Overall Project Summary / Abstract. With just over a million people in the entire state, Montana lacks an adequate healthcare infrastructure throughout our rural areas, contributing to significant and prevalent health disparity issues. These issues can be directly addressed by investing in clinical and translational (C&T) research. As noted in our letters of support, the University of Montana has numerous C&T investigators from a variety of disciplines, but uniformly working with clinical partners on C&T research is not common. We have assembled a strong team of both clinical and public health partners (Partner Organizations), allowing us to not only grow C&T research capacity but also to translate research findings to our “communities”, which includes our new Practice-Based Research Network, rural clinical sites, public health / tribal health departments, and community members themselves. Our team has extensive experience working within the Clinical and Translational Research (CTR) funding mechanism, participating in Core Director roles in the Mountain West CTR Infrastructure Network (Mountain West CTR-IN) for the last 10 years. In addition, we already have strong, existing relationships with clinical and public health stakeholders throughout our state. With an evaluation plan consisting of a mixed method design, we will test the overall hypothesis that the Montana Clinical and Translational Center (Montana CTRC) will significantly build C&T research capacity in our rural and underserved state. We will test this hypothesis through three Aims: Aim 1) Provide mentorship and workforce professional development to enhance the capacity and infrastructure in conducting C&T research, Aim 2) Administer clinical and translational research projects, and Aim 3) Integrate translational research within community settings.

Overall Project Narrative. Montana is one of the most rural states in the US, resulting in numerous health disparities that impact our underserved populations. In collaboration with our Partner Organizations, the Montana Clinical and Translational Research Center will build clinical and translational (C&T) research capacity that includes developing the C&T workforce, expertise, and infrastructure in Montana as we directly address the numerous health problems in our state.