Funding: Round 2: Increasing the Impact of Clinical Research on Human Health

This pilot funding opportunity focuses on potential solutions to common roadblocks that impact faculty, research staff, and other communities in the conduct of research on human health.

Background: The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) requires all clinical and translational science centers, including Harvard Catalyst, to fund pilot grants that use translational science methodologies to identify and mitigate roadblocks impeding health-related research at their local institutions. After outreach to faculty and other employees across Harvard University schools and affiliates identified translational roadblocks that they felt limited the breadth and impact of research on human health, Harvard Catalyst used their responses to form the basis for initiatives addressed by its pilot program, including this pilot opportunity.

In accord with the NCATS mandate, responsive applications should explore or demonstrate how a range of processes, assessments, models, technologies or modifications can inform clinical translational research more generally, rather than proposing work focused on a specific aspect of a highly-defined clinical question or setting.

This request for applications (RFA) therefore invites proposals for innovative pilot projects that use a translational science approach to address some aspect of any one of the following three translational roadblocks:

• Research and clinical data need to be connected and their access democratized.
• The clinical translational research (CTR) workforce must be grown to address emerging opportunities in CT research.
• Insufficient mechanisms exist to support implementation of CTR evidence into practice.

Learn more and apply.