AMDA Foundation - Foundation Represented at Cutting Edge Conference

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Vol XXV, Jun `06

Foundation Represented at Cutting Edge Conference

Vol XXV, June `06

AMDA Foundation staff members Gwendolyn Maddox and Barbara Calabrese recently attended an important conference that enabled government officials and national research leaders to gain a better understanding of clinical research networks. The NIH Roadmap Inventory and Evaluation of Clinical Research Networks (IECRN) National Leadership Forum, held May 31-June 1, also presented findings from an IECRN survey and examined ways to improve the infrastructure of clinical research networks and make recommendations for increasing their efficiency and effectiveness.

Among the survey findings:

Half of respondents had written policies or procedures regarding staff training with the use of such documents varying by primary type of study conducted and primary funding agency.
Sixteen percent of respondents said they have written policies for professional development activities. Forty percent without written policies had established informal practices for professional development.
Newer networks are most likely to provide financial support for site-level professional development activities. Overall, principal investigators, co-principal investigators, and new investigators are the most likely to participate in professional development programs.

The study also concluded that:

Lack of funding appears to limit the amount of professional development activity that takes place within a research network.
Networks that have a university affiliation appear to provide stronger professional development activities for their members. In part, this seems to be related to resources available at the academic institution.

Participants, including Maddox and Calabrese, had the opportunity to provide input into findings and best practice models used the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research in its ongoing discussion of re-engineering the clinical research enterprise. Among the attendees were principal investigators, epidemiologists, behavioral scientists, clinical study coordinators, pharmacists, biostatisticians, clinicians, data managers, and bioinformatics and information technologists. Speakers included NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, MD.

"Participation in the IECRN survey was a win-win opportunity for the Foundation because it afforded us the opportunity to add to NIH's understanding of clinical research networks and at the same time helped us to identify areas we could target to advance the Foundation's mission." said Barbara Calabrese, Director of Research for the AMDA Foundation.