The program builds on lessons learned from our prior experience in operating a highly successful “small hub” KL2 program, expands our proven strategies for mentor/mentee training, for enhancing skills in collaboration and team science, and for engaging potential junior faculty scholars into clinical and translational research before they would normally be able to compete for a K-funded position. We propose new collaborations with nearby CTSA Hubs and to continue to design and evaluate novel training experiences to then be shared with the national CTSA consortium. Our program leverages a meshwork of collaborations with all of the other cores in our Georgetown-Howard Universities Center for Clinical and Translational Science (GHUCCTS) Hub and is tightly integrated and synergistic with our TL1 pre- and postdoctoral programs. We draw upon a richly-qualified applicant pool from Georgetown and Howard Universities and from MedStar Health that is diverse with respect to prior scientific and professional training, discipline, translational stage(s), research focus, gender, race and ethnicity. This diversity informs our highly individualized and competency-based training program, anchored by equally-diverse dual/team mentorship in order to favor the pursuit of collaborative interdisciplinary team science addressing important health disparities. Our KL2 career development program aims to 1) guide the mentored research career development of exceptionally-promising junior faculty translational investigators from any discipline, department, or eligible institution within GHUCCTS; 2) individualize the development and training plans for each KL2 Scholar, while ensuring a common core of values and behaviors in the responsible conduct of research, skills in team science, and core competencies in translational research; and 3) enrich the pipeline and community of junior faculty translational scholars, especially from groups historically underrepresented in biomedical research, by design and expansion of workshops, courses, mentored experiences and novel training methods for our scholars and for those not yet ready to compete for KL2 support or in other career pathways, so that they all may contribute to rigorous and impactful translational research. We propose an evaluation plan that focused on both program process and outcomes for scholars (during and after training), mentors, curricula, educational experiences, program leadership and administration along with specific metrics and advisory committee input in order to favor critical revision and continued improvement of the proposed career development program.
