Professional Development Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CORE In the state of Louisiana, health disparities such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes/obesity, and cancer disproportionately affect Louisiana citizens. Unfortunately, there are not adequate numbers of investigators proficient in Clinical and Translational Research to address and diminish this health disparity. The overall objective of the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science (LA CaTS) Professional Development Key Component Activity (PD-KCA) is to educate and train academic faculty and trainees (Scholars) state-wide to pursue clinical/translational research focused on improving health outcomes and reducing health disparities in Louisiana. The PD-KCA provides a degree-granting training program, the Masters in Clinical Research (MSCR), mentorship, and a variety of educational research resources to aid Scholars from different health professionals throughout Louisiana. The PD-KCA research plans are based on the following specific aims: (1) develop programs that support clinical and translational research training, career development, and mentoring that specifically targets multiple health care disciplines and (2) develop, provide and coordinate accessible resources to aid faculty and trainees in developing, initiating, executing, analyzing, and disseminating clinical/translational research. The PD-KCA will implement the research plan by creating an academic “home” that provides clinical and translational research training tailored to Scholars with a wider range of research experience (e.g. students to postdoctoral fellows) and from different professional disciplines (e.g. medicine, psychology, dentistry, nursing, etc.). This cross-institutional structured approach has been developed to include collaborating LA CaTS institutions throughout the state of Louisiana. The PD-KCA plans to provide training and research resources, including courses in the MSCR curriculum on site and by Distance Learning, access to a centralized clinical trial enrollment center, the new Risk Assessment Clinic in the Louisiana Cancer Research Center, the state-wide virtual biorepository resource, and “team science” projects focused on health disparities diseases outcomes to promote research team collaborations. Distance Learning is key in providing Scholars access to all PD-KCA resources; therefore, a centralized compendium of MSCR courses and research tool kits will be provided via an asynchronous system. Overall, the PD-KCA intends to recruit, educate, and train Scholars from various health care disciplines in clinical and translational research focused on health disparities diseases in order to improve health outcomes that now negatively affect the citizens of Louisiana.