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The Institute for Clinical and Translational Science at UC Irvine: Building an Inquisitive Environment Where Everything Is Questioned and There Is No Status Quo

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: The University of California, Irvine, is one of the prestigious University of California family of campuses. It is a young and dynamic institution with a student population of 22,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduates. The Times of London selected UC Irvine in both 2012 and 2013 as one of the top five young (less-than-50-years-old) universities in the world. Academic development in the past decade has been particularly robust with the addition of new Schools of Law and Education, and Programs in Nursing Science, Pharmaceutical Science, and Public Health. The School of Medicine and the UC Irvine Health clinical enterprise comprise the only academic health center in the central region of southern California. We are emerging as a catalyst for healthcare reform and clinical translational investigation, both regionally and globally. We are situated in one of the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, vibrant, and rapidly growing population centers (approximately 3 million people) in the United States—an ideal platform for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS, our parent organization at the National Institutes of Health [NIH]) vision of translational research that begins in the laboratory and reaches out to all aspects of the community. In this review, we briefly describe the concerted efforts of our Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA), funded originally in 2010 to harness the energy of what had been loosely interconnected hubs of biomedical research excellence, training, and health care, and to transform these into a creative, flexible, and proactive home for clinical translational science. The five UC medical campuses, in collaboration with the UC Office of the President (UCOP), have identified system-wide collaboration in biomedical research as an opportunity to enhance clinical and translational research efforts. In response, UCOP launched an initiative in 2010 to identify policy changes and areas of collaboration to accelerate biomedical research across the UC biomedical campuses. The UC Biomedical Research Acceleration, Integration, and Development (UC BRAID) consortium, led by the Principal Investigators of the five UC CTSAs (Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco), is part of the effort to accelerate clinical and translational research. The goal of evaluation is to determine whether a planned set of activities is effective in achieving the desired outcome. Our evaluation plan is designed to create a framework of evaluation tools that will use a common methodology to assess each Unit's progress toward meeting its stated goals and objectives. This approach has been quite useful in actually modifying and ultimately improving key ICTS activities. One of our most utilized CTSA activities, the Pilot Grant Program, has benefited particularly from rigorous evaluation. Following a series of interviews with pilot grant recipients, we are in the process of building a more continuous and interactive relationship between grantees, and the ICTS staff and faculty. We learned that beyond formal funding of pilot grants, many researchers wanted ongoing guidance and support regarding the availability of ICTS links to core laboratories, biostatistical consulting, information management, and potentials for team building. The ICTS evaluation team is using the commercially available Salesforce software (www.salesforce.com) to engage in a continuous exchange of information with pilot grant awardees. In the most recent round of awards, grantees were informed of this new structure during an activation meeting and without exception expressed enthusiastic support for this innovation.

Source: Clinical and Translational Science

DOI: 10.1111/cts.12177