CCTS is working hard behind the scenes to support the DOM-led transition to OnCore, UAB’s new clinical trials management software (CTMS). Our Center for Research Support Program (CRSP) team has trained 18 OnCore “superusers” who, in addition to serving as resident experts within their units, will also help build the infrastructure to house the data from approximately 100 clinical trials. Other CCTS staff are building study calendars and budgets and testing new components and data migration scripts as they are developed. We applaud their team spirit and unflagging dedication.
In addition to streamlined workflows for CTMS functions such as managing patient appointments and communicating payer designations to billing entities, OnCore will offer expansive new functionalities, including centralizing and tracking protocol activity from startup to closeout, enabling electronic ordering of clinical services, simplifying regulatory compliance, and allowing the transmission of study and patient data to UAB’s electronic medical record.
“We have an opportunity to use OnCore as a catalyst for transformational change in the clinical trials process at UAB,” said Robert P. Kimberly, MD, CCTS director and senior associate dean for Clinical and Translational Research in the UAB School of Medicine. “With the integration of PowerTrials and OnCore, the impact on UAB and patient care will be huge.”
As OnCore is implemented within each research area, the current system, SiteMinder, will be phased out. The first wave of implementation is scheduled for November 2017.
To learn more, visit the OnCore page on the UAB Medicine website. [Editor’s note: the original list of 18 superusers appeared in the Sept. 8 issue of DOM’s Good News e-newsletter, produced by Carolyn Walsh.]
OnCore SuperUsers and Support Team
- Thyrza Johnson-Pulmonary
- Stephanie Biggers-Rheumatology
- Pamela Cunningham-ID
- Mary Dougherty-Bergeron-ID
- Lou Ann Faulkner-ID
- Tomeka Wilson-ID
- Jena Reeves-Rheumatology
- Steven Marchman-Rheumatology
- Rachel McMullen-ID
- Stephanie Ledbetter-Rheumatology
- Leigh Powell-CVD
- Patrick Frazier-CVD
- Lisa Williams-GI
- Rakesha Garner-GI
- Tiffany Grimes-Endocrinology
- Kentress Davison-Endocrinology
- Aras Acemgil-Preventive Medicine
- Michelle East-Preventive Medicine
- Courtney Jordan-CCTS
- Penny Jester-CCTS CRSP
- Meredith Fitz-Gerald-CCTS CRSP
- Dawn Bryant Matthews-CTAO
What is a CCTS domain?
So glad you asked! CCTS offers so many resources and supports for faculty, clinician-scientists, trainees, students, staff, and community members, even we had trouble keeping them straight. So we organized them into six administrative domains to help. Click on the plus signs in the hexagons below to learn more.
Research Commons
The CCTS supports clinical and translational research across the Partner Network. The CCTS Research Commons domain connects investigators to the expertise and technology they need, including tools, institutional resources, expert consultation and collaborators. The goal? To sharpen science and accelerate the pace of discovery, thereby improving patient care and reducing disparities and diseases that disproportionately affect our region. Learn moreTraining Academy
The CCTS seeks to develop a diverse and highly skilled clinical and translational research workforce well-prepared to collaborate, innovate, and accelerate the pace of scientific discoveries to improve patient care. Our Training Academy domain offers interdisciplinary, educational programs and enrichment activities for research teams across the career arc – faculty, trainees, staff and community members alike – to support a vibrant learning community with the skills, knowledge and perspective to effectively advance research insights to application. Learn moreEngagement of Communities
The CCTS supports the development of authentic partnerships between researchers and the populations we serve. Through our Engagement of Communities domain, we provide learning and collaboration opportunities to a wide variety of community stakeholders that foster trust, help establish shared research goals, and speed the translation of knowledge into health improvements for all. Learn morePartner Network
The CCTS reaches across disciplines and across institutional boundaries locally, regionally and nationally to work synergistically with those who share our mission. Our 11-member Partner Network represents unprecedented translational research engagement drawing on complementary expertise, technical capacity and patient populations across the Deep South. We collaborate with a growing number of organizations in support of multisite studies aimed at catalyzing scientific discovery and accelerating those insights to impact health. Learn moreSpecial Modules
Leveraging unique capacity across the CCTS Partner Network, the CCTS supports distinct research areas in genomic medicine, drug discovery, precision therapeutics and medical device development. This Special Modules domain reflects the CCTS commitment to innovative techniques and technologies that improve the quality, efficiency, and impact of translational research. Learn moreClinical Translation
The CCTS supports cutting-edge expertise and facilities to investigators conducting human subjects research. Our Clinical Translation domain provides cost-effective, quality services that exemplify best practice for every stage of the clinical research study lifecycle, from startup through implementation to closeout. Learn more-
Research Commons
The CCTS supports clinical and translational research across the Partner Network. The CCTS Research Commons domain connects investigators to the expertise and technology they need, including tools, institutional resources, expert consultation and collaborators. The goal? To sharpen science and accelerate the pace of discovery, thereby improving patient care and reducing disparities and diseases that disproportionately affect our region. Learn more -
Training Academy
The CCTS seeks to develop a diverse and highly skilled clinical and translational research workforce well-prepared to collaborate, innovate, and accelerate the pace of scientific discoveries to improve patient care. Our Training Academy domain offers interdisciplinary, educational programs and enrichment activities for research teams across the career arc – faculty, trainees, staff and community members alike – to support a vibrant learning community with the skills, knowledge and perspective to effectively advance research insights to application. Learn more -
Engagement of Communities
The CCTS supports the development of authentic partnerships between researchers and the populations we serve. Through our Engagement of Communities domain, we provide learning and collaboration opportunities to a wide variety of community stakeholders that foster trust, help establish shared research goals, and speed the translation of knowledge into health improvements for all. Learn more -
Partner Network
The CCTS reaches across disciplines and across institutional boundaries locally, regionally and nationally to work synergistically with those who share our mission. Our 11-member Partner Network represents unprecedented translational research engagement drawing on complementary expertise, technical capacity and patient populations across the Deep South. We collaborate with a growing number of organizations in support of multisite studies aimed at catalyzing scientific discovery and accelerating those insights to impact health. Learn more -
Special Modules
Leveraging unique capacity across the CCTS Partner Network, the CCTS supports distinct research areas in genomic medicine, drug discovery, precision therapeutics and medical device development. This Special Modules domain reflects the CCTS commitment to innovative techniques and technologies that improve the quality, efficiency, and impact of translational research. Learn more -
Clinical Translation
The CCTS supports cutting-edge expertise and facilities to investigators conducting human subjects research. Our Clinical Translation domain provides cost-effective, quality services that exemplify best practice for every stage of the clinical research study lifecycle, from startup through implementation to closeout. Learn more
In her days as a practicing nurse, Dr. Joy Deupree often wondered about the patients who seemed “noncompliant”—refusing to show for important medical appointments, taking more or less medicine than prescribed, ignoring discharge instructions, or leaving paperwork unfinished. She made a life-changing connection when she accompanied her daughter to a training on becoming a tutor and realized that these are the classic symptoms of an under-recognized barrier to health care: the inability to read or write.
Since the early 2000s, Deupree has immersed herself in the challenge to improve the rate of health literacy in Alabama. Nationally 30% of the population reads at or below a 5th grade level; when factoring in numeracy, the rate exponentially increases. In Alabama, it is estimated that up to 57% of the adult population suffers from low health literacy. “It’s not surprising so many patients have poor outcomes, often as a result of misunderstood protocols and mistakes with medications that lead to excess hospitalizations and unnecessary complications, including death,” she said.
Deupree stressed that while low health literacy is associated with being poor, from a cultural/ethnic minority, a recent refugee or a non-English speaker, and/or someone who did not complete high school, “you can’t judge a book by its cover—the largest group of individuals with low health literacy rates is seniors 65 and older, who are a long way from what they learned in school, have a great deal of trust in providers, and don’t like to admit a lack of knowledge.”
Even more surprising, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 9 out of 10 Americans, regardless of their education level, struggle with health information but may be too embarrassed to admit it. “Informed consent forms, discharge instructions, and prescription drug labels are rarely written in plain language, and can be confusing even to those of us who are in clinical care or research” she said.
The estimated economic burden on an already overwhelmed health system is staggering, between $106 and 238 billion in unnecessary health costs per year. Over the past decade, a growing awareness of health literacy as an economic drag and barrier to health care has resulted in numerous local, statewide, and national initiatives addressing its negative impacts.
Below is a brief summary of research topics, programs, and policy efforts that Deupree highlighted (for more in-depth information, see her slides):
- Adding health information to the curriculum for K-12 education
- Rewriting informed consent forms in plain language
- Improving provider education on how to identify and work with low literacy patients
- Offering CME credit to providers who train with free online materials (such as the CDC modules)
- Making prescription drug labels more patient friendly (such efforts often require buy-in from policy makers and big box chains with pharmacies)
- Re-engineering Discharge Toolkit (the Red Project) (requires buy-in from hospitals)
- Joining professional organizations dedicated to reducing health literacy via education, research, and sharing best practices
- Establishing coalitions of researchers, clinicians, community advocates, insurance companies, and policy makers such as the Alabama Health Literacy Initiative (Deupree helped establish along with Dr. Nancy Dunlap)
- Adding literacy as a field with an alert in the electronic medical record
- Supporting campaigns such as Know Your Meds AL, sponsored by Centers for Medical Services (CMS) and championed by the Alabama Quality Assurance Foundation
- Creating easy to understand and culturally competent patient materials
- Training frontline health care staff about health literacy issues
The CCTS recognizes the importance of health literacy as it relates to the success of three major goals of the national CTSA program: (1) to engage patients and communities in every phase of the translational process (2) to promote the integration of special and underserved populations in translational research across the human lifespan and (3) to innovate processes to increase the quality and efficiency of translational research, including multisite trials.
CCTS Director of Special Populations and UAB Minority Health & Health Disparities Research Center Director Dr. Mona Fouad has developed a successful program that addresses low health literacy by training community members of underserved populations to work as patient navigators (PNs) for clinical trial recruitment. The Increasing Minority Participation in Clinical Trials (IMPaCT) Program was implemented at UAB in 2006 to help identify and overcome barriers to participation. PNs communicate with patients in non-clinical, plain language, explaining the purpose of potential trials, reviewing consent forms and treatment plans, and answering questions about any issues that could pose a problem for retaining patients in a trial. To learn more, see "Patient Navigation Workshop 'Trains the Trainer'."
The WIP seminar series is jointly coordinated by the UAB Center for Outcomes Effectiveness Research and Education (COERE), the Deep South Musculoskeletal Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTs), the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, and the CCTS. Visit our events page and subscribe to CCTS Digest to hear about future learning opportunities.
The potential benefits of being mentored are undeniable. Mentors can provide useful advice on establishing academic independence, writing grants and manuscripts, progressing toward promotion, and tenure. They also can offer less concrete but no less valuable insights on organizational culture, work-life balance, and long-term professional growth. Mentors can benefit from the relationship as well, as mentoring has been shown to increase retention of new recruits, improve faculty morale, and reduce stress and burnout.
So why is the mentoring relationship so tricky? And where do you turn when you have an issue with a mentor or mentee?
The CCTS' Case Studies in Mentoring offers support for anyone seeking or involved in a mentoring relationship. Whether you are a seasoned faculty member with years of mentoring experience or a new investigator wondering how to find or keep a mentor, this series of mentoring discussion topics offers a helpful venue to discuss some of the common and less common mentor challenges.
More than 25 attendees have participated in the first few weeks of the series, exploring how to maintain effective communication, align expectations, assess understanding, and foster independence. The highlight for most attendees has been the shared “lessons learned” concerning specific mentoring challenges. As Adam Wende, PhD, assistant professor, Dept. of Pathology, said, “It has been a great platform for colleagues, both senior and junior, to share their experiences, conflicts, and resolutions on how to be a better mentor.”
The series offers a certificate for those who participate in all eight topics. Each topic is offered twice a week, and attendance is capped at 15 to ensure everyone has a chance to participate in the discussion. CCTS has announced new dates for the next 8-week series, which will meet on Weds. 8-9am and Fridays noon-1pm starting Wed. Oct. 11.
Wende encourages others to attend the entire series: “Each of the sessions to date has provided a unique and useful nugget of information, especially for a relatively junior faculty member such as myself. I recommend the mentoring series for faculty of all levels.”
Help us promote Case Studies in Mentoring by downloading our flyer. For information on other CCTS learning opportunities visit our upcoming events and recurring events pages and subscribe to CCTS Digest.
Attendees at this week’s Innovation by Design workshop quickly realized this was not going to be a “check my email while listening with half an ear” kind of training.
Within five minutes, Dr. Molly Wasko, CCTS Executive Council member and Associate Dean for Research, Innovation, and Faculty Success at UAB’s Collat School of Business, had everyone in the hall standing in a circle and cheering as she reviewed thea rules for the next 60-plus minutes: “Celebrate our values! Keep adding to the ideas of others, say ‘yes and’—no ‘yes buts’! And remember to celebrate others.”
Wearing bright green t-shirts with the slogan “Innovation Boot Camp—Problem Solving + Design Thinking = Innovation” emblazoned on the back, Dr. Wasko and her team then led the group through a “Design Thinking primer.” Step one was to trash everyone’s name tags, because the next hour would be spent redesigning the “introduction experience.”
The exercise consisted of finding a partner, planning an interview that would build rapport and elicit stories from the partner, analyzing notes on what was heard for deeper inferences, developing a brainstorming topic, working with a collaborator to think of additional ideas, sketching out one of the ideas, then testing it with the initial partner. The goal was to demonstrate the underlying Design Thinking philosophy: “do not lose sight of the people in a problem.” It moved attendees through the five stages of the Design Thinking process:
- Empathize: develop a deeper understanding of the challenge
- Define: clearly articulate the problem you want to solve
- Ideate: brainstorm potential solutions from which a team will select one for further development
- Prototype: design an example or several examples of your solution
- Test: engage in a continuous short-cycle innovation process to continually improve the solution design
“Design Thinking seeks to understand the future user of a solution and refine ideas based on our future users’ feedback,” Wasko said. “Innovation isn’t a mystery, but a repeatable process, aided by shared language and activities. Like scientists, we test hypotheses before we fall in love with our own solution.”
This thought-provoking, high-energy workshop will come around again (in response to user feedback, of course!), so stay tuned to our Events page and CCTS Digest for announcements.