More About Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Career Development

The Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Career Development initiative of the NIH Roadmap is a key part of the Reengineering the Clinical Research Enterprise theme, which seeks to accelerate and strengthen the clinical research process. Specifically, this initiative is intended to produce new clinical research leaders who can cross the boundaries of their disciplines and draw upon the strengths of other fields. Clinical research includes epidemiologic and natural history studies, patient-oriented research, clinical trials and outcomes research.

"A team approach is crucial for solving difficult medical problems that are too complex for scientists working in any single discipline to solve alone," says Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and who, together with Robert Star, M.D., Senior Scientific Advisor at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, co-chairs the NIH Roadmap Trans-NIH Clinical Research Workforce Training Committee. "This award will help train the future leaders who can capitalize on the advances that team research will make possible."

The awards will support medical or public health institutions that can provide training for up to 15-20 health professionals at the post-graduate level. The trainees, known as Clinical Research Scholars, will come from a variety of fields such as medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, the behavioral sciences, biostatistics and epidemiology.

Training will consist of instruction in how to design and conduct clinical research studies as part of a team of scientists encompassing several disciplines. The scholars, who will receive between two and five years of training, will design and participate in clinical research projects under the guidance of experienced clinical research mentors.

The NIH Roadmap for Medical Research is a series of far-reaching initiatives designed to transform the nation's medical research capabilities and speed the movement of scientific discoveries from the bench to the bedside. It provides a framework of the priorities the NIH must address in order to optimize its entire research portfolio and lays out a vision for a more efficient and productive system of medical research.

The National Institutes of Health, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research. NIH is comprised of 27 institutes and centers and investigates the causes, treatments and cures for both common and rare diseases.