What Do the CTSA Network Principal Investigators Aspire to Build Today?

orts to address the “translational gaps” in moving biomedical research forward and the “lagging” effi ciency of our clinical research infrastructure by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was the creation of the network of 60 or so Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs) to establish “integrated homes” across academic medical centers, and establishing the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). In July of this year, NIH also sponsored a report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies of Sciences which outlined a series of recommendations to further refi ne the goals of the CTSA program to better realize its full potential. Each of these is an important and laudable step in an ever-increasing eff ort to build the right national infrastructure that can translate the impact of scientifi c advances into improved human health. However, it is equally important that these “top-down” restructuring processes are also supplemented by appropriate “bottom-up” eff orts from investigators, grantees, and trainees at these academic medical centers. Th e Association for Clinical and Translational Sciences (ACTS), the professional organization that represents not only the CTSAs, but many non-CTSA academic medical centers, clinical and translational training programs, and patient-oriented researchers, provides just such a platform for the ground-level stakeholders to provide input into this process of national transformation through its policy statements, feedback from individual members, and public lobbying. In early Spring of this year, ACTS conducted a survey of the CTSA principal investigator (PI) group, responded to by 49 PIs, which asked for the most important short-term (i.e., which could be undertaken in a year) initiatives the CTSA consortium should be undertaking to impact clinical and translational research. Based on the results of this survey, ACTS then conducted a one-day facilitated retreat in Washington, DC, that was attended by 45 CTSA PIs or their representatives, translational researchers, as well as some of the ACTS Board members to further refi ne these thoughts. Described below are the recommendations from this meeting, which summarizes what the CTSA leadership group is thinking nationally. While this eff ort predated the IOM report, and was parallel to many NIH work groups, it is also remarkable how well these conclusions fi t with the NIH and IOM vision. Th e PI group was also convinced that not only all of the 61 CTSAs but most research-oriented academic centers should be asked to participate in the vision.