The Montana Clinical and Translational Research Center - Overall Project Summary / Abstract.
With just over a million people in the entire state, Montana lacks an adequate healthcare infrastructure
throughout our rural areas, contributing to significant and prevalent health disparity issues. These issues can
be directly addressed by investing in clinical and translational (C&T) research. As noted in our letters of
support, the University of Montana has numerous C&T investigators from a variety of disciplines, but uniformly
working with clinical partners on C&T research is not common. We have assembled a strong team of both
clinical and public health partners (Partner Organizations), allowing us to not only grow C&T research capacity
but also to translate research findings to our “communities”, which includes our new Practice-Based Research
Network, rural clinical sites, public health / tribal health departments, and community members themselves.
Our team has extensive experience working within the Clinical and Translational Research (CTR) funding
mechanism, participating in Core Director roles in the Mountain West CTR Infrastructure Network (Mountain
West CTR-IN) for the last 10 years. In addition, we already have strong, existing relationships with clinical and
public health stakeholders throughout our state. With an evaluation plan consisting of a mixed method design,
we will test the overall hypothesis that the Montana Clinical and Translational Center (Montana CTRC) will
significantly build C&T research capacity in our rural and underserved state. We will test this hypothesis
through three Aims: Aim 1) Provide mentorship and workforce professional development to enhance the
capacity and infrastructure in conducting C&T research, Aim 2) Administer clinical and translational research
projects, and Aim 3) Integrate translational research within community settings.
