OVERALL ABSTRACT The Boston University CCCR will serve as a central resource for clinical research focused mostly on the most common musculoskeletal disorders, osteoarthritis and gout and will also provide research resources for investigator based research in scleroderma, spondyloarthritis, musculoskeletal pain and osteoporosis. Center grant funding has supported 30-35 papers annually in peer reviewed journals, most in the leading arthritis journals and some in leading general medical journals. This center has trained many of the leading clinical researchers in rheumatology throughout the US and internationally, and many of these former trainees have active collaborations with the center. We will include a broad research community and a core group of faculty in this CCCR. The research community's ready access to core faculty and to the sophisticated research methods and assistance they provide will enhance the clinical and translational research of the community and will increase collaborative opportunities for the core faculty and the community. The CCCR updates BU's historical focus on epidemiologic methods to include new approaches to causal inference and adds new methods in machine learning and mobile health. The Research and Evaluation Support Core Unit (RESCU) is the focal point of this CCCR. A key feature is the weekly research (RESCU meetings in which ongoing and proposed research projects are critically evaluated. This feature ensures frequent interactions between clinician researchers, epidemiologists and biostatisticians who are the core members of the CCCR. The RESCU core unit has provided critical support for other Center grants related to rheumatic and arthritic disorders at Boston University, three current R01/U01's; five current NIH K awards (one K24, 3 K23's, one K01), an R03, an NIH trial planning grant (U34), and multiple ACR RRF awards. The overall goal of this center is to carry out and disseminate high-level clinical research informed both by state of the art clinical research methods and by clinical and biological scientific discoveries. Ultimately, we aim either to prevent the diseases we are studying or to improve the lives of those living with the diseases.

NARRATIVE The Boston University Core Center for Clinical Research will provide broad clinical research methods expertise to a large multidisciplinary group of investigators whose research focuses on osteoarthritis and gout with a secondary emphasis on scleroderma, spondyloarthritis, osteoporosis and musculoskeletal pain. The group, which includes persons with backgrounds in rheumatology, physical therapy, epidemiology, biostatistics and . behavioral science, meets weekly to critically review research projects and serves a broad research community with which it actively engages. It has been successful in publishing influential papers on the diseases of focus and in training many of the clinical research faculty in the US and internationally