This R25 application requests 5 years of funding to support a 6-site, interdisciplinary training consortium in Child Intervention Prevention, and Services mental health research (CHIPS). The CHIPS program will provide early career scientists (ECSs) who are postdoctoral fellows or junior faculty, with career enhancement and direction through an annual 5-day intensive summer research institute (SRI), and the development of mentoring relationships with institute faculty. The overarching goals of this program are to: (1) recruit and retain promising ECSs to child and adolescent mental health intervention, prevention, and services research; (2) prepare researchers who can conduct research that spans the boundaries of intervention, prevention, and services research; and (3) increase the success rate and decrease the time to successful acquisition of external NIH funding for ECSs. To achieve these goals the CHIPS training consortium will: (1) recruit a new cohort of 15 ECSs each year, who have demonstrated a strong interest in and potential for developing an academic career in child intervention, prevention, and/or services research; (2) provide an annual 5-day intensive educational workshop that will integrate mentoring activities with didactic teaching on research methods and processes that span the boundaries of intervention, prevention, and services research; (3) develop a one-year career enhancement plan that involves regular contact with a mentor from the CHIPS faculty consortium by phone at the summer institute and at least one visit to the mentor's center; and (4) evaluate the impact of CHIPS by monitoring participants' satisfaction, career development, contact with the mentor (and satisfaction with that contact), and academic productivity as measured by publications, presentations, and external funding. This application supports a training consortium of 6 sites, namely, University of Pittsburgh (the coordinating site, David Brent, MD), Arizona State University (Irwin Sandler, PhD), Children's Hospital, San Diego (John Landsverk, PhD), Johns Hopkins University (Phil Leaf, PhD), Oregon Social Learning Center (John Reid, PhD), and University of California, Los Angeles: Bonnie Zima, MD, MPH). These sites have successful track records in helping early career scientists develop independent research careers. Collectively, they span the breadth of intervention, prevention, and services research, and thus can promote the development of a broader training perspective to program participants than any single training site.
