CTSA ‘road show’ introduces service offerings to researchers on their home ground

The Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) service cores that provide clinical and translational research support to investigative teams across the Buffalo Translational Consortium (BTC) decided to take their show “on the road” this year, to visit the health sciences research faculty of the University at Buffalo and its BTC partner institutions on their home turf.

The first stop on the road show tour was the University at Buffalo’s School of Nursing in September. Representatives from the CTSA presented during a lunch-hour session. The presenters were Timothy Murphy, MD, CTRC director and CTSA principal investigator; Sanjay Sethi, MD, director of UB’s Clinical Research Office; Gregory Wilding, PhD, director of the CTSA’s Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design core; and Laurene Tumiel-Berhalter, PhD, director of the CTSA’s Community Engagement core.

“The purpose of the program was to familiarize the School of Nursing faculty, graduate students and staff with the breadth of services provided by the CTSA,” said Sethi, “and to introduce them to some of the core directors and staff of the CTSA and show them how to access the services.”

CTSA staffers introduced themselves and outlined their core offerings during the first 30 minutes of the session and then engaged in a lively Q&A period with attendees for the remainder of the meeting.

The idea for the road show emerged from a CTSA forum and leadership retreat held in March.

Yu-Ping Chang, PhD, RN, associate dean for research and scholarship and associate professor in the School of Nursing, invited the team to come out to Wende Hall on the South Campus to make the presentation.

“I always am looking to support and improve the research efforts of our nursing faculty and students,” she said. “Several of our faculty had positive experiences with the CTSA, but others needed to know what was available, so a chance to meet and talk seemed wise. ... We heard nursing faculty who want assistance with contracts, with statistical analysis and planning, with locating primary care partners for future projects, and for grant support for mixed-methods proposals.”

The feedback received during the session was two-way. “The presentation was very well attended, there were some excellent questions in the end,” said Sethi. " and we also got some good ideas, such as preparing modular descriptions of CTSA services for grant writing purposes.”

Added Chang: “The presentation was a nice way to begin our ‘Lunch and Learn’ series for the fall. We were impressed with the resources that CTSA has to offer. It gets our students and faculty thinking about how they can best use (those resources) in furthering their studies. It also set a positive tone as to the support and resources available for doing good work. I believe it will lead to more and better collaborations.”

Sethi said the responses CTSA presenters heard from attendees were “uniformly positive.” The visit to the School of Nursing was the first of what he said are likely to be another 20 “road show” appearances in the next three months.

“I am happy that we were the first school to ask for this type of interaction,” said Chang. “Sometimes it’s nice to be out in front.”