PBRC’s Dr. Ron Horswell, CCTS Informatics, discusses obesity research efforts with CCTS Road Trip team.

CCTS leadership and administrative staff logged more than 1,600 miles crisscrossing the AL-LA-MS region this summer to visit with nearly a dozen of our CCTS partner institutions and affiliates (Auburn University, HudsonAlpha, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Southern Research, Tulane University, Ochsner, University of Alabama, University Medical  Center New Orleans, University of South Alabama, and Xavier University). Conversations engaged senior institutional leadership as well as members of the CCTS research base.

Our goals for the “listening tour”—to deepen existing ties, establish new ones, and innovate novel collaborative strategies toward our shared mission—were not only met but exceeded. Below we share a few of the exciting new ideas, some of which are already in motion, as well as a few snapshots from our summer CCTS road trips.

Auburn University’s Director of Faculty Engagement, Associate Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling and CCTS Southern Commonweal representative Dr. Chippewa M. Thomas presented her work during a CCTS Road Trip visit.

Ideas

• Developing a TED-talk style video series addressing health disparities research
• Producing grant writing videos and experiential trainings
• Expanding access to Kaizen games via a mobile app, including the CCTS Rigor, Reproducibility and Transparency (R2T) game and a new Good Clinical Practice (GCP) game in development
• Using the EHR to explore the impact of obesity in cancer outcomes as an alternative to using BMI
• Testing Vanderbilt’s Trials Today search engine
• Adapting the CCTS Clinical Investigator Training Program for institution-agnostic use
• Synergizing informatics and health disparities research with cluster hires
• CCTS Executive Administrator Dr. Jennifer Croker presented an overview of the CCTS mission as part of the Summer Road Trip.Developing guidance and navigational support for SHARe multisite study opportunities
• Planning initial steps for creation of a digital biorepository
• Offering One Health research training
• Leveraging complementary BERD expertise