Stroke is the 2nd leading cause of death and a leading cause of disability in Southern California. It is imperative that new treatments for stroke prevention, acute therapy, and recovery be efficiently developed. This application is to renew the NIH Los Angeles ? Southern California StrokeNet Regional Coordinating Center (LASC StrokeNet RCC) that marshals a network of 37 acute stroke and rehabilitation medical centers in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and New Mexico, which will perform 5-10 NIH StrokeNet trials in prevention, acute, and recovery, efficiently and excellently. Participating hospitals in the network include 7 academic and 30 mixed academic-community and community medical centers. Twelve LASC StrokeNet Working Groups with expertise in specific neurovascular research domains facilitate trial implementation within the Network and serve as a resource to the RCC leadership and to individual performance sites. The four specific aims of this proposal are to: 1) perform high quality NIH StrokeNet acute and prevention trials throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and New Mexico; 2) perform high quality NIH StrokeNet recovery and rehabilitaiton trials throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and New Mexico; 3) ensure participation of high volumes of underserved populations in NIH StrokeNet trials, including women, Hispanic-American, African-American, and other minority populations; and 4) educate fellows, residents, medical students, premedical students, and junior faculty to engage in stroke translational research.
Stroke is the leading cause of combined death and severe disability in the United States. It is imperative that new treatments for stroke prevention, acute therapy, and recovery be efficiently developed. This application is to renew a large-scale regional clinical trial network to accelerate testing and validation of promising new stroke preventive, acute, and reparative therapies.