ycci leaders and staff members sit on the external scientific advisory boards of other ctsas and chair many national work groups. ycci leaders have also reviewed grant proposals for other institutions seeking a ctsa, many of which have gone on to receive awards. Sherwin leads by example through his position as chair of the advisory board for Washington University and as a member of the boards of Columbia University and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Tesheia Johnson, associate director for clinical research for the Yale School of Medicine and ycci’s chief operating officer, is a member of the advisory boards of the ctsas of the Mayo Clinic, New York University, and the University of Florida; she has also co-chaired four national ctsa key function committees, including the administration committee, the clinical research management committee, and the regulatory knowledge and support committee. She currently co-chairs the consortium management group ( cmg ), which applies such accepted business and organizational practices as enhanced communication strategies and project management to the work of the consortium. The cmg was formed in October 2009, and presently consists of five ctsa administrators selected by principal investigator nomination and approved by the National Center for Research Resources (ncrr); one ncrr supervisory medical officer; one staff member from the office of the ncrr director; one ncrr senior management/operations official; and one project manager from the contract coordinating center. “It’s an unusual model and an exciting one,” said Johnson, referring to the cmg. “We’ve known for centuries that science advances when professionals get together and build on each other’s discoveries. Clinical and translational research demand a sophisticated infrastructure, so administration is critical to this work.” This view is shared by ycci leadership, which is the reason why the Yale ctsa organized and hosted the first national meeting of ctsa administrators in Washington, D.C., in 2008. In 2009 Yale hosted meetings of ctsa administrators from Duke University, the Mayo Clinic, Washington University, and the University of California, San Francisco to compare notes on strategies, best practices, and programs. And in September 2010, the Yale ctsa organized and hosted an orientation meeting for administrators from the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Yale who serve with Johnson on the consortium’s child health oversight committee. This group provides a unique national forum for ctsa investigators and nih scientists to identify opportunities to collaborate on facilitating child health clinical and translational research through the ctsa program.
Face-to-Face Interactions National conferences have been an important strategy to advance work through collaboration between sites. To promote this strategy, Yale has organized a series of three annual national meetings in Washington, D.C., focused on enhancing clinical research management. ycci also manages a grant for the National Center for Research Resources
Stacey Scirocco, associate director for administration and operations for YCCI, plays an important role in national leadership in the CTSA consortium. Scirocco is co-leader of the Yale-Mayo Clinic project on sharing best practices and is a member of both the administration and communication key function committees (KFCs). She also led a “Tiger Team” from the CTSA communications KFC to develop a CTSA consortium communications plan. Thomas T. Fogg, MS, MPH, executive director of operations of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.
(ncrr) of the National Institutes of Health, which funds the meeting. The proceedings of the second annual meeting will be published in the journal, Clinical and Translational Science, so that the findings discussed at the conference can be shared with a much wider audience. An increasingly popular event, the third annual national workshop drew 400 people. “Last year’s workshop was a wonderful opportunity for participants from across nih and ctsa and non-ctsa sites to come together and exchange ideas,” said Johnson. “We are hoping for an even larger gathering next June, with more opportunities to learn from each other.” “The ctsa consortium is a complex, diverse, dispersed, and growing organization, involving thousands of faculty and staff from 55 academic health centers as well as the nih,” said Thomas T. Fogg, ms, mph, executive director of operations of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (ctsi) of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. “Communication is just as essential to success as strategic planning, organizational management, and a clear sense of priorities.” Worth the Time For ycci’s leadership, the time spent working with other ctsa sites, serving on national committees to develop best practices, and organizing events at which trainees can interact with their peers is an important component of what ycci intends to accomplish. By adopting a scientific approach to managing clinical trials—using metrics to measure the efficiency of time to study initiation, for example—the faster clinical trials can get under way, and the faster new treatments can be developed. “It’s worth the extra effort to forge relationships with other ctsas because it helps us do our job better,” said Sherwin. “And that means better care for patients.” ycci.yale.edu
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