Clinical and Translational Research Support Core

University of Massachusetts Medical School Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center
Center URL: http://www.umassmed.edu/iddrc
Core URL: http://umassmed.edu/iddrc/cores/clinical-and-translational-research-support-core.aspx

Core Personnel
Core Co-Director: Carol Curtin, MSW
Core Co-Director: Jean Frazier, MD

Core Keywords
Translational research; participant; recruitment; assessment; IRB interface; shared instrumentation

The Clinical and Translational Research Support Core serves the recruitment and instrumentation needs of IDDRC projects that study human participants by

• Ensuring that investigators have adequate well-characterized participants to fulfill their aims
• Providing information and coordination services regarding Institutional Review Board interface
• Coordinating access to and maintaining instrumentation that is shared across IDDRC laboratories

To ensure sufficient participant recruitment, the Clinical and Translational Research Support Core provides five principal services:

• Recruitment of participants;
• Assessment (including health screening), and preparation of participants for projects on an as-needed basis;
• Tracking of all participants recruited into different projects, and developing a database of specialized populations;
• Quality control, including project support/review by a multidisciplinary team of experts in research, developmental disabilities, and clinical studies issues.
• Coordination of interactions with the UMMS IRB, which includes advising investigators on approaches to present clear, complete, unambiguous proposals that do not require numerous submissions to achieve IRB approval.

To support investigators of all types who have clinical and/or translational research interests, this Core provides:

• Formalized Access to Clinicians, Clinician/Scientists and Human Participant Populations, a service that allows individuals with little or no clinical/translational research experience to access the IDDRC?s wealth of knowledge and resources that could potentially support research in this area. A major component of this service is a research review opportunity whereby investigators may have their research programs, ongoing and planned, supported and critiqued with respect to issues relating to the inclusion of human participants.
• A Clinical Research Resource Information and Coordination component, one purpose of which is to evaluate, publicize, and assist in the coordination of access to local, regional, and national resources that could potentially enhance the IDDRC?s clinical and translational research programs. Another purpose is to assist researchers who have conducted primarily basic research in collaboration with clinical researchers to evaluate research hypotheses that may introduce a translational or clinical dimension to their programs.

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Last Edited: 01/22/15 12:00 AM by Corina Miclea