Southwest Center for Advancing Clinical and Translational Innovation (SW CACTI) - To remove barriers to translational science, accelerate clinical translational innovation, and improve health outcomes in the United States Southwest (SW) region, the University of New Mexico (UNM) and the University of Arizona have partnered to form the Southwest Center for Advancing Clinical and Translational Innovation (SW CACTI). Since its inception in 2010, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)-funded UNM Clinical and Translational Science Center has had a transformational impact on the scientific landscape of New Mexico (NM). Building on this success, our new visionary partnership will address common regional health concerns, including: (1) disproportionately burdensome conditions affecting rural populations, and (2) unique geography, and barriers to quality healthcare access. NM and Arizona together have large, rural populations and significant numbers of our populations living in rural/frontier counties. The region faces common (e.g., opioid crisis, mental health, restricted access to quality healthy foods) and unique (e.g., valley fever, hantavirus) health challenges. Critically, our region requires clinical and translational science (CTS). This task demands a skilled clinical and translational research (CTR) workforce, which we have carefully cultivated at our institutions and will continue to grow through SW CACTI. Along with our respective institutional leadership, we are committed to creating, monitoring, and maintaining successful, responsible, easily accessible research environments with an ethos of collaboration. We are positioned to develop, uptake, and efficiently disseminate these innovative CTS solutions and trainings across the national CTSA consortium. We will accelerate our effectiveness and meaningfully advance the vision of SW CACTI and the NCATS CTSA Program by achieving measurable goals and objectives for a thriving CTS environment through these Specific Aims: Aim 1. Discover scientific and operational CTS innovations within the SW CACTI partnership and adopt externally developed innovations supported by new cross-cutting workgroups in key areas that intersect with and augment the scientific, outreach, and training activities of the CTSA consortium. Aim 2. Engage and serve SW communities through people- and patient-centric strategies and CTS experimental approaches that identify, employ, and disseminate best practices for CTR, multidisciplinary workforce development, and community outreach. Aim 3. Provide cutting-edge research resources and services to address vital needs and critical barriers and to catalyze innovations across the multiple stages of CTS. Aim 4. Expand innovative CTS training platforms with a range of opportunities across multiple workforce development areas, including a clinical research staff professional career pathway program that facilitates high-quality CTS/R and addresses clinical and biomedical challenges unique to our region.
