What is the role of the pharmacy community in the NIH CTSAs?
There is enthusiastic support for the CTSA program within the pharmacy academic community, and most see this program as an opportunity, not a risk. Strategic, advanced planning will ensure that ongoing academic programs and specialty areas can continue alongside and/or mesh with newly developed CTSA programs and curricula. In addition, there is general consensus that clinical research with a specific pharmacotherapy component can be effectively designed into a CTSA proposal, given careful planning. Most important is that faculty at schools of pharmacy be fully integrated with CTSA activities and leadership beginning with the application-writing phase and continuing throughout the development and implementation of CTSA programs. Care should be taken to diversify pharmacy participation within an institution’s CTSA applications to avoid being “sliced out” if created as an overly modular, “line-item” component. However, for efficiency, the components of different extramural training applic
