What are the critical considerations in crafting and negotiating a fair and appropriate clinical trial budget? Join us on Wed. July 5th for a discussion of the financial realities and hidden costs of implementing a clinical trial. Discover how other clinical trial experts get the best deal for their research units.

The 4th annual CCTS CEI will take place on Fri., Oct. 6th, at the BJCC. The theme is "Community Engagement and Environmental Renewal (CHEER) for Civil Inclusion and Empowerment." CEI 2017 will feature two keynote speakers: President and CEO of Associated Black Charities Mrs. Diane Bell McKoy and Dr. Errol Crook, Director of the Center for Healthy Communities and Chair of Internal Medicine, University of South Alabama College of Medicine.

Please take a moment to share your thoughts about our website and the CCTS Digest. How can we improve our communication efforts to better meet your information needs? Click through takes less than 5 minutes although we welcome more thoughtful replies.

Mark your calendar for Wed. June 28! CCTS will conduct a mock NIH study section review of a real R01 grant that successfully navigated the resubmission process to reach funded status. Register soon, seats fill up fast!

Eleven teams are trained and ready to connect with potential "target customers," including engineers, radiologists, pharma VPs, clinicians who use PEG tubes or who care for stroke patients, helicopter pilots, patient safety officers, young single teen moms, and biomed operations officers. If you are an expert in only these categories, please say "yes" to a brief interview with our intrepid scientist-entrepreneurs!

Cosponsored with the UAB Informatics Institute, this 8-week informatics overview kicks off next Wed. June 14 with “What is Informatics? Why Should I Care?” Open to all levels (student to professor). Free unless taken for credit. Drop ins welcome. Participants may attend individual sessions or the entire series.

Dr. James Willig, CCTS Informatics Co-Director and UAB Assistant Dean of Clinical Education, explained what inspired him to create the Kaizen online gaming environment, the behavioral theories that helped fuel its success, and how the platform has evolved to enable enhanced learning and knowledge retention across a wide variety of curricula.

Would you like to know what common pitfalls to avoid when preparing a paper for this venerable high-impact peer-reviewed journal? Ever wondered how to get more deeply involved in scholarly publishing for medical education, training, research, and policy? Editor-in-Chief David P. Sklar, MD, will take to Twitter on June 13, from 1 to 2pm CT, to discuss topics with broad appeal to the academic medicine community. To join, tweet @AcadMedJournal #AsktheEditor.

Does Digest provide news you can use? Is our website wonderful or woeful? To better serve your information needs, please take our 5-minute survey. Responses, due Monday, June 12, will be anonymous.

Have fun while mastering required NIH policies for rigor, reproducibility, and transparency (R2T) in our online Kaizen game! The third round of this highly popular approach to learning competencies will run June 19-July 27. Originally designed by CCTS Informatics for federally funded trainees, Kaizen R2T is open to players at any professional level across the CCTS Partner Network.

Congratulations to our six CCTS Partner Network Multidisciplinary Pilot Program awardees for 2017. Their projects seek to address disparities in diseases disproportionately represented within the Deep South, including cystic fibrosis, cardiovascular disease, and several cancers. Stay tuned for the launch of our 2018 pilot program this August.

CCTS One Great Community partner, Innovate Birmingham, recently graduated its first class of Generation IT students. Some have already landed positions with the area’s biggest employers, including UAB. Help us share the news about this life-changing opportunity--the next class starts June 5.