linical research is evolving rapidly and requires an increasingly sophisticated knowledge base, earlyacquisition of advanced skills and more collaboration among disciplines. This application seeks to establish apredoctoral clinical research training program at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (School of Medicine,School of Nursing and Bloomberg School of Public Health) to provide an integrated set of exposures andtraining opportunities in clinical research for predoctoral trainees during their early professional training andtailored to their degree of interest and commitment. The proposed program builds on a strong foundation ofinterest and expertise in training in patient-oriented research at Johns Hopkins based in the Welch Center forPrevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research. The Welch Center was established in 1989 to fostermultidisciplinary collaboration between the Schools of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing. Its hallmark hasbeen the conduct of high-impact and high quality multidisciplinary clinical research and training. The Centerbrings together clinical researchers, epidemiologists, biostatisticians and behavioral scientists with molecularscientists and clinical specialists to address important scientific challenges. The center has catalyzed thecreation of research teams (including trainees) with extensive collaboration among scientists across themedical institutions and colleagues across the U.S. This proposal coincides with a sweeping effort tocomprehensively reform the Johns Hopkins medical school curriculum that embraces many goals, structuralelements and learning methods shared with high quality clinical research training, presenting us with aunique window of opportunity to embed clinical research training meaningfully into our learning environment.We propose to a) enhance the curriculum at Johns Hopkins to provide all predoctoral trainees with coreknowledge, attitudes and skills for lifelong interest in participation in clinical research studies, b) providemeaningful short term (summer or elective) clinical research experiences for predoctoral trainees, annually,that will stimulate and maintain their interest in a clinical research career during their medical school trainingand post-graduate training and c) provide predoctoral trainees with a more intensive learning experience thatprepares them to be exemplary clinical researchers (in any discipline, specialty or subspecialty) and teachersof clinical research and d) increase the diversity of trainees and ultimately academic faculty participating inclinical research. We hope to train the next generation of clinical researchers to address complex healthproblems by starting earlier in the process of career development. In doing so, we hope to optimally prepareyoung scholars for careers in clinical research and thereby speed the time from biomedical discovery toimplementation of therapies to improve health.
