DEEP SOUTH TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH MENTORED CAREER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

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We propose the Deep South Translational Research Mentored Career Development Program KL2 to focus on the growing gap between research and the translation of research into clinical practice that has been labeled the “valley of death”. Our Partner Network brings existing training infrastructure, ongoing partnerships, and complementary research expertise in diseases and disparities that are disproportionately represented within an area of the southeastern US known as the “Deep South”. We aim to create a career development program that fosters “team science” and instills scholars with mastery of translational research (TR) core competencies through an intensive curriculum that will nurture “translational thinking” by helping Scholars use logic, imagination, intuition, and systemic reasoning, to examine potential solutions to diseases and conditions that disproportionately affect the Deep South. Over the grant period, we intend to provide enhanced training for 18 early career faculty scholars who will be supported by a collaborative research base (109 mentors) supported by more than $315 million in extramural funding. Our overall goal for this career development program is to facilitate new, and expand existing, innovative opportunities to train early career faculty across the T1-TR spectrum in areas such as drug discovery and development, integrative “omics”, clinical informatics, and outcomes research aimed at addressing disease and health care disparities that disproportionately affect the Deep South. We will mentor these early career investigators towards becoming academic leaders within our CCTS Partner Network and nationally. Our specific aims are to: 1) Identify, recruit, and cultivate a diverse cohort of early career faculty investigators across the Partner Network; 2) Enhance the personalized career development of translational scientists from a broad range of clinical and methodological disciplines through individual, peer, and team mentoring particularly focused on future grant development and grant submission support to assist in the transition towards an independent research career; 3) Provide a curriculum and collaborative, multidisciplinary experiential training in translational research incorporating a spectrum of clinical disorders, with emphasis on prevalent diseases and health disparities in the US Deep South; 4) Advance mentoring and team building skills of faculty to foster “team science” and continue the expansion of cross-institutional training experiences for KL2 Scholars and other early career investigators; The Deep South Translational Research KL2 will provide new and expand existing infrastructure across our regional partners for career development, to recruit and train individuals with significant potential to be highly successful translational researchers, and to mentor them toward becoming academic leaders at our institutions and nationally, and ultimately to improve healthcare in the Deep South.