CTSA PROGRAM UPDATE

January 27, 2017

CTSA PROGRAM MEETING
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: SEEKING GRAND OPPORTUNITIES IN TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE 

 SUBMIT YOUR SUGGESTIONS FOR GRAND OPPORTUNITIES in translational science by Monday, Feb. 20.  Check out the CTSA Program meeting webpage for more information.

Questions?  Contact Amit Chaudhari.

CTSA PROGRAM + RARE DISEASES

CALLING FOR VOLUNTEERS

If you are interested in joining a workgroup that will brainstorm ideas on how the CTSA Program can make an impact in the rare disease research area, please forward your name and email to Samantha Jonson by Friday, Feb. 3.

Questions?  Contact Samantha Jonson.

COMMON METRICS 

METRICS DEVELOPMENT KICK-OFF CALLS

The Accrual metric development team had their first kick-off orientation call on Thursday, Jan. 26.  The Informatics metric development team will have their first call on Monday, Jan. 30.  NCATS will engage the CTSA Program Principal Investigators, Steering Committee and Evaluators in the “vetting” process. NCATS is targeting a completed operational guidelines for the Accrual and the Informatics metric by April, 2017.  A robust pilot study will then be implemented for each of the two metrics to determine feasibility of data collection.

Questions?  Contact Samantha Jonson.

FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

CTSA PROGRAM DATA TO HEALTH (CD2H)COORDINATING CENTER: RFA-TR-17-006

NCATS released a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA) on January 27 inviting applications for a Coordination Center (CC) to support activities of the Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program in using data to translate discoveries to health benefit (see: CTSA Program Data to Health (CD2H) Coordinating Center (U24); RFA-TR-17-006).

It is expected that the CD2H Coordination Center (CD2H-CC) will discover, develop, demonstrate, and disseminate innovation in informatics tools, standards, methods, and processes and will facilitate collaboration and consortium activities in the area of innovative informatics solutions that will translate to health benefit.  Specifically, the CD2H-CC will 1) support and enhance a collaborative informatics community for the CTSA Program, 2) develop Good Data Practice (GDP) for information stewardship, 3) promote software standards for interoperability, 4) foster collaborative innovation in the area of informatics tools, methods, and processes, 5) stimulate the use of cutting edge biomedical research informatics and data science education for CTSA Program researchers, and 6) evaluate the impact of CD2H-CC activities to enhance health through the use of informatics resources.

Receipt Date:                            April 14, 2017, for October 2017 Council consideration

Letter of Intent Due Date:   March 14, 2017

Funds Available:                      NCATS intends to commit up to a total of $5 million per year for up to five years for one award. Funding is contingent upon NIH appropriations and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.

Award Budget:                          Application needs to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project and are limited to $3.5 million per year in direct costs.

Award Project Period:           The scope of the proposed project should determine the project period. The maximum project period is five years.

Questions? Contact Erica Rosemond.

DOMAIN TASKFORCE (DTF) UPDATES

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT DOMAIN TASKFORCE

Election results:  The Workforce Development (WD) DTF congratulates Jason Umans (Georgetown University) and Rebecca Jackson (Ohio State University) for their recent elections to the WD DTF.  The group also welcomes Susan Smyth (University of Kentucky) to the Lead Team as the new Steering Committee representative.

The group thanks those members rotating off the Lead Team, Richard Barohn (University of Kansas) and Carrie Byington (now at Texas A&M), for their service and commitment to this DTF.

INFORMATICS DOMAIN TASKFORCE

In-person meeting:  The Informatics DTF (iDTF) will hold an in-person members meeting on March 31 from 8 – 12 noon (PST) in San Francisco after the AMIA Joint Summits on Translational Science Conference.  If you would like to attend this meeting, please click here to register.  The agenda for the meeting is currently in development.  The program committee currently consists of the iDTF lead team and C4 support staff.

LIFESPAN DOMAIN TASKFORCE

Election results: The Lifespan DTF thanks Jon Davis (Tufts) and James Heubi (Cincinnati Children’s), who rotated off of the Taskforce during the recent elections.  The group welcomes Christina Chambers (UCSD) and Rosalind Wright (Mt. Sinai), who is joining the DTF Leadership Team.

General updates: The full DTF and Early Life Exposure workgroup are working with the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Team to create questions for a “Childhood Module.”

COLLABORATION/ENGAGEMENT DOMAIN TASKFORCE

In-person meeting: The Collaboration/Engagement (C/E) DTF is holding an in-person meeting during the week of the ACTS meeting in Washington, DC. If you are interested in participating on the planning committee please contact Leslie Boone at collaboration_engagement@ctsac4.org

Leadership announcements: The C/E DTF welcomes Patricia Jones, DrPH, MPH (Program Officer, Division of Clinical Innovation) as the new NCATS representative to the DTF and Joel Tsevat, MD (University of Cincinnati) as the new Steering Committee representative.

Developing Measures for Assessing and Improving Collaborations Workgroup: The workgroup produced a draft summary report on the measures of research collaboration quality/process.  The summary was submitted to the C/E DTF Lead Team for review. Co-Leads for the project are Doriane Miller (University of Chicago), Usha Menon (University of Arizona) and Beth Tigges (University of New Mexico).

Dissemination, Implementation and Knowledge Transfer Workgroup: The D&I Workgroup is the newest effort under the C/E DTF. For the first quarter of 2017, the workgroup proposes to draft and submit a manuscript to describe the role of D&I science in the NIH mission and opportunities for growth within funded CTSA Program hubs. The workgroup will also develop a short survey to profile and assess current D&I activities and capacity at the hubs. Co-Leads for this project are Laura-Mae Baldwin (University of Washington), Rowena Dolor (Duke University) and Paul Meissner (Albert Einstein College of Medicine).

Researcher Training and Education and Community Capacity Building Workgroup:  The workgroup is in the process of analyzing the summary data from the environmental scan of the existing CTSA Program education and training resources for investigators engaging communities and stakeholders and for community partners collaborating in research.

METHODS & PROCESSES DOMAIN TASKFORCE

Election results:  The Methods and Processes DTF welcomes new members John Buse (UNC-Chapel Hill) and Donald McClain (Wake Forest).  Brad Pollock (UC Davis) has moved from Lead Team member to Co-Chair of the DTF.  The group would also like to thank William Trochim (Cornell), Co-Chair who rotated off the Lead Team, for his service.

Questions? For more information on the DTFs (including points-of-contact), click here.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

HUB SPONSORED MEETINGS ON CTSA CENTRAL WEBSITE

CTSA Program hubs can upload information to be posted on the C4 Coordinating Center website, CTSA Central, in order to spread the word about sponsored conferences, activities, and/or items relevant to the CTSA Program and the advancement of translational science.  Hubs can upload conference or meeting information here.

Recent additions are Scripps Research Institute’s “10^th Annual Future of Genomic Medicine Conference”, University of Buffalo’s “2017 Creative Scientist Workshop,” and University of Cincinnati’s “Ethics of Integrating Research and Clinical Care.”

Questions? Contact Colleen Lawrence.

FREE ONLINE COURSE ON GROUP-RANDOMIZED TRIALS NOW AVAILABLE

The NIH Office of Disease Prevention (ODP) recently launched a free, seven-part, online course called “Pragmatic and Group-Randomized Trials in Public Health and Medicine” to help researchers design and analyze group-randomized trials (GRTs). GRTs, which are a type of randomized trial widely used in public health and medicine, randomize groups to study arms and observe members of those groups to evaluate the impact of the intervention. Examples of GRTs include worksite health promotion studies, school-based drug-use prevention studies, clinic-based cancer screening studies, and many community-based studies.

The course describes the most widely used GRT designs and presents the many approaches to power and data analysis that are now available. It is presented by Dr. David M. Murray, NIH Associate Director for Prevention and Director of the NIH Office of Disease Prevention. It is designed for faculty and fellows, as well as advanced graduate students, who have prior training in basic research design and regression methods.

Following discussions with NCATS leadership and Program staff about how to best provide methods training in GRTs to the CTSA Program community, the NIH ODP developed this online course, which is now available on the Resources for Researchers section of ODP’s website. It includes video presentations, PDF slide sets, suggested reading materials, and guided activities.

Questions? Contact grt@mail.nih.gov.