The clinical and translational research workforce involved in social and behavioral research (SBR) needs to keep pace with clinical research guidance and regulations. Updated information and a new module on community and stakeholder engagement were added to an existing SBR training course. This article presents evaluation findings of the updated course for the Social and Behavioral Workforce.

Participants working across one university were recruited. Course completers were sent an online survey to evaluate the training. Some participants were invited to join in a focus group to discuss the application of the training to their work. We performed descriptive statistics and conducted a qualitative analysis on focus group data.

There were 99 participants from diverse backgrounds who completed the survey. Most reported the training was relevant to their work or that of the study teams they worked with. Almost half (46%) indicated they would work differently after participating. Respondents with community or stakeholder engaged research experience vs. those without were more likely to report that the new module was relevant to study teams they worked with (t = 5.61, p = 0.001), and that they would work differently following the training (t = 2.63, p = 0.01). Open-ended survey responses (n = 99) and focus group (n = 12) data showed how participants felt their work would be affected by the training.

The updated course was rated highly, particularly by those whose work was related to the new course content. This course provides an up-to-date resource for the training and development for the Social and Behavioral Workforce.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic produced swift, extensive changes in daily life, including for first-episode psychosis (FEP) clients. This study examined pandemic-related psychosocial impacts to clients while engaged in Coordinated Specialty Care (CSC). We also examined FEP client vaccination rates, as vaccinations can reduce hospitalizations/deaths, and related worries.

Thirty-one clients (45% female; ages 13-39; 26% black, 61% white) from Pennsylvania (PA) CSC outpatient programs completed an online survey evaluating exposure to COVID-19, associated worries, coping, and safety strategies. Descriptive statistics characterized responses and demographic group differences. Additional program evaluation data informed vaccination rates for PA FEP clients.

Participants reported substantial pandemic-related impacts to daily life. Many clients reported improved safety measures to protect themselves/others from COVID-19. Clients largely denied substantial worries about infection for themselves, reporting greater concern for loved ones. Multiple coping strategies were endorsed, which, with few exceptions, did not differ among demographic groups. FEP clients had a low reported rate of vaccination (28.6%) as of September 2021.

Observed prolonged pandemic effects may alter FEP client progress in CSC. Stakeholders should be prepared to adjust FEP treatment accordingly in the event of a similar disaster. Concentrated vaccination efforts may be necessary for this population.

The Michigan Integrative Well-Being and Inequality (MIWI) Training Program aims to provide state-of-the-art, interdisciplinary training to enhance the methodological skills of early-career scientists interested in integrative approaches to understanding health disparities. The goals of this paper are to describe the scientific rationale and core design elements of MIWI, and to conduct a process evaluation of the first cohort of trainees (called “scholars”) to complete this program.

Mixed methods process evaluation of program components and assessment of trainee skills and network development of the first cohort (n = 15 scholars).

The program drew 57 applicants from a wide range of disciplines. Of the 15 scholars in the first cohort, 53% (n = 8) identified as an underrepresented minority, 60% (n = 9) were within 2 years of completing their terminal degree, and most (n = 11, 73%) were from a social/behavioral science discipline (e.g., social work, public health). In the post-program evaluation, scholars rated their improvement in a variety of skills on a one (not at all) to five (greatly improved) scale. Areas of greatest growth included being an interdisciplinary researcher (mean = 4.47), developing new research collaborations (mean = 4.53), and designing a research study related to integrative health (mean = 4.27). The qualitative process evaluation indicated that scholars reported a strong sense of community and that the program broadened their research networks.

These findings have implications for National Institutes of Health (NIH) efforts to train early-career scientists, particularly from underrepresented groups, working at the intersection of multiple disciplines and efforts to support the formation of research networks.

In 2017, the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (MICHR) and community partners in Flint, Michigan collaborated to launch a research funding program and evaluate the dynamics of those research partnerships receiving funding. While validated assessments for community-engaged research (CEnR) partnerships were available, the study team found none sufficiently relevant to conducting CEnR in the context of the work. MICHR faculty and staff along with community partners living and working in Flint used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to develop and administer a locally relevant assessment of CEnR partnerships that were active in Flint in 2019 and 2021.

Surveys were administered each year to over a dozen partnerships funded by MICHR to evaluate how community and academic partners assessed the dynamics and impact of their study teams over time.

The results suggest that partners believed that their partnerships were engaging and highly impactful. Although many substantive differences between community and academic partners’ perceptions over time were identified, the most notable regarded the financial management of the partnerships.

This work contributes to the field of translational science by evaluating how the financial management of community-engaged health research partnerships in a locally relevant context of Flint can be associated with these teams’ scientific productivity and impact with national implications for CEnR. This work presents evaluation methods which can be used by clinical and translational research centers that strive to implement and measure their use of CBPR approaches.

To evaluate an enrichment training program targeted at home palliative care professionals in terms of its effects and participants’ satisfaction. The program had 2 main aims: give voice to professionals’ emotional fatigue and promote their personal resources.

One hundred twenty-three home palliative care professionals participated in 12 parallel training courses; each course consisted of four 3-hour meetings led by 2 trainers and involved about 10–15 participants. The program adopted the method and tools typical of the enrichment approach, with the insertion of an art therapy exercise in the central meetings. The topics addressed were the following: emotional awareness in care relationship; the recognition of the needs of the patient, the family, and the professional himself; the inevitability of the death of the patient; and the challenges and resources of the multidisciplinary care team. At the first (T1) and last (T2) meetings, participants filled in a self-report questionnaire assessing work emotional fatigue, empowerment, generativity, and satisfaction with the course.

Participants were highly satisfied with the course. They reported a higher level of work emotional fatigue and a higher perception of personal resources, in terms of empowerment (both individual-oriented and relationship-oriented) and generativity at the end of the program than before.

Results confirm the need to provide home palliative care professionals with trainings in which they can express, share, and deal with personal and professional needs. This course gave voice to professionals’ work emotional fatigue and promoted their personal resources, while enhancing collaboration in the multidisciplinary team.

Optimizing the effectiveness of a team-based approach to unite multiple disciplines in advancing specific translational areas of research is foundational to improving clinical practice. The current study was undertaken to examine investigators’ experiences of participation in transdisciplinary team science initiatives, with a focus on challenges and recommendations for improving effectiveness.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with investigators from twelve multidisciplinary teams awarded pilot research funding by the University of Kentucky College of Medicine to better understand the barriers and facilitators to effective team science within an academic medical center. An experienced qualitative researcher facilitated one-on-one interviews, which lasted about one hour. Structured consensus coding and thematic analysis were conducted.

The sample was balanced by gender, career stage (five were assistant professor at the time of the award, seven were senior faculty), and training (six were PhDs; six were MD physicians). Key themes at the team-level centered on the tension between clinical commitments and research pursuits and the limitations for effective team functioning. Access to tangible support from home departments and key university centers was identified as a critical organizational facilitator of successful project completion. Organizational barriers centered on operationalizing protected time for physicians, gaps in effective mentoring, and limitations in operational support.

Prioritizing tailored mentoring and career development support for early career faculty, and particularly physician faculty, emerged as a key recommendation for improving team science in academic medical centers. The findings contribute to establishing best practices and policies for team science in academic medical centers.

The Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program aims to enhance the quality, efficiency, and impact of translation from discovery to interventions that improve human health. CTSA program hubs at medical research institutions across the United States develop and test innovative tools, methods, and processes, offering core resources and training for the clinical and translational research (CTR) workforce. Hubs have developed services across different domains, such as informatics and pilot studies, to provide ad hoc expertise and staffing for local research teams. Although these services can provide efficient, cost-effective ways to cover skills gaps and implement rigorous studies, three CTSAs of varying size found the majority of investigators were single domain service users, likely missing opportunities to further enhance their work.

Through interviews with CTSA service users and a survey of CTSA service managers, this exploratory study aims to identify barriers to using services from multiple modules and solutions to overcome those barriers.

Barriers include challenges in finding information about services, unclear or unknown user needs, and users’ lack of funding to engage in services. More issues were identified for the largest CTSA.

Although this study represents a small subset of CTSA hubs, we anticipate that our findings and proposed solutions will be relevant to the broader CTSA community. This study provides foundational information can use in their own efforts to increase service utilization and methods that can be used for more comprehensive studies that focus on explaining the relationship between CTSA features and rates of single versus cross-module service use.

Growing recognition that collaboration among scientists from diverse disciplines fosters the emergence of solutions to complex scientific problems has spurred initiatives to train researchers to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams. Evaluations of collaboration patterns in these initiatives have tended to be cross-sectional, rather than clarifying temporal changes in collaborative dynamics. Mobile health (mHealth), the science of using mobile, wireless devices to improve health outcomes, is a field whose advancement needs interdisciplinary collaboration. The NIH-supported annual mHealth Training Institute (mHTI) was developed to meet that need and provides a unique testbed.

In this study, we applied a longitudinal social network analysis technique to evaluate how well the program fostered communication among the disciplinarily diverse scholars participating in the 2017−2019 mHTIs. By applying separable temporal exponential random graph models, we investigated the formation and persistence of project-based and fun conversations during the mHTIs.

We found that conversations between scholars of different disciplines were just as likely as conversations within disciplines to form or persist in the 2018 and 2019 mHTI, suggesting that the mHTI achieved its goal of fostering interdisciplinary conversations and could be a model for other team science initiatives; this finding is also true for scholars from different career stages. The presence of team and gender homophily effects in certain years suggested that scholars tended to communicate within the same team or gender.

Our results demonstrate the usefulness of longitudinal network models in evaluating team science initiatives while clarifying the processes driving interdisciplinary communications during the mHTIs.

Given the widely acknowledged benefits of intergenerational programs (IGPs), we compared processes and structures across different IGP types and explored potential areas for improvement.

Thirteen IGPs were classified into three types: arts, learning, and assistance programs. Data were collected through direct structured interviews and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.

Participants were recruited from community-based IGPs in the greater Tel Aviv area of Israel.

Eighty-four older participants (OPs), 97 younger participants (YPs), and 21 organizers were interviewed.

Questions included participant demographics as well as closed- and open-ended questions regarding processes based on the Impact of Intergenerational Programs Questionnaire (IIPQ).

Responses to closed-ended questions were compared among IGP types and age groups using two-way ANOVAs for ordinal data, and chi-squares for nominal data. Responses to open-ended questions by OP, YP, and program organizers about potential areas for improvement were analyzed using thematic analysis.

Processes in need of improvement were preparation and guidance, length of program participation, and monitoring of activities, which differed across IGP types and age groups. These processes were related to broader structural problems such as lack of resources, organizers’ poor employment conditions, and inadequate public services for older persons in Israel.

Our study highlights the complex relationships between IGP types, processes, and structures. IGP processes and goals can be hindered by structural variables such as insufficient funding, infrastructure, and public services for older adults.