North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS)

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Project Summary The North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (TraCS) is a dynamic regional network of universities, research institutes, healthcare providers, and >250 community collaborators across our state. Based at UNC Chapel Hill, TraCS has strategically fostered partnerships with NC A&T, the largest HBCU in the U.S., which brings expertise in health equity research, workforce development, engineering, and data science, and NC State, with a nationally ranked school of veterinary medicine and additional expertise in engineering and computer science. Over the next seven years, we will catalyze development, testing, implementation, and dissemination of translational science and research to improve human health, with an explicit focus on advancing health equity by completing our Overall Aims. Aim 1: Perform and support research that advances the science of translation with the goal of clearing barriers to rapid translation of research towards implementation of best evidence to our patients and their communities. Aim 2: Maximize the informativeness of translational research, to drive its impact to improve clinical benefits and reduce harms with particular attention to populations impacted by health inequities. Aim 3: Train and maintain a diverse, expert, multidisciplinary translational research workforce at all professional levels, prepared to meet the challenges of current and future health crises. Aim 4: Implement evidence-based strategies to improve human health using our learning health care system as our laboratory. We have intensified our efforts in health equity as well as dissemination and implementation, recognizing that these are the critical barriers to effective translation of innovation to health. We will capitalize on (i) the substantial resources of our learning health care system and (ii) the collective expertise of TraCS, honed over 14 years of supporting world-class translational research, to integrate the principles of social justice in all our services and trainings and to realize our vision of “A healthier North Carolina through innovation”. We will innovate inclusive methods and processes, engender trust, and recruit research participants who reflect the diversity of our state. We will implement our advances to ensure benefits for our participants, their communities and patients everywhere. With broad stakeholder engagement and rigorous evaluation of our efforts, we will maximize the relevance of our research to those we serve. TraCS will lead and support efforts across the CTSA consortium to create a more efficient, inclusive research environment to mitigate health disparities.