Harvard Catalyst Program Breaks Down Barriers to Collaboration

Just 108 days after Harvard University received a CTSA, the Harvard Catalyst Web site went live to introduce Harvard Catalyst—the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center. On the same day, a request for proposals for Harvard Catalyst pilot grants was distributed throughout the Harvard clinical and translational research community. Since then, the Web site has had 35,000 visits, and the program has had 607 pilot grant applications.

Harvard Catalyst program leaders have been streamlining four General Clinical Research Centers into one Human Research Laboratory and making the distributed resources of 18 academic health care centers and 10 Harvard University schools accessible to all Harvard clinical and translational researchers. Program leaders are also bringing Harvard thought leaders together to find efficient solutions to long-standing regulatory and administrative barriers to collaboration. The program includes three research navigators: Ph.D.-level scientists charged with facilitating collaborations and access to shared resources across the vast research landscape at Harvard and its affiliates. The navigators are the eyes and ears of Harvard Catalyst, identifying scientific, administrative, or regulatory roadblocks and working with researchers to overcome them.

The Harvard Catalyst Web site is more than a simple repository for information. It is the online manifestation of Harvard Catalyst’s three strategic goals: to create connections, to be at the cutting edge of every endeavor, and to nurture clinical and translational researchers. In short, Harvard Catalyst CAN. The Web site includes the following:

• Profiles, a social networking application that displays faculty descriptions (e.g., titles, affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address). Profiles also creates both passive networks that are formed automatically when faculty share common traits, such as researching the same topics (as defined by keywords assigned to publications), and active networks when faculty identify others as collaborators, advisors, or advisees.
• Medvane, an automated bibliome mining system that analyzes articles from PubMed in the contexts of journal, author, subject, and gene
• The Leder Human Biology Ph.D. Program, which provides students committed to careers in translational research with the fundamentals of human biology and disease
• Coordination of master’s degree programs in biomedical informatics, biostatistics, and clinical effectiveness; the Scholars in Clinical Science postgraduate training program; and the new Harvard K12 multidisciplinary master’s degree program
• A clinical and translational colloquium series geared to the needs of young clinical investigators that includes specialized nano-courses in clinical research imaging and genetics
• Consultation services for biostatistics, imaging, and genetics
• A searchable compendium of the conferences and seminars available at the 18 academic health care centers and Harvard Medical School
• A comprehensive and searchable directory of core facilities available to members of the Harvard research community
• The Pathology Specimen Locator, a core facility created and managed by the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center that allows investigators to find and obtain formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues from the archives of the pathology departments at participating Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals. With the Pathology Specimen Locator, investigators can identify archived tissues, determine which blocks are appropriate for their research, get assistance with institutional review board approval, and obtain requested tissue blocks.

As new tools, technologies, and collaboration mechanisms become viable, they will become publicly available on the Harvard Catalyst Web site.

Administration Key Function Committee Takes a Broad View of CTSA Supervision

The Administration Key Function Committee (KFC) brings together administrators from CTSA institutions to share best practices. It serves as a forum to facilitate discussion of grants management, inter- and intra-institutional collaboration, and facilitate overall program management in support of principal investigators (PIs). The Administration KFC enables critical networking among CTSA administrators and provides a mechanism for leveraging the lessons learned at individual CTSA institutions to benefit other institutions across the national consortium.

Furthering the Consortium’s Strategic Goals

At its October meeting, the Administration KFC discussed the four major strategic goals identified by the CTSA Consortium Steering Committee (CCSC) and the CCSC’s intention to structure the CTSA Consortium’s committees and workgroups around those goals. To assist in this process, the Administration KFC will evaluate in depth the activities and mission of each of the existing committees and workgroups, map the activities to the four strategic goals, and propose options for restructuring. Furthermore, the Administration KFC will propose a consistent governance structure for all committees that supports productivity and communication, and it will suggest a streamlined process for creating, evaluating, and disbanding committees to ensure that they remain accountable and productive.

The clarification of strategic goals and reorganization of the consortium committees is providing an opportunity for CTSA administrators to demonstrate that they not only provide support to the PIs but also are integral partners in achieving the goals of the consortium. Three administrators have volunteered to serve on each strategic goal committee to assist the PI leaders of those committees, and other administrators have offered to participate as committee members.

Focusing on CTSA Institutions’ Administrative Issues

Since its inception in 2007, the Administration KFC has had three major initiatives. The Annual Progress Report and Grants Management meetings have brought CTSA administrators and NCRR staff together to discuss the CTSA’s reporting requirements and financial issues, respectively. The Progress Report calls are an opportunity for an administrative and technical representative from each CTSA to share information and for NCRR program, grants management, and technical leads to address questions about the non-competitive renewal applications, including electronic reporting of certain information.  In addition to weekly calls near the time reports are due, a searchable web-based site is utilized by NCRR and the CTSAs for posting and addressing questions as they arise . Using previous years’ questions, NCRR staffers have developed detailed guidelines to demystify the process for new CTSA awardees. This year’s weekly Progress Report calls will begin in early December.

Through monthly calls and the wiki, the Grants Management group facilitates communication between NCRR staff and grants management staff at CTSA institutions to address, finalize, and archive questions about CTSA grants management. The group also shares information about the processes that the CTSA institutions use and encourages communication among institutions.

A third administrators’ project is focusing on the transition from pre-CTSA to CTSA, with the aim of identifying and disseminating lessons learned from the process. The Transition group is gathering information about how the awardees instituted and have modified their programs and infrastructure since receiving CTSA funding. Several institutions have described their processes already, and newer CTSA awardees have said the information is helpful.

Finally, NCRR staff and Administration KFC volunteers are planning a workshop on leveraging core resources across institutes and centers (2009) and another on applying business management practices (2010).