Richard D'Aquila
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Turning a laboratory discovery into a treatment that reaches patients can take decades, and much of the delay comes not from the biology but from how research itself is organized, staffed and translated into practice. The Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute is a hub built to study and fix that pipeline, treating the process of translation as a research subject in its own right rather than only supporting individual studies.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
clinical and translational science
implementation science
translational research
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2031
What they work on
- Expand and better train the clinical and translational science workforce, strengthen partnerships across the hub and its clinical affiliates, and improve research participation so study results generalize to broader patient populations (the IMPROVE aim).
- Catalyze innovation at every stage of translation, from discovery through delivery, including support for entrepreneurship and for the rigor and reproducibility of translational research studies (the INNOVATE aim).
- Infuse implementation science methods, which study how effective health services get adopted in practice, into clinical research across the health system and with community partners to speed public health impact (the IMPLEMENT aim).
- Evaluate the hub's strategies and initiatives using its program evaluation infrastructure and open-science practices, including FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data, so approaches can be disseminated to other CTSA hubs.
More about the research
This award funds NUCATS as a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hub serving Northwestern and its clinical partners, including Northwestern Medicine, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. The work is organized around three aims. IMPROVE focuses on the translational science workforce: expanding training, strengthening partnerships across the hub, and improving how patients and communities participate in research so results generalize to more people. INNOVATE targets new interventions and new research processes across every stage from discovery to practice, with attention to entrepreneurship and to the rigor and reproducibility of translational studies. IMPLEMENT brings implementation science, the study of how effective health services actually get adopted and delivered, into clinical research across the hub and with community partners, so that proven interventions reach patients faster. Each aim is pursued through defined strategies and initiatives, overseen by a multiple-principal-investigator team in which each PI leads one aim, supported by advisory committees, a program evaluation infrastructure, and open-science practices including FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data standards. Deliverables include evaluated workforce and partnership programs and methods that other CTSA hubs can reuse.
Why it matters
Effective treatments often take years to reach the patients who need them, and some never do. By training the translational workforce, broadening who takes part in clinical studies, and embedding implementation science into research across a large academic health system and its community partners, this work could shorten that delay and spread effective health services more evenly. Methods and programs developed here are intended to be shared with other clinical research hubs nationally.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rachel Hess
University of Utah, UT·Medicine & Clinical Research
Design, develop and test new translational science methods, tools and best practices that make clinical and translational research more efficient and reproducible.
Sanjay Sethi
University at Buffalo, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Grow existing community partnerships and build new ones across the Buffalo Translational Consortium, engaging community members in all phases of research to improve health in the region.
Laura James
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, AR·Medicine & Clinical Research
Develop, demonstrate and share translational science innovations that make it easier to move research through several stages of the clinical and translational research spectrum.
The school
Northwestern University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 536 research doctorates a year.
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