The Rockefeller University Clinical Scholars (KL2) program 2006–2016

Abstract

Introduction and Methods The Rockefeller Clinical Scholars (KL2) Program began in 1976 and transitioned into a 3-year Master’s degree program in 2006 when Rockefeller joined the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program. The program consists of ~15 trainees supported by the CTSA KL2 award and University funds. It is designed to provide an optimal environment for junior translational investigators to develop team science and leadership skills by designing and performing a human subjects protocol under the supervision of a distinguished senior investigator mentor and a team of content expert educators. This is complemented by a tutorial focused on important translational skills. Results Since 2006, 40 Clinical Scholars have graduated from the programs and gone on to careers in academia (72%), government service (5%), industry (15%), and private medical practice (3%); two (5%) remain in training programs. 39/40 remain in translational research careers with 23 NIH awards totaling $23 million, foundation and philanthropic support of $20.3 million, and foreign government and foundation support of $6 million. They have made wide ranging scientific discoveries and have endeavored to translate those discoveries into improved human health. Conclusion The Rockefeller Clinical Scholars (KL2) program provides one model for translational science training.

KL2 mentored career development programs at clinical and translational science award hubs: Practices and outcomes

“…Their charge was to identify the types of initiatives developed by CTSA hubs to support KL2 scholars, which resulted in a series of "white papers" focused on approaches to strengthen the career development of clinical translational scientist trainees [1], and elements of mentoring [2][3][4][5][6][7]. Most reports of specific KL2 program practices and scholar outcomes focus on single institution experiences, representing large, unique, and/or wellresourced programs of greater longevity [8][9][10][11]. Given the evolution of CTR core competencies [12][13], of heterogeneous approaches to KL2 scholar training, and expansion of the CTSA consortium to include newer programs with smaller scholar cohorts, this survey now focuses on CTSA hub-reported program practices and scholar outcomes in the contemporary era.…”

The Rockefeller Team Science Leadership training program: Curriculum, standardized assessment of competencies, and impact of returning assessments

“…We try to emphasize that we do not expect Scholars to master all of the team science competencies rapidly, but rather want to help them identify the key skills and attributes needed and intentionally plot a multi-year path to achieve the goal that can be incorporated into the Scholar's Individual Development Plan. We previously developed a Graduate Tracking Survey System (GTSS) [1,12] to assess the progress of our Scholars after graduation and it provides outcome data on our Scholars' success as translational science team leaders. Over time, by merging the process-based assessments generated by the survey with the outcome data from the GTSS, we hope to gain a better understanding of the factors that are associated with Team Science Leadership success.…”

“…By combining our domain-specific expertise and experience, we created a list of competencies that we assessed to be essential for an outstanding translational scientist to lead a multidisciplinary team in conducting a human participant research protocol (Supplemental Figure 1). All 15 Senior Staff members participated in a modified Delphi method [1,8,9] for generating and reviewing both the major domains and the items within domains. Over the course of 6 months of weekly meetings, the domains were first agreed upon, and then the items within domain were created, deleted, and revised until neither new items nor major revisions were suggested.…”

“…The overall vision of the Rockefeller University Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS), supported by the National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, is to develop, demonstrate, evaluate, and disseminate innovative programs to achieve translational success and to integrate these into a seamless "Learning Clinical Research Enterprise" that uses outcome data to drive quality improvement for the benefit of human health. The Rockefeller University 3-year Masters' degree KL2 Clinical Scholars Program, which began in 2006 and is supported by both CTSA and University resources, is a key component of the CCTS, and its goal is to prepare translational team science leaders who are able to use their skills to improve human health [1]. It is designed to provide an optimal environment for junior translational investigators to develop team science and leadership skills by designing, conducting, analyzing, and reporting a human participant protocol under the supervision of an expert senior scientific mentor and a multidisciplinary group of Team Science Educators/Evaluators (TSE/Es) who comprise the Senior Staff of the CCTS.…”

Analyzing NIH KL2 Outcomes: A Pilot Study Using Administrative Data

“…The primary large-scale effort to systematically track KL2 outcomes is the Rockefeller University Graduate Tracking Survey System, which supplements scholar survey data with secondary datasets on grants and publications [21,22]. While more consistent and comprehensive data collection is an improvement over idiosyncratic single-institution follow-ups, its creators underscore the lack of a comparison group against which to benchmark.…”