Letter from the Co-Directors: Early Winter 2024

Dear UR CTSI community,

We recently welcomed representatives from the National Institutes of Health for a comprehensive site visit as part of their evaluation for our current grant. Leaders, staff, and supported researchers presented detailed information on our programmatic successes, including our growing education program, innovative research services, and our health equity, workforce, and diversity initiatives.

The success of the site visit is due to the hard work of so many. Our presenters did a fantastic job, including and especially Erika Ramsdale, MD, presenting on the work of Informatics, and UR CTSI-supported trainees Aileen Aldalur, PhD, Jahaira Capellán, PhD, MS, RN, FNP-BC, and Janiret Narváez Miranda.

The comments and questions from the NIH representatives were thorough and insightful, allowing us to further communicate the impact UR CTSI has had on URMC, the local community, the region, and the translational science and research fields more broadly.

Thank you to Mary Little and Shelby Johnson for coordinating the details and logistics of the site visit. Many of you came up with great content to hang in the hallway or posted pieces in the display cases. Thanks to Mary and Shelby, Rebecca Laird, Carrie Dykes, Susanne Pallo, Jon Ghent, and everyone who helped bring it all together.

Our personnel continued to make significant impacts as we closed out 2023 and started work this year. Edith Williams, MS, PhD, was chosen as the new director for the Center for Community Health & Prevention (CCHP). She will continue to oversee the Office of Health Equity Research (OHER), which will serve as our bridge to CCHP. We see OHER as another example of a successful “incubation” that began in UR CTSI, one that will continue to grow and improve outcomes for URMC and the community. We look forward to working with Edith in her new role and offer her our enthusiastic congratulations and well-wishes.

We also wish to acknowledge Jack Chang, MS, PhD, our lead informatician and senior associate for informatics, who was recently selected to join the ranks of the Fellows of the American Medical Informatics Association for his leadership in the field. Great job, Jack!

We remain hard at work on our next grant application, which is centered around the themes of health equity and translational science. We are working to improve the draft to maximize visual and technical impact. In a parallel effort, our web team is currently leading content updates to our website. The team aims to reorganize and update our site to help researchers find the resources they need when they need them. Please keep an eye on the website in the months ahead as this project develops.

We are excited to have started 2024 on such a strong note and look forward to sharing more with you as the year continues.

Sincerely,

Co-Directors Karen Wilson, MD, MPH, and Martin Zand, MD, PhD

Michael Hazard | 2/1/2024