly well-positioned, not only to effectively participate, but also to provide leadership as a Clinical Core Center in the proposed Genomic and Proteomic Network. In this application, we will describe in detail our extremely successful clinical research facilities and infrastructure. We will also emphasize our well-documented strengths including patient accrual and retention, high-quality data acquisition and entry, rapid ramp-up to initiate new trials, protocol adherence, analysis and publication productivity, and collaborative success in protocol development and implementation in the NICHD MFMU Network which appears to be a model upon which the proposed new network is based. We believe that our enthusiasm and commitment to this project will be evident and we believe that our qualifications will be very competitive for consideration. ? ? ?
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