Health Research Alliance: A National Organization Fostering Links Between Reseearch and Practice

Bulletin:

Health Research Alliance members:
The April HRA Members' Meeting at the Liberty Hotel in Boston on April 12-13 was fantastic. Many thanks to our gracious co-hosts: The Donaghue Foundation, the New York Stem Cell Foundation and The Medical Foundation, a division of Health Resources in Action. Slides from the sessions and notes from the joint working group meetings have now been posted on the Member Meetings & News page, along with the background materials posted before the meeting.
Health Research Alliance members: It is not too early to mark your calendars for the fall, 2012 Members' Meeting! The meeting has been scheduled for September 6-7, 2012, and will be hosted by The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
Is your organization interested in becoming a member of the Health Research Alliance? Find out more.
Health Research Alliance
P.O. Box 13901
21 T. W. Alexander Drive
Research Triangle Park,
North Carolina 27709
Much of the work of the Health Research Alliance is carried out in working groups that are chaired by representatives from member organizations. These groups meet in person as part of Members' Meetings and also convene by conference call and webinar throughout the year.

Early Career Scientists Working Group
The Early Career Scientist Working Group provides an opportunity for funders with career development awards to:
  • Develop a common approach to emerging and evolving issues (examples: the evolving definition of "independence," gauging institutional commitment in the absence of tenure.
  • Discuss coordination issues that commonly arise when two organizations are funding the same awardee (example: conflicting research time requirement)
  • Pool and leverage resources for maximum impact (examples: evaluation, career development resources for awardees, preparing awardees for future funding opportunities, sharing reviewers)
The working group considers how participating organizations can work together to build community across all of their early career awardees, including combined career development educational opportunities, joint awardee meetings, and developing interest groups spanning the awardees of multiple funders.

Working Group for Funders Focused on Drug and Other Therapy Development
This working group focuses on issues specifically related to drug and other therapy development such as:
  • Effect of nonprofit accounting standards on funding models
  • Working with big pharma - access to drugs on the shelf and a role for nonprofits in pharma drug development programs
  • Strategies for pricing of drugs developed with nonprofit funds
  • Clinical research infrastructure to subsidize drug development costs
  • Metrics for drug development programs
  • FDA issues: need for regulatory science; the need for EMEA-FDA harmonization
  • Sharing documents such as MTAs, NDAs, research contracts, and multi-party contracts.

Discovery Science Working Group
The term "discovery science" for the purposes of this working group includes the search for knowledge of the basic biology of certain diseases or systems. "Discovery Science" implies an emphasis on innovative approaches to research questions and visualizing the path from discovery to applications improving human health. "Discovery science" also includes the analysis of large volumes of experimental data with the goal of finding new patterns or correlations, leading to novel hypothesis formation and sharing scientific methodologies among diverse scientific areas of study. This working group provides the opportunity for funders of discovery science to:
  • Share methodologies for evaluation, impact, and portfolio analysis of funded discovery science
  • Examine opportunities to pool resources to encourage (or require) open access to data
  • Learn new approaches from funders in different disease or scientific focus areas
  • Discuss how funders can encourage the publication of null results

Translating Research into Practice and Policy
The Translating Research into Practice and Policy working group is focused on getting prevention and outcomes research more quickly adopted into practice and policy. There are many effective, research-based interventions to improve public health or improve health care delivery, but rarely do they get farther than journal articles. And unlike the pathways for drug development, no industry exists with the purpose is to push these interventions into use. There is, however, a growing community of researchers, health systems, quality improvement organization, and funders who are focused on the challenges of scaling-up and adopting these health improvements.

Grants Administration Working Group
The Grants Administration Working Group addresses a wide range of high-priority operational issues common to funders of health research, by sharing information, showing how a variety of different organizations approach a specific issue, and by defining and sharing recommended approaches and best practices. Topics researched by the group include reviewer conflict of interest policies, intellectual property and patent policies, and the mentoring of early career clinical investigators.

In 2008, the Working Group implemented a listserv, HRAList, that provides member organizations an opportunity to query each other on grants administration issues. The Working Group also offers periodic "Open Mic" discussions by conference call to the entire membership on current topics of interest.
    Individual Development Plans (IDPs):
    In January, 2007, representatives from HRA member organizations met to consider the benefits and implications of adding a requirement for an IDP as a component of health research and training awards for postdoctoral fellows and early career investigators. Despite data demonstrating the correlation between the use of IDPs and postdoctoral productivity, IDPs are not widely used in the mentoring of postdoctoral fellows. An IDP is a professional development tool that can help postdoctoral fellows and early career investigators identify professional development needs and career objectives. Specifically, the goals of the IDP are to:
    • Identify short-term needs to improve performance
    • Identify long-term career options and the training necessary to realize those options
    • Clarify work expectations
    • Foster communication between the advisor and the trainee
    The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) has taken a leading role in promoting the use of the IDP. Check out FASEB's description of the goals, benefits and process of the IDP along with a list of references on self-assessment, the postdoctoral experience, career opportunities, and resources on non-academic careers. Also see FASEB's Sample Annual Review .