Translating fundamental discoveries into practice involves a series of complex scientific, regulatory, commercial, and financial steps that depend on coordinated activities among a wide range of experts working in teams. These activities, centered on increasingly efficient information transfer and application, delineate a systematic field of knowledge broadly defined as “translational sciences.” The full spectrum of translational biomedical research includes dauntingly diverse types of scientific activities and expertise, ranging from molecular biology to public policy and implementation science. Thus, the Association for Clinical and Translational Science's (ACTS) primary purpose is “to promote the field of clinical and translational sciences through the culture of team science and by engaging all of the interdisciplinary professionals within it.”
To accomplish this purpose, one of the biggest challenges is to create a gathering place for these diverse groups of translational scientists who, traditionally, are part of professional societies devoted to specific research fields such as cancer, endocrinology, neuroscience, biostatistics or informatics. The majority of these researchers gather in professional meetings and societies where they are recognized as “translational science” experts within their much focused disease areas. They do not have opportunities to interact with like‐minded translational researchers from other subspecialty or disease‐oriented societies to discuss the scientific methods and processes for knowledge transfer and application, outcome measurement, and health improvement. ACTS's vision is to provide platforms for likeminded researchers, whether they are in the “bench to bedside” (T1 research) or “bedside to community” (T2 and beyond) space, a professional society and gathering place to exchange ideas and to develop cross‐disease translational methodologies. The challenge is to create new communication and collaboration methods that are virtual, easy to use, reaches a community of scholars not limited to one specific organ or disease based focus, and meaningfully facilitates their work.
The ACTS leadership fully embraces this collaborative team‐based vision. As the outgoing and incoming ACTS presidents, we would like to discuss a very exciting new program that we are unveiling to address this challenge.
The new ACTS initiative provides unique virtual gathering and communication forums for interdisciplinary translational researchers called “Special Interest Groups” (SIGs). These SIGS will be based on broad translational interests, such as community engagement research, comparative effectiveness research, translational researcher education, and mentoring. Importantly, the ACTS membership is encouraged to self identify projects that will move the translational science fields forward. SIGs will have at their disposal virtual chat rooms and national teleconferencing resources. They will have the opportunity to communicate their work through the organization's newsletter, ACTS Connection, and with peer‐reviewed articles published in the Clinical and Translational Sciences Journal (CTS Journal). SIGs will provide a venue to expand the participant's career network, and also offer opportunities to increase leadership skills, build organizational capacity, identify new trends and topics in their field, and productively work with other ACTS member scientists with similar interests.
The opportunities to join or propose new SIGs are open to any active ACTS member (individual or through institutional membership). A standard application is available on the web site www.ACTScience.org; and to make this process effective and easy to initiate, ACTS has defined a few basic rules:
Any ACTS member can request to form a new SIG if they can enroll at least five ACTS members to establish it, and demonstrate a minimum growth to 25 members within 2 years.
The SIG generates unique projects relevant to the groups’ interests.
The group builds awareness and benefits of SIG membership through communications (e.g., CTS Journal and ACTS Connection).
Participate in quarterly calls and submit required reports to ACTS.
The SIG leadership participates in annual ACTS strategic planning sessions.
SIG formation will align with and expand ACTS’ four missions of translational research, education, advocacy, and mentoring. SIG activity will build leadership capacity within the ACTS committee structure and help drive the organization's development and growth, thereby helping define the disciplines of “translational science.”
We hope that many research expert groups that had been meeting by teleconferences as part of national and regional translational consortia will find this new ACTS venue attractive and effective. We envision the SIGs as a mechanism for remaining active in and contributing to the national dialogue about how best to advance translational sciences. Importantly, SIGs will grow their respective areas of expertise through this platform.
We believe that for ACTS to foster “translational sciences” as robust disciplines at the national level, these virtual platforms for collaboration, project development, interdisciplinary learning, and consensus building are critical. When these virtual scientific community interactions are highly subscribed and then supplemented with a vibrant annual face‐to‐face meeting of experts and learners from diverse disciplines, ACTS will have accomplished a key success metric towards its larger mission of promoting the field of clinical and translational sciences through a culture of team science.