The shortage of clinical research trainees continues to be a crisis for academic medicine. This competing continuation application for a Clinical Research Curriculum Award (CRCA) at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine (FSM) responds to the ongoing need for an expanding program of clinical research training by assuring leadership, oversight, coordination, and expansion of course offerings and workshops for the clinical investigator training enterprise. The goal of this competing application is to expand an existing cohesive framework for training a critical mass of clinical investigators and to address ongoing needs identified by our evaluation process. Objectives of this renewal application for the Clinical Research Curriculum program at FSM are: 1) To further develop and strengthen an established interdepartmental administrative structure which oversees the research training of junior faculty, clinical fellows, and residents; 2) To develop 3 new clinical research courses (Clinical Measurement; Medical Informatics; and Bioinformatics) to expand existing offerings in a successful Masters in Clinical Investigation (MSCI) degree program; 3) To continue an ongoing process for evaluation of the program's effectiveness in meeting its goals and objectives; and 4) To develop new activities in this application including the establishment of a Visiting Clinical Scientist program, creation of a trainee's clinical research day (including research prizes for the best abstracts), and expansion of trainee workshops to include leadership/teamwork training, and implementation of a mentoring workshop for mentors of the CRCA trainees. The long-term goal of the CRCA is to encourage bright, enthusiastic, well-trained, academically-oriented physicians to pursue careers in clinical investigation, make them knowledgeable about the complex issues associated with conducting scientifically and ethically sound clinical research, and maximize the likelihood they will be competitive in seeking subsequent research support. The program builds on strengths established during the current period of funding that began in FY2001 and on the considerable scientific and research training experiences of faculty from a wide variety of medical school departments, centers, and institutes. The continued development of the program comes at a time of substantial and sustained growth in FSM's clinical research enterprise. All of these factors make Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine an ideal site for a continuing NIH-funded Clinical Research Curriculum Award.
