This K05 award seeks protected time for the candidate so that he may achieve the following mentoring and research goals: 1) To mentor pre- and post-doctoral students and junior faculty in the health sciences in order to build their careers around advancing the science related to testing cognitive and behavioral trials for managing symptoms and improving quality-of-life of cancer patients; 2) To achieve a set of career development objectives that may be learned through their application to the research plan proposed by the candidate and will result in applying for a Small Business Research Initiation Grant to translate the program of research into practice. The candidate describes his mentoring philosophy, capabilities, and mentoring record. The accomplishments of past mentees and their current positions are summarized in figure three. The candidate describes how the current environment and resources available will enable him to attract new pre- and post-doctoral and junior faculty mentees. Letters from department chairs associate deans and leaders of units are provided to support this mentoring plan. The content of a mentoring practicum is presented and plans for its use with pre and post-doctoral students and junior faculty are presented. Plans for how students and junior faculty will be integrated into all aspects of the proposed research are described. The candidate summarizes his 26 years of consecutive NIH research funding. The contributions of each research project to conceptual and methodological advances in the science and to health policy and practice are presented as well as how each contributed to the candidate's program of research. These contributions are summarized in Figure 4 in the text. Building on this program of research the candidate's plan for merging of datasets from four clinical trials where the candidate was either the PI or Co-PI is described. The candidate links his career development objectives to the merged datasets and demonstrates how his learning objectives are critical to developing and applying for a small business grant. The goal of this small business grant will be to involve mentees and collaborators in translating the candidate's program of research into clinical practice.
