CTSA K12 Program at Virginia Commonwealth University

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The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical importance of translational research to eradicate human disease, tackle emerging public health threats and promote health, especially in hard-to-reach communities that face health disparities. To take on these challenges, we need a diverse, well-resourced, and well-trained research workforce, as highlighted by the NIH Physician-Scientist Workforce report. 1 The VCU Wright Regional Center for Clinical and Translational Science (Wright Regional CCTS) serves a region in Central and Eastern Virginia and North Carolina that includes both rural and urban underserved communities and has vast experience serving a diverse community of patients who often face health disparities. The nature of our environment has driven the development of a research workforce that is prepared to meet the challenge of engaging and serving diverse patients. The Wright Regional CCTS serves as the hub for providing the translational research infrastructure for the training and career development of scholars through their professional life cycle. In addition, The Wright Center CCTS has a $32 million endowment with which we have established the first Wright Faculty Scholars in Health Disparities program. This program supports early career faculty from diverse backgrounds who are committed to better understanding the drivers and developing solutions to health inequities in our communities. Our existing partner institutions bring experience training the workforce across the translational spectrum with an emphasis on community engaged research (Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS)), informatics (Old Dominion University (ODU)) and mentorship (Virginia State University (VSU), an HBCU). Training scholars to translate research observations to clinical application in our unique communities is a priority for the proposed K12 Training Program. Our program will continue its commitment to providing early career faculty/late-stage postdoctoral fellows with a comprehensive “blueprint” for transitioning to research independence. We will recruit scholars from a pool of early career scientists who are diverse in both research discipline and demographics. Through integration with our UM1 and RC2 awards, K12 scholars will be exposed to an innovative and comprehensive program that supports 75% committed time to scholar specific domain expertise but also provides a combination of didactic, virtual, and experiential training in fundamental characteristics of the translational scientist. We will achieve our goals through the following specific aims: Aim 1: Prepare early career translational researchers for research independence through comprehensive, innovative, and individualized training in translational science. K12 scholars will be positioned to translate preclinical, clinical, and community-based research to improving health of all communities. Aim 2: Serve as an institutional resource for research career development and facilitate the creation of a diverse community of clinical and translational researchers through both internal and external partnerships.