Children’s National Stimulating Access to Research in Residency (CNStARR) Program (NHLBI)

Project Summary/Abstract: Funded by one of the inaugural R38 awards from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the Children’s National Stimulating Access to Research in Residency (CNStARR) Program is an existing mentored program of career development and research training. It has dramatically expanded our institution’s capacity to

recruit and retain outstanding residents with demonstrated potential and interest in pursuing research careers in content areas of interest to the NHLBI with a special emphasis on asthma and airway diseases, congenital heart disease, and hematology and immunology. Each content area was chosen because of the depth and

breadth of our locally available, committed, and highly experienced preceptors. Leveraging the existing collaborations between Children’s National Hospital (CNH) and George Washington University (GWU) such as their jointly held Clinical and Translational Science Institute, CNStARR will recruit residents in pediatrics from

CNH and in internal medicine from GWU. Utilizing the existing infrastructure of the Children’s Hospital Research in Residency Program and as well as highly tailored and focused Individual Development Plans, CNStARR provides its scholars with both the didactic competencies and the transformative mentored

experiences in basic, clinical, or translational research to prepare them as successful, independent clinician- scientists. The most proximate goal of CNStARR is to accelerate the transition of participants to subsequent mentored career development awards, particularly the “Stimulating Access to Research and Residency

Transition Support,” the linked individual K38 mechanism from the National Institutes of Health, as well as other mechanisms such as T32 and F32 appointments, our institutional KL2 and K12 awards, or individual K- series awards. CNStARR scholars will join the future academic leaders in research areas of relevance to

NHLBI. Ultimately, they will direct research teams, compete successfully for grant support, and add significantly to our understanding of the etiology and treatment of heart, lung, and blood disorders across the human life span. Because academic medicine in general (and pediatrics and internal medicine) suffers

grievously from a shortage of investigators from backgrounds under-represented in medicine (UIM), CNStARR will pursue an intentional and deliberate strategy to identify, recruit, and retain scholars from backgrounds UIM.