In 2006 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program, recognizing the need for a new impetus to encourage clinical and translational research. At the time it was very difficult to translate basic and clinical research into clinical and community practice; making it difficult for individual patients and communities to receive its benefits. Since its creation the CTSA Program has expanded, with 61 sites spread across the nation's academic health centers and other institutions, hoping to provide catalysts and test beds for policies and practices that can benefit clinical and translation research organizations throughout the country. The NIH contracted with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2012 to conduct a study to assess and provide recommendations on appropriateness of the CTSA Program's mission and strategic goals and whether changes were needed. The study was also address the implementation of the program by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) while exploring the CTSA's contributions in the acceleration of the development of new therapeutics. A 13-member committee was established to head this task; the committee had collective expertise in community outreach and engagement, public health and health policy, bioethics, education and training, pharmaceutical research and development, program evaluation, clinical and biomedical research, and child health research. The CTSA Program at NIH: Opportunities for Advancing Clinical and Translational Research is the result of investigations into previous program evaluations and assessments, open-session meetings and conference class, and the review of scientific literature. Overall, the committee believes that the CTSA Program is significant to the advancement of clinical and translational research through its contributions. The Program would benefit from a variety of revisions, however, to make it more efficient and effective.

To explore the role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in innovative drug development and its impact on patient access, the Board on Health Care Services and the Board on Health Sciences Policy of the National Academies jointly hosted a public workshop on July 24â€"25, 2019, in Washington, DC. Workshop speakers and participants discussed the ways in which federal investments in biomedical research are translated into innovative therapies and considered approaches to ensure that the public has affordable access to the resulting new drugs. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

In 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program – an institution-based grant intended to re-engineer the clinical research enterprise, speeding the time from pre-clinical discovery to the development of therapies to improve human health. As universities competed for CTSA funding and often struggled to develop or recalibrate institutional infrastructures and research support services, the face of pre-clinical and clinical research changed dramatically. These changes (and their intended and unintended consequences) introduced the possibility of new roles for health sciences librarians, creating novel opportunities to engage with researchers, research administrators and community members as active partners in the research enterprise. This book demystifies translational research by providing a comprehensive historical background and context on the CTSA program, including the impact of funding reductions and administrative changes. The highlight of the book are case studies by librarians from CTSA Consortium institutions. These case studies, including successes, challenges, and lessons learned, will detail specific routes to librarian involvement in translational research, including collection development, creating and maintaining relationships with researchers and administrators, instruction and training, data management, team science and more. The variety of case studies, including challenges and lessons learned, will help libraries that are looking for ways to engage the translational research audiences at their institutions, or those who currently work with CTS but face new challenges due to declining federal research funds, shifting institutional priorities, or other factors. The book will not be a comprehensive accounting of librarian engagement at each institutions but rather a sample of “best practices” to help librarians develop programs and relationships relevant to translational research, and a look at newly emerging opportunities to leverage skills in information organization and dissemination.

There is growing recognition that the United States' clinical trials enterprise (CTE) faces great challenges. There is a gap between what is desired - where medical care is provided solely based on high quality evidence - and the reality - where there is limited capacity to generate timely and practical evidence for drug development and to support medical treatment decisions. With the need for transforming the CTE in the U.S. becoming more pressing, the IOM Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation held a two-day workshop in November 2011, bringing together leaders in research and health care. The workshop focused on how to transform the CTE and discussed a vision to make the enterprise more efficient, effective, and fully integrated into the health care system. Key issue areas addressed at the workshop included: the development of a robust clinical trials workforce, the alignment of cultural and financial incentives for clinical trials, and the creation of a sustainable infrastructure to support a transformed CTE. This document summarizes the workshop.