NJ ACTS: A Platform for Translational Science in New Jersey - After 4 years, the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS), a partnership among four institutions, Rutgers, Princeton Universities, the New Jersey Institute for Technology, and RWJBarnabas Health, has profoundly altered the trajectory of clinical and translational science and research across NJ. Designated as a Hub in 2018, NJ ACTS soon faced a devastating pandemic that served as a springboard to reimagine how we provided our services and facilitated research despite multiple logistic, staffing, recruitment, and safety challenges. From these experiences, NJ ACTS can now reimage its programs and services to catalyze breakthroughs in practices and policies that impact health. In the next 7 years, NJ ACTS will address and overcome challenges and barriers that impede the progress of translation and the adoption of evidence-based processes that will impact the health of NJ. Our approach to providing these solutions will be accelerated by our strengths in dissemination and implementation (D&I) science, informatics, clinical trial performance, and our ability to provide translational science services across the ecosystem. NJ ACTS seeks to advance CTS by developing, demonstrating, and disseminating best-in-class processes, services, and training that incorporate and advance team science, D&I science, health policy, and the learning health system. We will incorporate our communities into our work, understanding their priorities and concerns as Americans. In this way and especially through a participant population representing the totality of the US, we will advance our understanding of the heterogeneity of the disease and response to therapy and address health care delivery. In Aim 1, NJ ACTS will provide a sustainable infrastructure that will provide access to unique study cohorts, tools, and opportunities. Aim 2 will use our strengths in community engagement to develop innovative interdisciplinary approaches to improve population health. Aim 3 will enhance our workforce through targeted training, recognizing their achievements through digital badging and certificates. In Aim 4, we will integrate large and disparate databases with the EHR to provide reliable, comprehensive, and shareable data for interventional or observational clinical trial research, which in turn will provide a roadmap to enhance healthcare delivery in individuals, communities, and populations. In partnership with the Consortium, we will propel CTS discovery, dissemination, and implementation. Success will be defined using rigorous evaluation science approaches that will provide directions for continuous improvement.
