The mission of the Translational Research Institute (TRI) at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) is to develop new knowledge and novel approaches that will measurably address the complex health challenges of rural and underrepresented populations. While our CTSA hub has significant experience in submitting and securing National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, our experience with the ?prior approval process? was burdensome and challenged our hub resources and the expertise of institutional grant officials. Delays in timing placed severe limitations on activities related to pilot grants and KL2 projects, reducing our ability to respond to our mission and make progress on the overall aims of our grant. We hypothesize that a dedicated Quality Assurance/Quality Control position will expedite prior approval and eRA approvals from NCATS by establishing standard operating procedures, providing education to relevant grant recipients, and establishing a metrics tracking system. We will test our hypothesis by 1) establishing a Quality Assurance/Quality Control position and quality management system for our CTSA hub for approval processes with NCATS and 2) delivering grants management education to investigators through the development of templates and monitoring the effectiveness of our process through evaluation and feedback loops. Our proposed application provides innovation in our local context in that our institution has few research-specific quality control staff. We intend to build our quality assurance/quality control program initially by reviewing best practices and standard operating procedures available from an existing federally supported multisite network program located at UAMS. We anticipate that this resource will benefit other funded programs throughout our institution, such as other training grants and Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grants. Establishing a dedicated quality position within our CTSA hub will thus serve local hub needs and provide a resource for grants management education that will benefit numerous other researchers in our hub.
The mission of the Translational Research Institute (TRI) at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) is to develop new knowledge and novel approaches that will measurably address the complex health challenges of rural and underrepresented populations. Delays in timing with the NCATS prior approval process place severe limitations on activities related to pilot grants and KL2 projects, reducing our ability to respond to our mission. Employing a dedicated Quality Assurance/Quality Control position will expedite prior approval process by establishing standard operating procedures, providing education to relevant grant recipients, and establishing a metrics tracking system.
