Enhancing research training for Maine Track / Tufts medical students

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Over the past two decades, Maine Medical Center Research Institute, a component of MaineHealth, has built a highly competitive research program encompassing basic, translational, clinical, and health services research to support and enhance the healthcare needs of the state of Maine. Our focus on developing basic biomedical research to support translational programs has been supported by the formation of Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (2000-present), and in 2017, a multi-institute Northern New England Clinical and Translational Research Network to establish infrastructure required for extending clinical research efforts. We have maintained a focus on medical training programs, with prominent academic affiliations with Tufts University School of Medicine, with 40 of their medical students in a Maine Track program and 20 ongoing residency and fellowship programs. Of note, recent expansions in graduate medical education include the addition of a Rural Track in our Internal Medicine residency, and an enhanced focus on research as part of residency and fellowships. These efforts have been bolstered by institutional investments to support medical students and physicians in expanded options for research, and the alignment of research mentors with these commitments. Research and clinical strengths at Maine Medical Center include topics of high relevance to the mission of the NHLBI, including vessel wall biology, vascular development, myocardial injury, heart failure, vascular progenitor cells, vascular inflammation, adipose/vascular interactions, endothelial dysfunction and cardiovascular disease; and clinical research addressing cardiac arrest, cystic fibrosis, hemorrhagic shock, vascular complications of trauma, and genetics/epidemiology of disease. This proposal requests the needed support to fulfill the objective of the NHLBI to develop the biomedical research workforce focusing on a unique population of medical students in Maine. This proposal requests funds to focus on providing rigorous, full-time summer research training experiences for Maine Track medical students. While some of those students may already have an interest in research, this new program will broaden our educational scope to include translational biomedical research. Currently, all Maine Track students are required to complete a scholarly project as part of their medical training, and we have an established infrastructure to support research experiences in the summer after the first year of study. Our vision is to enhance this pipeline to increase our community of rigorously trained physicians who are comfortable working across the basic-translational-clinical research spectrum to promote public health. While this is a long-term and ambitious goal, it is even more pressing in an environment such as the rural state of Maine, which does not have a portfolio of large academic medical centers that attract a high number of medical students, residents or fellows interested in translational research. This proposal requests funding for ten short-term summer experiences for medical students in the Tufts Maine Track with experienced mentors committed to promotion of mentorship and training.