Concept: REsearch Across Complementary and Integrative Health Institutions (REACH) Virtual Resource Centers

Project Concept Review

Council Approval: March 7, 2024

Program Director: Lanay M. Mudd, Ph.D.

Background

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) currently supports a variety of research training and career development opportunities to increase the number and quality of scientists trained to conduct rigorous, cutting-edge research on complementary and integrative practices, and to foster interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships. NCCIH recognizes a distinct need to support the development of clinician-scientists trained in complementary and integrative health practices to pursue clinically informed research careers. The 2016 National Advisory Council for Complementary and Integrative Health (NACCIH) Working Group Report on Clinician-Scientist Workforce Development included six formal recommendations, as follows:

1. Make improvements in existing programs if a need is identified and find new ways to leverage and optimize these programs.
2. Continue to support a variety of career paths to the goal of clinician-scientist, addressing specific roadblocks in each type of path. As part of this effort, develop innovative approaches to support research training for clinicians with complementary and integrative health degrees.
3. Develop programs to support the host environments at all types of institutions involved in research training in complementary and integrative health. This effort should include incentivizing institutions to reward teams of scientists and clinicians.
4. Raise the visibility of complementary and integrative health in the research and clinical community at large by enhancing the profile of both complementary and integrative health-trained clinician-scientists and conventionally trained researchers who conduct research in this field.
5. Tie NCCIH’s training and career development initiatives to the Center’s priority areas for research funding, while remaining open to potential support of new areas as appropriate.
6. Consider ways to address challenges related to the peer review process.

In response to this report, NCCIH has invested in several individual-level efforts to support complementary health practitioner clinician-scientists, including administrative supplements for individual practitioners to gain a research experience on a funded grant (NOT-AT-22-010), supplemental slots on funded T32 programs to support a practitioner at the pre- or post-doctoral level to pursue research training (NOT-AT-21-014), and supplemental slots on funded KL2 programs to support complementary health practitioner clinician-scientists at the early career level (NOT-AT-20-010). At the institutional level, we also supported an institutional training program for interdisciplinary complementary and integrative health clinical research training (RFA-AT-19-010). 

Providing additional avenues to support career development of clinician-scientists trained in complementary and integrative health practices remains a priority within the NCCIH strategic plan. Most recently, NCCIH supported an initiative for REsearch Across Complementary and Integrative Health Institutions (REACH) virtual resource centers to foster institutional partnerships and provide resources to support research activities and research training for clinician-scientist faculty located at complementary and integrative health clinical institutions (RFA-AT-23-007). While NCCIH intended to support a network of REACH centers, only one application scored competitively and was funded (U24AT012549). Thus, NCCIH is seeking to re-issue this concept to develop a network of REACH centers that can support a diverse array of research activities and trainings for clinician-scientists.

Purpose of Proposed Initiative

Re-issuing the REACH initiative aligns with the NACCIH Working Group Report on Clinician-Scientist Workforce Development and with Objective Four of the NCCIH strategic plan to “Enhance the Complementary and Integrative Health Research Workforce.” Despite our previous efforts, there remains a gap specifically for supporting institutional-level partnerships that foster research career development for clinician-scientists. 

The proposed initiative will support partnerships between research-intensive institutions and institutions focused on clinical training of complementary and integrative health practitioners. Research-intensive institutions will provide key resources to support the development, submission, and management of Federal research grant applications, and will also provide training for clinician-scientists at complementary and integrative health clinical institutions to expand their research skills and develop interdisciplinary research teams. Complementary and integrative health clinical institutions will commit to providing protected time for selected faculty to participate in training activities. It is anticipated that these institutional-level partnerships will enhance the research environment at complementary and integrative health institutions and make it easier for faculty at these clinical institutions to engage in federally funded research. In addition, new REACH centers will be expected to collaborate with the previously funded REACH center to provide a network of resources that cover a diverse array of research training needs and research activities aligned with NCCIH strategic priorities. These institutional-level partnerships are expected to enable a cadre of clinician-scientists who participate in interdisciplinary research teams across a variety of institutions to conduct complementary and integrative health research that is informed by clinical practice. 

Objectives

The objectives to be met by this concept are well aligned with the Working Group Report and include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Enhance interdisciplinary partnerships between research-intensive institutions and complementary and integrative health institutions
• Develop innovative approaches to support research training for clinicians with complementary and integrative health degrees
• Promote the development of interdisciplinary research collaborations for clinician-scientists
• Enhance the profile of complementary and integrative health-trained clinician-scientists
• Support research training within NCCIH priority research areas
• Increase the number and quality of clinician-scientists  trained to conduct rigorous, cutting-edge research on complementary and integrative practices