What are the National Institutes of Health doing to enhancing clinical and translational sciences?
NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni has made clear that the discipline of clinical and translational sciences must develop further to bridge gaps between basic science discoveries and clinical applications. There are many important challenges to the clinical research enterprise: • Difficulty recruiting and retaining clinical researchers. • Increasing regulatory burden and overhead costs. • Fragmented training programs. • Limitations and barriers due to funding mechanisms, review and program structures. • Explosion in clinical service demands and reduction in financial margins at academic health centers. • Decreased valuation attached to translational science because of the “dilution” effect due to a marked in crease in numbers of faculty • The complexity of knowledge needed to be an effective clinical/translational scientist. • The absence of a true “academic home’ for young clinical faculty. On the last bullet above, the “academic home,” the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) h
