Request for Communication Liaison

The RTRN INSIDER, your monthly e-newsletter, allows us to include more content in each month’s issue, and we need your help identifying important announcements, events and research activities occurring at your sites.

We recently requested that each of the 18 RCMIs submit the name of an individual(s) that would serve as the site’s communication liaison. As of June 30, 2009, we have received commitments from six RCMI institutions: University of Texas at El Paso, Morehouse School of Medicine, Florida A&M, Charles Drew, University of Hawaii and Universidad Central del Caribe.

The Communications Division of RTRN is committed to assisting the RCMI’s in its effort to promote the outstanding, newsworthy activities occurring at the centers. Your communications liaison will work closely with the communications division to ensure your sites information is regularly posted to the web site, disseminated to the community via LISTSERV, and included in the RTRN INSIDER and the IN THE NEWS e-articles.

We must work together to keep all the members of RTRN informed and aware of the exciting events, discoveries and collaboration happening at the various sites. Please forward the name, e-mail address and phone number of your site’s communication liaison tocommunications@rtrn.net.
As always, the RTRN INSIDER continues to serve as a tool for the RCMI community that can showcase the great work and achievements of the individuals and teams at our institutions.
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Investigator Meeting and Training Initiated

The Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) at Charles Drew University (CDU), Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), and Jackson State University (JSU) have approved version 2.0 of the protocol. Version 3.0 has been approved by the NIH DSMB as well as the IRB at MSM, with JSU approving enrollment at that site. IRB approval at CDU is pending. The Case Report Forms (CRFs) are fully approved, as are the Data Validation Plan and the Annotations. The database build has begun and is slated for release in August. The Investigator meeting and General Process / MOP training (a two-day web conference) began on Thursday July 23. Patient screening is scheduled to start July 27.

RTRN Steering Committee has a New Chairwoman

The network moves into year three with new leadership at the helm of the RTRN Steering Committee. In addition to her many responsibilities and roles at Meharry Medical College and throughout the scientific community, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, has accepted the position of RTRN Steering Committee Chairwoman for 2009-2010. Since officially assuming her duties in July, Dr. Montgomery Rice has expeditiously addressed pending activities and begun setting Year 3 committee goals and objectives.

Dr. Montgomery Rice is optimistic and enthusiastic about the Steering Committee and subcommittees’ ability to help the researchers in the network. She sees the Steering Committee leading the charge to communicate more effectively with the researchers to encourage and increase their participation in RTRN-initiated projects, deciding on the network’s research priorities related to the five specific disease areas: HIV, Cardiovascular, Cancer, Diabetes/Metabolic, and Neurology, as well as ensuring the community is engaged in all the network’s activities.

As a first of her many responsibilities as Chair, Dr. Montgomery Rice initiated a series of one-on-one meetings with each subcommittee chair/co-chair. The meetings allowed both Dr. Montgomery Rice and the subcommittee chairs to review the group’s previously established priorities to ensure these objectives remained in line and consistent with the specific aims of the network. Together, Dr. Montgomery Rice and the subcommittee chairs identified 2-3 objectives/items to complete in year three. The subcommittees’ efforts and outcomes pertaining to the newly established priorities will be presented during the Steering Committee meeting scheduled for September 14, in Washington, D.C.

Additional efforts will focus on establishing a strong relationship between the Steering Committee and the translational research clusters, and making certain that the activities of the subcommittees will support the work occurring in the clusters. Dr. Montgomery Rice knows that RTRN is all about research and providing the necessary tools to ensure the RCMI scientists can generate ideas, turn those ideas into feasible projects, and produce outcomes which can be shared and incorporated into the underserved communities to address health disparities. She mentioned the work of the Ethics & Regulatory subcommittee; noting their work to unify the RCMI IRBs into a central IRB that can expedite the approval of protocols submitted to the network is one approach to providing improved tools and resources for the research clusters. All the subcommittee projects are created with the purpose of bolstering the research agenda.

Dr. Montgomery Rice plans to keep the DTCC heavily involved in these activities. Additionally, she will continue to promote and encourage the members to utilize the web site and the secure portal for information exchange and sharing. She stated, “DTCC is our communications hub. The center is providing useful tools and technologies to aid our projects and it is extremely important that our researchers become more comfortable with incorporating these resources in to their processes.” She continued, “The fact that one can search and find information on the web site or use the RTRN portal to streamline our processes and expedite knowledge transfer while maintaining a secure and compliant working environment is significant.”
Dr. Montgomery Rice is setting the example by utilizing the secure RTRN Portal to post her Steering Committee documents and sharing pertinent information across the RCMI community via the multi-media/communication resources available to the network.

Subcommittee Leadership, Present at July 16 Steering Committee Meeting

Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice (Meharry Medical College) has quickly assumed her duties as the chair for the RTRN Steering Committee. She has met with all the chairs of the subcommittees to outline their Year 3 goals and objectives; she’s been working with the DTCC to organize the Portal workspaces to ensure the subcommittees have access to support documents and materials to assist with the implementation of their projects and activities, and on July 16, she has hosted the second Steering Committee meeting via teleconference. Each of the subcommittee chairs provided the members with a brief update of their committees’ activities:

Education & Dissemination subcommittee, led by Dr. Rosanne Harrigan (University of Hawaii), is identifying and evaluating online courses available in health disparities and ensuring those courses are available through the network. Their goal is to establish a comprehensive curriculum in Health Disparities Research and a complete web-based module on Participatory Research. Once completed, RTRN members can be certified in these programs.

The Education & Dissemination subcommittee meets every second Tuesday of the month.

The Ethics & Regulatory Subcommittee has submitted a grant application in response to the Recovery Act Limited Competition: “NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research” (RC1) (RFA-OD-09-003). The proposal is entitled “Ethical Issues Associated with Electronic Sharing of Health Information” (02-OD (OSP)-103). Ethics & Regulatory subcommittee is working on improving the IRB approval process for network researchers, increasing awareness of technology transfer and creating templates for material agreements, etc.

The Ethics & Regulator Subcommittee meets every second Thursday of the month.

Community Engagement Subcommittee

The Community Engagement subcommittee plans to submit a proposal to the Steering Committee to approve an on-site retreat to cover community participation. Community representatives from various organizations would participate in the exchange.

The Community Engagement subcommittee meets the first Wednesday of the month.

Core Resources Subcommittee is seeking to increase membership. The subcommittee has been identifying shared capabilities across the network. The group conducted a needs assessment to determine the resources and capabilities available at the RCMI centers. The subcommittee still needs responses from several of the institutions. Please complete the CORE RESOURCES NEEDS ASSESSMENT at https://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/164b0g3932a.

Protocol Review subcommittee is seeking to increase membership. Dr. Vincent C. Bond, Morehouse School of Medicine, has accepted the role of co-chair for this committee. The subcommittee is actively reviewing the applications submitted for the RTRN Small Grants Program. This subcommittee will make recommendations about the Small Grants Applications to the RTRN Steering Committee and NCRR.

Publications & Presentations subcommittee has been working on a supplement of 4-6 manuscripts for the “Ethnicity & Disease” Journal. The subcommittee is developing a roster of manuscripts reviewers; this list will be provided at the Steering Committee meeting in September.

Research subcommittee is working with the Protocol Review subcommittee in the review of RTRN Small Grants applications. The group continues to support the work of the clusters to generate new research projects.

Translational Informatics Subcommittee has elected Dr. Ahmed Fadiel (Meharry Medical College) as Chair and M. Theresa Perry (DTCC-Jackson State University) as Co-chair. Dr. Robert Dottin (Hunter College-CUNY) will serve as the recorder. Many of the members will participate in the NCIBI Summer Workshop at the end of the month. The subcommittee has developed and completed a survey to determine the needs and capabilities available for informatics across the network. The survey will be disseminated the first week of August. The group is working on a translational informatics project, MATRIX, a tool for identifying collaborators and resources.
If you would like more information about the Translational Informatics subcommittee, contact Dr. Fadiel at afadiel@mmc.edu or http://www.rtrn.net/subcommittee_wg/translational_subcommittee.htm.

The Translational Informatics subcommittee meets every third Friday of the month.

The subcommittees should be prepared to provide status reports at the September 14, 2009 Steering Committee Meeting. A dial-in number will be available for members unable to attend the meeting.
For additional information about the RTRN Subcommittees, visit http://www.rtrn.net/subcommittee_wg/rtrn_subcommittees.htm.

RTRN Represents at 2009 HealthGrid Conference in (Berlin, Germany)

Bioinformatics and Computational Biology working group chair, Dr. Raphael Isokephi (Jackson State University) and Dr. M. Edwina Barnett, DTCC Program Director are attending the 2009 HealthGrid Conference in Berlin, Germany. Both will present posters on the Network’s collaborative research efforts and available technology. Their efforts will focus on identifying ways that RTRN might work as a partner to the international organization. More than 300 computer scientists, physicians, medical educators and students, epidemiologists, bioinformatics and medical informatics experts, military medicine specialists, security and policy makers, economists and futurists are expected to attend. The HealthGrid conference is the premier conference on the transformation of biomedical research, education and medical care through the application of Grid technologies. HealthGrid is dedicated to:

• Enhancing biomedical research and healthcare delivery

• Creating an open collaborative virtual community

• Communicating the collective knowledge of the HealthGrid community

RCMI Principal Investigators Meeting
Date: Monday, September 14, 2009
Time: 8:00 AM
Location: NIH

RTRN Steering Committee Meeting
Date: Monday, September 14, 2009 at 3:00pm
Location: NIH
(Dial-in number is available for those unable to attend)

NARRC Council Meeting
Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2009
(There will be a videocast of this meeting for persons unable to attend. Go to NIH.gov)

Symposium on Nonhuman Primate Models for AIDS
Date: October 28 -31, 2009
Location: Hyatt Harborside Hotel
Boston, Massachusetts
For more information, visit http://www.rtrn.net/events/upcoming_events.htm

Innovation Acceleration Partnership Fellowships Research and Invention to Benefit Mankind

• positions in one of the nation’s top research environments
• broaden your understanding of technology transfer and commercialization
• partner with expert faculty to pursue starting a venture
• competitive salary and benefits

Sponsored by Washing University in St. Louis, University of Missouri-Columbia, Center for Emerging Technologies, Innovate St. Louis, BioGenrator and National Science Foundation (NSF).
For more information, visit http://www.rtrn.net/news/special_announcements.htm

Site tool for identifying collaborators

Check out “SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS” on the homepage. New and exciting opportunities are being posted regularly.

Enhance your search for collaborators. Post your Request for Collaborators on the site. Click the “MULTI-SITE COLLABORATIONS” link on the homepage. Send you requests to communications@rtrn.net for posting.