CTSA PROGRAM UPDATE
May 26, 2017

Happy Memorial Day!

COMMON METRICS

UPDATED PILOT PUBLICATION METRIC WORKSHEET NOW AVAILABLE
The Tufts Common Metrics Implementation team has completed a new version of the Pilot Publication Metric Worksheet for use by all hubs. The new version includes examples and blank tables to help meet the aim of efficiently capturing Pilot Publication Metric values. The worksheet is available here (Excel).

Questions? Contact the Common Metrics help desk.

UPDATE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR NEW COMMON METRICS!
The Common Metrics Development Teams for the accrual metric and the informatics metric are hard at work preparing final drafts of their operational guidelines for the pilot study. The metric development teams will present their operational guidelines to the CTSA Program Steering Committee (SC) on the June 12th call. Contingent upon SC approval of the common metrics, the “vetting” process for the operational guidelines will be initiated in early June through early July. Please stay tuned for more information about the pilot study!

Learn more about the informatics metric by visiting the Project Updates/Important News section on the Tufts Implementation website.

Questions? Contact Samantha Jonson

FOLLOW UP TO MAY CTSA PROGRAM PI WEBINAR

MAY 24 PRESENTATION: BUILDING A DRUG REPURPOSING NETWORK FOR THE CTSA PROGRAM CONSORTIUM
Drs. Richard Larson and Larry Sklar (University of New Mexico) presented an update on the Drug Rescue, Repurposing, and Repositioning Network (DR3N), which was established to accelerate and facilitate advancement of new treatments to clinical proof-of-concept studies. They would like to identify: 1) interested users and collaborators and 2) a common process for the CTSA Program network to engage with this resource.

The purpose of this network is to promote inter‐institutional collaboration across the CTSA Program consortium by funding innovative, translational research projects that involve two or more CTSA Program hubs. The CTSA Program hubs of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (UNM HSC) in partnership with University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) and University of North Carolina (UNC) will facilitate collaborative investigations and team science throughout the CTSA Program consortium. DR3N will provide resources to new therapeutic concepts for existing drugs to new clinical research collaboration and trials. Specific project paths include entry of drugs via rescue, repurposing, or repositioning approaches with a common endpoint to clinical proof of concept trials. Collaborative DR3N projects will leverage resources at CTSA Program hubs to support rapid translation of new therapeutic concepts. Check out their 2016 Fall CTSA Program meeting presentation slides (PowerPoint) for more information.

Interested in participating in DR3N? Submit your contact information here!

Questions? Contact Richard Larson.

DOMAIN TASK FORCE (DTF) UPDATES

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT DOMAIN TASK FORCE

The Harmonizing Competencies/Personalized Pathways Workgroup seeks your valued input in finalizing the workgroup’s initiative. In the early years of the CTSA Program, the former CTSA Program Education and Career Development group developed competencies that were vetted and approved in November 2011. The work resulted in 97 competencies developed across 14 core thematic areas. Additionally, nine sets of role-based special interest competencies were developed.

Toward that end, the Workforce Development DTF would like to request that this CTSA Program Personalized Pathway Survey is routed to the most appropriate respondent(s) at your CTSA Program hub. The respondent(s) might include your hub PI, the director of your KL2 program or translational workforce development component, or the lead administrator for that program. The survey seeks their opinions on how they would advise scholars to obtain training for these phenotypes:

1. Community Engaged Researcher
2. Clinical Researcher
3. Preclinical Bench Research Investigator
4. Public Health Researcher
5. Data Sciences/ Analytics Researcher
6. Dissemination/Implementation Researcher

Once a phenotype survey is completed, hitting “Submit” will generate a link to another blank survey for completion, if applicable.

We will report results to the full Workforce Development DTF, and then use what we find to consider development of a streamlined tool that will focus on helping trainees-scholars understand what intensity of training is recommended as a start to their IDP.

For questions about the survey functions in REDCap please contact workforce_development@ctsac4.org. Any substantive questions/comments about the survey content can be noted in the open text boxes within the REDCap survey.

INFORMATICS DOMAIN TASK FORCE

The full Informatics Domain Task Force members had a long, productive discussion about metrics at their monthly meeting on May 5th. The feedback will be brought back to the Steering Committee.

The Imaging Informatics Workgroup is currently working on summarizing the results of their survey into a format that can be easily shared and understood by the larger CTSA Program audience (executive summary, white paper, etc.).

The Sustainable Informatics Workgroup is continuing to refine the content and focus of their paper.

LIFESPAN DOMAIN TASK FORCE

The Lifespan In-Person Meeting was held May 6, 2017, in San Francisco, Calif. Fourteen members attended in-person and eight on-line. Accomplishments of the past year were reviewed and plans for the upcoming year were discussed. Long-term priority items include creation of a lifespan toolkit. Short-term goals include submission of a Lifespan DTF response to NOT-OD-17-059: Request for Information (RFI): Invitation to Comment on Inclusion in Clinical Research Across the Lifespan.

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

ANNOUNCEMENTS

NCATS FUNDING POLICY FOR FISCAL YEAR 2017
NCATS has posted information about the Center’s FY17 funding policy here.

SPRING 2017 CTSA PROGRAM MEETING REPORT NOW LIVE
Thank you again to all those who attended the Spring CTSA Program Meeting and contributed to the discussions! A full report from the meeting, including an executive summary, all of the presenters’ slides, and original notes from breakout group discussions, can be accessed via CTSA Central or via this direct link.

Questions? Contact Amit Chaudhari.

TIDIRH 2017! TRAINING INSTITUTE IN DISSEMINATION AND IMPLEMENTATION RESEARCH IN HEALTH NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS
The National Cancer Institute, in coordination with additional National Institutes of Health Institutes and Centers and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, are hosting this training institute to provide participants with a thorough grounding in conducting Dissemination and Implementation research in health across all areas of health and health care. In 2017, the institute will utilize a combination of a 4-month online course (six modules with related assignments) between August 14 and November 17, 2017, and a 2-day in-person training to be held November 30 and December 1, 2017, in Bethesda, MD. Faculty and guest lecturers will consist of leading experts in theory, implementation, and evaluation approaches to D&I; creating partnerships and multilevel, transdisciplinary research teams; research design, methods, and analyses appropriate for D&I; and conducting research at different and multiple levels of intervention (e.g., clinical, community, policy).

Participants will be expected to return to their home institutions prepared to share what they have learned at the institute to help further the field of D&I research (e.g., giving talks, leading seminars, forming new collaborations, mentoring, submitting D&I grant proposals, etc.).

For a background on the training institute, please see this article published January 24, 2013: “The U.S. training institute for dissemination and implementation research in health.” Implementation Science 2013 8:12. For information on NIH funding in dissemination and implementation science, please visit the NCI Implementation Science Team Funding page.

Questions? NCIdccpsISteam@mail.nih.gov.

HUB SPONSORED MEETINGS ON CTSA CENTRAL WEBSITE
CTSA Program hubs can upload information about important meetings they host 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 listed below. Please click the event name for more information!

Questions? Contact Colleen Lawrence.

NIH NCATS: Improving Health Through Smarter Science

Connect with us!: https://ncats.nih.gov/connect