The Scholars program offers a combination of didactic training, mentoring, exposure to multidisciplinary research, and ongoing evaluation. Importantly, it also covers 75 percent of Scholars\u2019 salaries for two years and provides funds for research assistants, travel, supplies, and tuition.<\/p>\n
On an early evening in April, Green is joined in his office by colleagues Martha Bruce, PhD, MPH, and Yolanda Sanchez, PhD, two senior scientists who serve as advisors for the Scholars program, as well as co-directors for SYNERGY education, training, and career development. They are there for a check-in meeting with 2016-18 Scholar Wilder Doucette, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry.<\/p>\n
Each Scholar, they explain, is matched with a primary mentor (among a team of mentors), for Doucette it\u2019s Green, who supervise their training activities and patient-oriented research projects during their award period. The mentors chosen reflect the disciplines needed to gain independence in the proposed area of research.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs advisors, we check in regularly with the Scholars and their mentors to see what has gone well so far, what the challenges are, and how we can assist them\u2014whether it\u2019s helping them design their research plans or navigate SYNERGY\u2019s many resources,\u201d says Bruce, a professor of psychiatry at Geisel and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.<\/p>\n
Interacting with people from different specialties helps you refine your thinking about your science and craft it in a more generalizable way, so you can get people outside your field excited about what you're doing.\"<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n-Wilder Doucette, MD, PhD<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe program\u2019s multi-faceted support is invaluable, says Doucette, who is about six months into his award period. \u201cFor example, I just finished taking the certificate course, which offered a structured introduction to translational medicine,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe second part involved workshops with rotating faculty and with peers who are at a similar level of career development, which was also very useful.<\/p>\n
\u201cInteracting with people from different specialties helps you refine your thinking about your science and craft it in a more generalizable way,\u201d he adds, \u201cso you can get people outside your field excited about what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is critical when trying to secure large grants like R01s from the NIH, when only about 10 percent of applications succeed. \u201cYou have to be able to tell a compelling story about your research and its impact,\u201d says Sanchez, an associate professor of molecular and systems biology at Geisel. \u201cAnd you have to know where the remaining gaps are in your field and how your research is going to address them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doucette\u2019s research project is using a rat model to assess the effectiveness of neuromodulation\u2014mild electrical stimulation of specific circuits within the brain\u2014as a potential treatment for addiction, eating disorders, and obesity.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite our best efforts in treatment and prevention, almost 40 percent of people in the US are overweight or obese, and the rates of obesity continue to rise,\u201d says Doucette, who specializes in appetitive disorders and sees patients in an outpatient addiction clinic. \u201cMy primary motivation is to translate discoveries we make in the lab into alternative treatment tools that can be used to help patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two-year Scholars period is giving him protected time to build a critical mass of work, which includes compiling data, submitting manuscripts for publication, and securing pilot grants\u2014\u201call things that people like me need to do to land larger sources of funding and become an independent researcher,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
The Scholars program also helps more established investigators develop skills in areas that are vital to advancing their careers. For 2014-16 Scholar Carrie Colla, PhD, a health care economist and associate professor of The Dartmouth Institute, that new area was qualitative research.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy project involved using different data sources, including The National Survey of ACOs, Medicare claims data, and interviews with 16 Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) who were participating in a Medicare-initiated payment reform effort,\u201d she explains. \u201cBasically, we wanted to know how the changes in payment incentives were affecting the care of patients who were transitioning from the hospital to post-acute care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Being a Scholar was a really special opportunity--the training will allow me to improve our grant proposals and strengthen my research in the future.\"<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n-Carrie Colla, PhD<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nColla\u2019s findings from her time as a SYNERGY Scholar have appeared in a number of papers, and have helped to inform the field about changes in post-acute patient care associated with ACO payment changes. \u201cWe are able to disseminate our research back to provider organizations who participate in either our qualitative interviews or our National Survey of ACOs through a distribution list, and share some innovative things that ACOs are doing to improve both the quality and efficiency of care,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing a Scholar was a really special opportunity\u2014the training will allow me to improve our grant proposals and strengthen my research in the future,\u201d adds Colla, who recently received a prestigious health policy fellowship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.<\/p>\n
Similarly, becoming a SYNERGY Scholar (2014-16) allowed Elisabeth Erekson, MD, MPH, to gain skills in health care delivery science. \u201cIt\u2019s an aspect of research that I hadn\u2019t explored before, which I was then able to tie back to what I do as a clinician\u2014treat urinary incontinence and pelvic floor disorders,\u201d explains Erekson, a practicing specialist in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and of The Dartmouth Institute.<\/p>\n
My SYNERGY project provided the pilot data for an R01 grant from the NIH that was funded through Dartmouth and Brigham and Women's.\"<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n-Elisabeth Erekson, MD, MPH<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIn a collaborative project between Dartmouth and Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital, Erekson and her colleagues were able to successfully merge two separate data sources\u2014a longitudinal survey known as the Nurses\u2019 Health Study and Medicare claims\u2014creating a powerful linkage that will provide new insights in how to improve care for older women with urinary incontinence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have several abstracts being submitted and the papers will be coming out in about six months,\u201d she says. \u201cBut even more exciting, my SYNERGY project provided the pilot data for an R01 grant from the NIH that was funded through Dartmouth and Brigham and Women\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leveraging Dartmouth\u2019s emphasis on team science enabled Alex Gifford, MD, a pulmonologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and assistant professor of medicine at Geisel, to also form some fruitful external collaborations (among others) during his Scholars\u2019 award period (2014-16).<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that the Scholar period enabled me to do, and this has been catalytic for my career, is to partner with regional academic medical centers to expand the scope of my research,\u201d explains Gifford, who has focused his academic energies on performing clinical and translational research in the area of cystic fibrosis (CF).<\/p>\n
One of the things that the Scholar period enabled me to do, and this has been catalytic for my career, is to partner with regional academic medical centers to expand the scope of my research.\"<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n-Alex Gifford, MD<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nWorking closely with mentors George O\u2019Toole, PhD, and Deborah Hogan, PhD, at Geisel\u2019s department of Microbiology and Immunology, his project sought to determine if biomarkers of iron homeostasis could be used to customize CF care for patients who need to be hospitalized due to pulmonary exacerbations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe project went very well and we plan to publish our findings in the fall,\u201d he says. \u201cBeing chosen as a SYNERGY Scholar came at a pivotal juncture in my career. It enabled me to successfully secure grants from the CF Foundation, which now help to fund my research, and cross the divide between intramural and extramural support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strong mentorship, collaborative colleagues, protected time, and resources are all important contributors to a young investigator\u2019s success. Another, which Scholar candidates themselves must possess in order to be chosen for the program, is tenacity or what some refer to as, \u201cfire in the belly.\u201d<\/p>\n
To help ensure a high rate of success, Scholars are chosen by a multidisciplinary panel of senior scientists through a rigorous peer-review process. \u201cApplicants have to put in a letter of interest, and only about half of those are accepted and asked to submit a full application,\u201d explains Bruce, who along with Sanchez is a member of the review panel. \u201cAnd then, depending on the year, only about 15 to 20 percent of applications are chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur review process is modeled after the NIH\u2019s KL2 Scholars program,\u201d says Sanchez, \u201cwhere each award application is carefully reviewed and scored based on a number of criteria that are critical to determining whether a candidate has what it takes to succeed. We then rank the applications and make our recommendations to Dr. Green.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 2011, there have been 16 SYNERGY Scholars (including the 2017-19 Scholar who will be announced soon) representing a diversity of departments and schools, and interconnected projects, across Geisel, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and Dartmouth College.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, when we wrote the grant for the CTSA, one of the things we noticed was that the number of young people coming into translational science at Dartmouth was relatively small, as was the number of career development awards,\u201d recalls Green.<\/p>\n
Their main goals, he says, have been to strengthen the infrastructure for clinical and translational research\u2014to build a pipeline of investigators\u2014and do it in a way that amplifies some of the strengths that Dartmouth already has, in areas such as basic science and outcomes research.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re well on our way,\u201d Green says. \u201cOne of the most important things that SYNERGY does, and the CTSA is making this all possible, is to develop young talent, those clinician-scientists and translational researchers that are going to be the future leaders and mentors here. They are the ones who will carry this important work forward and can have the biggest impact on population health in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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