The last 50 years have seen an increasing dependence on academic institutions to develop and commercialize new biomedical innovations, a responsibility for which many universities are ill-equipped. To address this need, we created LEAP, an asset development and gap fund program at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). Beyond awarding funds to promising projects, this program aimed to promote a culture of academic entrepreneurship, and thus improve WUSTL technology transfer, by providing university inventors with individualized consulting and industry expert feedback. The purpose of this work is to document the structure of the LEAP program and evaluate its impact on the WUSTL entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our analysis utilizes program data, participant surveys, and WUSTL technology transfer office records to demonstrate that LEAP consistently attracted new investigators and that the training provided by the program was both impactful and highly valued by participants. We also show that an increase in annual WUSTL start-up formation during the years after LEAP was established and implicate the program in this increase. Taken together, our results illustrate that programs like LEAP could serve as a model for other institutions that seek to support academic entrepreneurship initiatives.

Clinical trial participation among historically underrepresented populations remains low in large part due to mistrust of academic institutions and research investigators. Mistrust may be ever greater today given misinformation related to COVID-19. The Research Ambassador Program is an interactive educational workshop delivered by Promotoras de Salud/Community Health Workers and designed to both address common myths, fears, and concerns about research and encourage research participation among underrepresented populations. An evaluation conducted with 819 Latino and Black participants demonstrated a change in behavior and intention to participate in a clinical trial, with half of participants enrolling in a clinical trial research registry.

Clinical trials conducted with incarcerated populations are rare. We present a case example of one such jail-based cancer prevention clinical trial to demonstrate the importance of including a theory-driven approach to intervention framing, novel experimental designs to boost access to low-risk trials, and retention strategies for long-term follow-up of hard-to-reach populations. As such we offer a social determinant of health framework to ensure cancer prevention research is conducted through the lenses of health promotion and health equity. Deviations from the gold-standard randomized control design, transparent systematic allotment, and street-based outreach retention strategies contribute to the feasibility of conducting clinical trials in carceral settings and after people leave jail. Best practices presented can be used in design and conduct of future clinical trials with criminal legal system-involved populations.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have mandated that hospitals implement measures to screen social determinants of health (SDoH). We sought to report on available SDoH screening tools. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, as well as the grey literature were searched (1980 to November 2023). The included studies were US-based, written in English, and examined a screening tool to assess SDoH. Thirty studies were included in the analytic cohort. The number of questions in any given SDoH assessment tool varied considerably and ranged from 5 to 50 (mean: 16.6). A total of 19 SDoH domains were examined. Housing (n = 23, 92%) and safety/violence (n = 21, 84%) were the domains assessed most frequently. Food/nutrition (n = 17, 68%), income/financial (n = 16, 64%), transportation (n = 15, 60%), family/social support (n = 14, 56%), utilities (n = 13, 52%), and education/literacy (n = 13, 52%) were also commonly included domains in most screening tools. Eighteen studies proposed specific interventions to address SDoH. SDoH screening tools are critical to identify various social needs and vulnerabilities to help develop interventions to address patient needs. Moreover, there is marked heterogeneity of SDoH screening tools, as well as the significant variability in the SDoH domains assessed by currently available screening tools.

Clinical trials face many challenges with meeting projected enrollment and retention goals. A study’s recruitment materials and messaging convey necessary key information and therefore serve as a critical first impression with potential participants. Yet study teams often lack the resources and skills needed to develop engaging, culturally tailored, and professional-looking recruitment materials. To address this gap, the Recruitment Innovation Center recently developed a Recruitment & Retention Materials Content and Design Toolkit, which offers research teams guidance, actionable tips, resources, and customizable templates for creating trial-specific study materials. This paper seeks to describe the creation and contents of this new toolkit.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The aim of this study is two-fold (1) to include a participatory action research design in the development of a community-based health advocate (HA) training programme which empowers community members to support the Barbados diabetes remission study 2 protocol – a low-calorie intervention for T2DM remission (2) to study the implementation of this programme with in select faith-based organisations (FBOs) which will act as community hubs. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Translation was informed using the RE-AIM framework. The target population were members of select FBOs. We assessed the readiness of FBOs to become community hubs in relation to human resources (the HA team must include someone with a clinical degree), infrastructure capacity (a private room for interviews) and the perspective (knowledge and attitude) of the FBO leadership to both the training and diabetes remission programmes. An open recruitment for HAs was made to the FBO membership and all who responded were accepted to the programme; which consisted of 8 weeks of face to face sessions inclusive of lectures and practical demonstrations and exercises specific to NCDs e.g. assessment of basic clinical parameters, ethics and nutrition. This was followed by a simulation exercise and a formal objective structured clinical examination (OSCE). HAs will participate in focus groups aimed at exploring the barriers and facilitators to the use of social media as a support system; this will be followed by participatory design workshops where the HAs will design support systems, inclusive of social media support, to assist participants in the diabetes remission intervention. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: All three FBOs that were approached responded favourably and the programme was described as ‘necessary’ and ‘timely’ by the leadership. The FBOs were assessed and found to be ready. Thirty-eight persons signed up for the programme (more than the 21 we anticipated); 31 (82%) attended at least 1 session and 29 completed the training; this indicates that implementation in the community is feasible. All who completed the programme attained an overall passing grade indicating the effectiveness of, and fidelity to the training. Initial feedback on the programme from HAs and volunteers indicates that it was acceptable. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: This community-based training programme was successful in terms of reach, as both the FBO and the individual HA responded favourably; and effectiveness as measured by the expanded skill set of the HA. Initial feedback suggests that implementation of the programme is feasible in the community and acceptable to the HAs. Although this model focusses on diabetes remission utilising FBOs as hubs, it can be easily adapted to other NCDs e.g. hypertension and mental health; other disciplines e.g. surveillance; and other communities e.g. workplaces, homeless shelters.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: (1) To assess the prevalence of mental health symptomatology (depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, PTSD symptoms, and problematic alcohol use) and psychosocial risk factors for mental health disorders (low social support, immigration stress, acculturation, and marital/partner discord), and their association with immigration status, health care access and contextual risk factors in Spanish-speaking parents of young children (ages 0–5) who attended a well-child visit. (2) To explore acceptability of screening for and discussing parental distress in the pediatric primary care setting, and parental acceptability of a group well-visit format to address both psychosocial risk factors and mental health symptoms in this population. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Latino immigrant parents (n=100) of children ages 0–5 attending well-child visits at Johns Hopkins Bayview Children’s Medical Practice were surveyed between October 2015 and February 2016. The verbally administered survey included the Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST), AUDIT-C, Primary Care Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PC-PTSD) Screener, California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), Appraisal Support Subscale from Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL), Personal Health Questionnaire Depression Scale (PHQ-8), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-2). These questionnaires have been used in large regional or national surveys and most have been validated with US Latino populations. Positive screens were defined as PHQ-8>5 (mild depression or greater), GAD-2>3, AUDIT-C>3 for women and >4 for men, and PC-PTSD>3. Descriptive information and comparisons were obtained by χ2 and Student t-test. Study protocol will allow review of childrens’ pediatric records (n=100). From this sample, parents were separately recruited to participate in in-depth interviews (n=11 of 20 planned have been completed) further exploring both sources of parental distress, acceptability of screening for parental mental health symptoms in the primary care pediatric setting, and acceptability of a potential group-based well-visit model in the pediatric setting. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Survey participants were 93.0% women, and predominantly<35 years of age. The vast majority (94.0%) were undocumented, recently arrived (<15 years ago) and reported poor or very poor English proficiency (75.0%). Most (84.7%) reported living with a partner or spouse (84.7%), and 58% reported partner relationship strain. In all, 71% reported poor social support. The prevalence of “screen positive” mental health symptoms was highest for depression (55%) and PTSD (35%), followed by anxiety (29%) and alcohol risk use (25%). Having depression was significantly higher (68.4%) (p<0.02) in participants with less education (<6 grade). Partner relationship strain was associated with a higher prevalence of depressive symptoms (59.3%) (p<0.03). Immigration stress (feeling guilty for leaving family and friends) was also significantly associated with depressive symptoms (58.1%) and PTSD (43.5%) (p<0.03). More than half of the participants (60.0%) with depression were not covered by any health insurance and 56.3% of those with depression reported not having been seen by a health care provider in the past 12 months. A high prevalence of symptoms was found in those with poor appraised social support: alcohol risk use (76.0%), depression (69.1%), anxiety (69.0%), and PTSD (68.6%). Among participants, those aged<30 years old and those with more children reported poorer appraised social support. Data from child medical records (including BMI, presence of feeding problems, referrals for social work, or mental health services) has been extracted but not yet linked to parent survey or interview results. Preliminary review of In Depth Interviews suggests that the most common reported source of stress among participants was related to finances, followed by documentation/legal status difficulties, access to childcare, and limited English proficiency. Some mothers also mentioned interpersonal violence and lack of access to healthcare as stressors. All mothers expressed an interest in a pediatric primary care based parent focused the majority of which indicated that a group based intervention would be acceptable, some mothers indicated they preferred a one-to-one intervention if mental health were to be discussed. Mothers seem preferential to social worker-led interventions compared with pediatrician-led, but most mothers were indifferent. Finally, mothers expressed low support from the Latino community in Baltimore. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Results from this study suggest that this population of parents is experiencing a relatively high rate of mental health symptoms, low perceived social support, and limited access to their own source of care. This suggests that an intervention delivered within a primary care pediatric setting would have the potential to reach parents who might not otherwise interact with their own providers, and that there are an array of problems that could be targeted. Intervening with parents of young children has the potential to affect multiple child outcomes. A group intervention may target poor social support, though this format is not universally preferred. Next steps for this project include assessing the acceptability of and preference for various content components (ie, depression, parenting stress, legal issues) and linking parent data with child data (including developmental screening results, weight, feeding problems, and behavior problems).

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Our objective is to create a Resistant Hypertension (RHTN) computable phenotype from electronic health record (EHR)-based data, and to determine the characteristics associated with RHTN within a large, diverse, EHR-based database. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium includes 10 unique health care systems providing care for approximately half of the state (48%, ~10 million). OneFlorida houses a Data Trust which contains longitudinal EHR data and claims data from these providers in a common format, the PCORnet common data model v3.0. For the current project, data from 5 health care systems were considered. All of the adult hypertension (HTN) patients with a HTN diagnosis from an outpatient encounter were extracted from the OneFlorida Data Trust. Additional data such as demographics, prescribing, and vitals information were also extracted. The RHTN computable phenotype was created by constructing a drug exposure variable that took into consideration the number of antihypertensive medications an individual was prescribed at any point in time over the course of the OneFlorida dataset. RHTN was defined as any blood pressure requiring four or more antihypertensive drugs, or uncontrolled blood pressure (≥140/90) on 3 antihypertensive drugs. RHTN cases had to meet the definition criteria twice during the data period, at least 30 days apart. All data extraction, computation phenotype coding, and statistical analyses were conducted using SQL or SAS. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Our preliminary results show that there were n=342,026 adults with a HTN diagnosis from an outpatient visit in the data set. After the RHTN computable phenotype was constructed, n=11,670 RHTN cases were identified from the n=130,901 HTN individuals with all of the required variables in the data set (8.9% RHTN prevalence). In all, 55% of RHTN cases were Black or African American, compared with the total HTN population (25% Black/African American). RHTN cases also had more prescriptions for loop diuretics, centrally acting agents, α-blockers, and vasodilators compared with the total HTN population. Not surprisingly, the RHTN cases had 26% of the antihypertensive prescriptions in the data set, and the RHTN cases had fewer blood pressure readings that were in control (only 49.4% of readings <140/90). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Overall, our preliminary data shows that it is possible to create the very complicated computable phenotype of RHTN within the OneFlorida Data Trust. We found that the RHTN prevalence in OneFlorida is 8.9% which is consistent with previous studies from NHANES. Although promising, these results require further validation of the computable phenotype and replication in other similar data sets in order to ascertain their true meaning. Once validated, the experience gained from this computable phenotype can be applied to many other phenotypes.

The Common Metrics Initiative aims to develop and field metrics to improve research processes within the national Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Consortium. A Median Accrual Ratio (MAR) common metric was developed to assess the results of efforts to increase subject accrual into a set of clinical trials within the expected time period. A pilot test of the MAR was undertaken at Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) with eight CTSA Consortium hubs. Post-pilot interviews were conducted with 9 CTSA Principal Investigators (PIs) and 23 pilot team members. Over three-quarters (78%) of respondents reported that the MAR could be useful for performance improvement, but also described limitations or concerns. The most commonly cited barrier to MAR use for performance improvement was difficulty in interpreting the single value that is produced. Most respondents were interested in using the MAR to assess recruitment at an individual trial level. Majority of respondents (63%) had mixed opinions about aggregating metric results across the CTSA Consortium for comparison or benchmarking. Collecting data about additional contextual factors, and comparing accrual between subgroups, were cited as potentially helping address concerns about aggregation. Significant challenges remain in ensuring that the MAR can be sufficiently useful for collaborative process improvement. We offer recommendations to potentially improve metric usefulness.

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Coordinating research studies is multifaceted and requires a foundational level of research knowledge, skills and abilities in order to contribute to high-quality, ethical research projects that adhere to local and federal regulations as well as Good Clinical Practice. Oftentimes, coordinators who are new to research or new to an institution have trouble navigating the research landscape. Departments within the University of Minnesota have limited resources to devote to developing robust training programs above and beyond protocol or department-specific training. Therefore, UMN’s CTSI created a comprehensive training and support program for research professionals at the University of Minnesota. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: CTSI employs several strategies to provide a comprehensive training program for the University of Minnesota Research Workforce. The offerings are based on the The Joint Task Force for Clinical Trial Competency (JTF). In addition to training programs, valuable resources, materials, and connections are provided to trainees.

• An Onboarding process for new coordinators that includes a welcome email upon hire that provides resources as well an opportunity to meet face-to-face to get their questions answered about where to start with research training.

• Foundations for Research professionals, two week (20 hour) training program, provides a foundational level of knowledge to new coordinators via in-person and online training modules.

• Informed Consent 1 & 2 provides in-person training on the informed consent including the process, documentation, and ethical issues around consenting vulnerable populations.

• Over 40 on-line research training modules that coordinators can take at anytime.

• An active list serv that connects >600 research professionals with training updates and opportunities.

• Bi-weekly seminar series that provides a forum to share current regulations, best practices, resources, and guidelines pertaining to clinical research at the University.

• An online training “Roadmap” tool that customizes individual research training plans, and includes an inventory of training available.

RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS:

• 218 research professionals participated in our Foundations blended training program with 191 completing (88% completion rate) the entire training. A comprehensive assessment based on national competencies is completed by all participants at Baseline and Post training. Baseline scores average at 75% and Post scores average at 82% (7% increase). Satisfaction is measured and participants are overall satisfied with the training, 4 out of 5 on a Likert Scale.

• 353 research professionals have participated in our Informed Consent Session 1 & 2 in-person training. Satisfaction is measured and participants are overall satisfied with the training, 4.5 out of 5 on a Likert Scale.

• Over 190 research professionals have utilized our research on-line training modules.

• Training participants have been from 27 different departments across the University.

• The Clinical Research Professional Development Seminar Series has offered over 87 seminars with 4907 total attendees. These seminars are offered in-person and live stream.

DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Establishing a comprehensive training program at the University has streamlined the training that research professionals receive across departments. It also ensures that all coordinators have access to research training, a network of other research professionals, resources, and continuing education opportunities.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program is a national consortium of 50+ academic medical research centers charged with accelerating the translation of clinical research. In 2017, the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences anticipates total CTSA program funding of over $500M. The consortium’s hub-and-spoke structure makes it a natural dissemination network, and the newest funding announcement makes dissemination of innovation across the consortium an explicit goal, but characteristics of CTSA hubs as adopters and transmitters of innovation are unknown. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: A content analysis was conducted using data from CTSA hub Web sites (n=64) and a structured coding taxonomy based on 6 constructs drawn from literature about diffusion of innovation in service organizations (Greenhalgh et al., 2004): dissemination priority, institutional complexity, communication infrastructure, support for dissemination/implementation functions, cross-institutional collaboration/networking, and leadership composition. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: In total, 52% of hubs will renew under the new PAR in the next few years, providing an incentive to demonstrate dissemination capacity (although hubs will likely lag in operationalizing these activities until they are funded). A third of hubs (34%) represent more than one academic/research institution, and almost 80% of hubs have more than one clinical affiliate. To accommodate these different levels of institutional complexity, broad diffusion will require multi-modal, locally adapted dissemination efforts. Only 25% of hubs have capacity to undertake additional dissemination activities, and only 27% provide formal D&I support, suggesting that additional capacity/support will be needed to operationalize the CTSA dissemination mission. In total, 30% of hubs participate in cross-institutional collaboration/networking, so many may not have existing norms/tools supporting inter-institutional collaboration, but 77% include leadership from outside the School of Medicine, facilitating effective intrainstitutional dissemination. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Understanding more about CTSA hubs as both adopters and transmitters of innovation can facilitate strategic use of these sites as a built-in dissemination network to amplify the reach and impact of clinical innovation and improve population health. Based on this initial analysis, the CTSA network does not appear to be fully primed for broad, rapid dissemination of innovation across its sites. In-depth interviews are being conducted to investigate CTSA hubs’ perceptions of their dissemination capacity and roles as adopters and transmitters of innovation.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Our aim is to test whether osteocyte-specific CXCL12 expression is critical to exercise-driven bone formation. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: All procedures were approved by the NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. We generated male and female mice in which CXCL12 was deleted from OCYs (CXCL12ΔOCY) by crossing CXCL12 floxed mice and 10kb DMP1-Cre transgenic mice (gifts from Drs. Geoffrey Gurtner and Lynda Bonewald, respectively). The 10kb DMP1-Cre has been shown to be robustly expressed in odontoblasts and OCYs, with little to no activity in cells from non-mineralized tissues (Lu+ J Dent Res 2007). Growing male and female mice (n=3-8/group) were given fluorochrome labels every two weeks between 4-16 weeks of age, to monitor the role of CXCL12 during development. A second group, of adult 16-week-old mice (n=5/group), were subjected to tibial axial cyclic loading (1200µɛ, 2Hz, 120cycles, 3days/wk for 2 wks) (Liu+ Bone 2018). Basal and load-induced periosteal (Ps) and endosteal (Es) mineralizing surface (MS/BS, %), mineral apposition (MAR, µm/day) and bone formation rates (BFR/BS, µm3/µm2/year) were calculated (Dempster+ JBMR.2013) at mid-length. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: No significant differences were detected in basal bone formation during development. However, relative load-induced Ps MAR (rMAR) was reduced by 50% in female (p=0.02) and 75% in male (p=0.002) CXCL12ΔOCY mice; and similarly, Ps rBFR/BS was reduced by 50% in female (p=0.01) and 70% in male (p=0.001) CXCL12ΔOCY mice (Figure 1). Es bone formation was not affected by CXCL12 deletion. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: In summary, osteocyte-specific CXCL12 expression plays a critical role in exercise-driven periosteal new bone formation, suggesting that CXCL12 signaling may positively regulate osteogenic differentiation and/or mature osteoblast function. Further underlying mechanisms are currently being explored. Thus, osteocyte-specific CXCL12 signaling may be a promising target to enhance load-induced bone formation in patients with compromised ability to form new bone.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Our objective is to study the role of soluble adenylyl cyclase in the melanocyte regulation of pigment in response to ultraviolet radiation. Melanocytes are specialized cells that produce melanin in organelles called melanosomes, and melanin determines the pigmentation of hair and skin. cAMP is a master regulator of pigmentation and transmembrane class of adenylyl cyclases are essential for expression of important enzymes involved in melanogenesis. However, pigmentation is also controlled by melanosomal pH, which regulates melanogenesis, tyrosinase activity, and melanosome maturation. The relationship between melanosomal pH and cAMP has been elusive. Soluble adenylyl cyclase is a noncanonical source of cAMP that is not responsive to G proteins but rather functions as a pH sensor. We recently demonstrated that loss of soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) activity leads to increased melanosomal pH as well as increased pigmentation in cells and hair. We expanded our research to investigate the role of sAC in the intrinsic response of melanocytes to ultraviolet radiation. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We utilized sACfl/fl (wild type) and sACKO mouse melanocytes and compared their change in pigmentation in response to ultraviolet radiation. Melanin was used as a measure of pigmentation. We irradiated these cells at differing doses of UVB (0, 1, 2, or 3 mJ/cm2) daily for 3 days. After UVB treatment, cells were observed and the surviving cell numbers were determined. Cells were then analyzed for melanin content using spectroscopy. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: We found that while both sACfl/fl and sACKO cells had increased melanin content in response to UVB, the melanin content of sACKO cells increased more compared with sACfl/fl cells (p=0.001 at daily dose of 3 mJ/cm2). In addition, sACKO cells required less UVB dose to induce a response. We also observed that sACKO cells show increased cell death compared with sACfl/fl cells. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Although both sACfl/fl and sACKO cells can induce melanin production in response to UV, our results suggest that sACKO cells are more sensitive. We believe that this increased response in sACKO cells is due to increased melanosomal pH. In addition, sACKO cells show increased cell death, suggesting that sAC is important in the damage response secondary to UV exposure. UV plays a wide range of roles in skin biology such as contributing to cancer risk and pigmentation. Since pigmentation is essential for the protection of the skin from UV insult, further investigation of possible mechanisms in which sAC can influence pigmentation in response to UV is warranted.

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: The New Jersey Alliance for Clinical & Translational Science conducted an observational study of current clinical research training to establish a comprehensive infrastructure. The goal was to develop a cross training catalogue of available resources for trainees to fill gaps in their Clinical Research training. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The focus of this observational study is the evaluation of (1) available clinical research training programs, (2) training areas aligned with the Joint Task Force competency domains, (3) specific target audiences who utilize trainings offered nationally, and (4) availability of resource toolboxes. This assessment was extracted by clicking on each of the hubs Education & Training and Resources tabs. The determination of the training areas and competency skills that aligned with the JTFs eight domains was confirmed by reviewing the course description on each website. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: CTSA hub website analysis of each hub revealed that each CTSA hub region has their own regional focus on training areas targeted for specific audiences. The validation of the NJ ACTS Education and Offering Inventory study allowed authors to categorize available training programs which significantly showed that Basic Training Programs targeted 22% of Undergraduate Students, Community Engagement Training Programs targeted 15% of Early Career Faculty, Experiential Training targeted 20% of Early Career Faculty and Undergraduate Students, Scholarly & Certificate Training targeted 20.5% of Graduate Students, and Graduate/Post Graduate Programs targeted 22.5% of Graduate Students and KL2 scholars. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: This information helps build the infrastructure of a National Cross-Training Resource Platform in aid to encourage trainees to take advantage of available trainings across the CTSA Consortium.

Community involvement in research is key to translating science into practice, and new approaches to engaging community members in research design and implementation are needed. The Community Scientist Program, established at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in 2018 and expanded to two other Texas institutions in 2021, provides researchers with rapid feedback from community members on study feasibility and design, cultural appropriateness, participant recruitment, and research implementation. This paper aims to describe the Community Scientist Program and assess Community Scientists' and researchers' satisfaction with the program. We present the analysis of the data collected from 116 Community Scientists and 64 researchers who attended 100 feedback sessions, across three regions of Texas including Northeast Texas, Houston, and Rio Grande Valley between June 2018 and December 2022. Community Scientists stated that the feedback sessions increased their knowledge and changed their perception of research. All researchers (100%) were satisfied with the feedback and reported that it influenced their current and future research methods. Our evaluation demonstrates that the key features of the Community Scientist Program such as follow-up evaluations, effective bi-directional communication, and fair compensation transform how research is conducted and contribute to reducing health disparities.