Mailman School of Public Health faculty member Melissa Begg, ScD, has been named co-director of a new Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, part of a national consortium focused on innovation, streamlining and expediting clinical research. One of 12 grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the new center is expected to transform how clinical and translational research is conducted across the nation.
The $54 million award by NIH announced in October 2006, is part of the NIH?s Roadmap for Medical Research, whose goal is to accelerate medical discovery and improve health. The grant, which will establish the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (CTR), will help re-engineer how research is conducted, from focusing on a single approach to problem-solving to a model characterized by multi-disciplinary teams who collaborate to transform basic discoveries into new treatments for patients. Dr. Begg will serve as co-director of the Irving Institute. Henry Ginsberg, MD, Irving Professor of Medicine, and principal investigator on the grant, will serve as director.
"Effective collaboration and communication are crucial to the research enterprise," said Lee Goldman, MD, MPH, executive vice president of Columbia University and dean of the faculties of health sciences and medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. "The CTSA Award will allow us to enhance the levels of collaboration, integration, and communication among our scientific community. It is vital to ensuring that CUMC continues to lead, to innovate, and to be a valuable partner with like-minded academic health centers now and into the future."
The establishment of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research is a first step in improving and restructuring to a more supportive environment for translational research. "The Irving Institute CTR will centralize and expand core resources that are available to clinical researchers, such as the Mailman School?s already distinctive Biostatistics Department consulting service," noted Allan Rosenfield, MD, dean of the Mailman School. "I truly am delighted that one of the Mailman School?s outstanding faculty members in Biostatistics is co-directing this important new initiative at Columbia."
As a member of the Mailman School faculty, Dr. Begg's primary focus has been the development and administration of training programs for clinical investigators. In addition to clinical research education, Dr. Begg has contributed to research in the areas of oral health, mental health, categorical data analysis, and statistical methods for analyzing clustered data, for which she also received an NIH award. In addition to her activities at the Irving Center for Clinical Research, she also serves as the director of academic programs for the Department of Biostatistics.
"The development of this consortium represents the first systematic change in our approach to clinical research in 50 years," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "Working together, these sites will serve as discovery engines that will improve medical care by applying new scientific advances to real world practice. We expect to see new approaches reach underserved populations, local community organizations, and health care providers to ensure that medical advances are reaching the people who need them."
About the Mailman School of Public Health
The only accredited school of public health in New York City, and among the first in the nation, Columbia University?s Mailman School of Public Health provides instruction and research opportunities to more than 950 graduate students in pursuit of masters and doctoral degrees. Its students and more than 300 multi-disciplinary faculty engage in research and service in the city, nation, and around the world, concentrating on biostatistics, environmental health sciences, epidemiology, health policy and management, population and family health, and sociomedical sciences. (www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu)