Harvard Planning Grant for Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We are submitting an application for a Planning Grant for an Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Harvard-affiliated Academic Health Centers (AHCs). Harvard is committed to establishing an academic home for clinical research, the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center (CISC), that will integrate resources across Harvard, facilitate productive interdisciplinary collaborations, foster successful career development through Roadmap T32 and K12Programs, link investigators with experts in potentially transformative technologies, such as genomics, advanced imaging, and bioengineering, provide pilot grant support for promising, interdisciplinary research, and generally speed translation of scientific insights into beneficial clinical care. In this proposal we describe our vision for the CISC, and a planning process to establish its governance, administration, content, and evaluation. Harvard's research resources, faculty, and trainees are extraordinary but frequently dispersed and isolated. Our CTSC will seek to integrate clinical research across Harvard to add new dimensions of research productivity benefiting patients. In the process we will integrate and realign our four separate General Clinical Research Centers. Informatics will reinforce the CTSC's links across disciplines and institutions. The magnitude of this task dictates that we start with a planning grant. We have constituted an Executive Committee composed of Harvard's leaders in clinical research and outlined subcommittees to address each of the critical components of the program. We will assemble an inventory of relevant resources and seek expert advice from within and outside Harvard. An organizational consultant will help us identify programmatic synergies and obstacles and help assure the planning process meets its milestones. The Principal Investigator is both an accomplished clinical investigator and an Associate Dean with a long history of success working across Harvard's institutional boundaries. The Trustees include the AHC CEOs and Chief Academic Officers as well as HMS Deans. These Trustees reflect broad institutional commitment to the Program and the authority to direct institutional change and investments of space and money to underwrite the Program. We believe our planning process is specific, innovative yet disciplined, and should be robust. A full and competitive CTSA application will be produced in a timely manner.