UCSF has provided training in the methods of clinical research for more than 15 years. Each year nearly 100 fellows, residents and junior faculty from diverse specialties take our introductory workshops, and 15-17 receive additional instruction in our 8- month Advanced Training in Clinical Research program. UCSF has extraordinary resources for training clinical investigators. We have 76 faculty members from diverse specialties who are actively involved in clinical research and will participate as instructors in our courses. All four UCSF Schools (Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry and Pharmacy) rank in the top 3 nationally for NIH funding. Trainees have access to three Clinical Research Centers at UCSF, and to numerous on-going projects, large data sets from prior work, and repositories of biological specimens drawn from UCSF and collaborating institutions including the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and Chiron and Genentech Corporations. Taking advantage of these resources, we propose to greatly expand Clinical Research Training by adding 11 new or considerably enlarged courses and establishing two formal training tracks. We propose to offer a new 2-year Master of Clinical Research degree (MCR) requiring 36 quarter-hours of didactic courses, publication of an original scientific paper in lieu of a Master's thesis, and strong preceptor relationships with faculty mentors actively involved in clinical research. In addition to the 8-12 students who will enter the MCR program each year, we anticipate that 40- 50 will pursue a new Certificate in Clinical Research (CCR) that will require completion of 5 courses. We will disseminate our teaching materials to other institutions, and will carry out evaluations of our training activities and of the degree to which we succeed in the main objective, producing successful clinical investigators. Our graduates will be able to conduct creative and rigorous clinical investigation in the changing world of clinical research. They will be prepared to translate the exciting advances of basic science, capitalize on the revolution in informatics to increase the efficiency and capacity of clinical research, systematically synthesize the accumulating body of clinical research, respond to the call for cost-effective health care, and maintain the highest ethical standards in their work. The combination of the extraordinary resources of UCSF and partner institutions and the expanded curriculum will produce leading scientists for the new era of clinical investigation.
