Supervised Research Training
| The performance of research is an essential component of the research training and involves approximately forty-five percent of the Research Track fellow’s time commitment. At the beginning of the fellowship program, we provide all fellows a booklet describing the background, research interests, ongoing research projects, and available research databases of faculty. This booklet helps the fellow identify faculty with similar interests who can serve as research supervisors. This assists fellows in setting up meetings with faculty to explore potential research collaboration. During the first months of the Fellowship, the fellows devote considerable time to reading, formulating research ideas, meeting with faculty to discuss these ideas and meeting with the Program Directors to monitor their progress. By the fall or early winter, fellows generally define at least one viable research project and a faculty member to supervise it. By this time, each fellow has an overall Fellowship Program mentor who provides guidance in selection of the research project and a faculty preceptor for the project. Under the guidance of the research supervisor, the fellow refines the research proposal. In doing so, the fellow is likely to review additional scientific literature and consult with a number of faculty members. The next step for the fellow performing research is to write a research protocol and submit it to his/her research supervisor for review. Once the proposal is approved, the research begins. The project may involve primary data collection or use of secondary data sets. The advantage of the latter for fellows is considerable. The effort of performing the study is likely to be significantly reduced if data collection is not required. Certainly the duration of the project will be shorter, an important consideration in a two-year training program. Practically speaking, time and cost constraints will often limit the trainee to the performance of projects using secondary data or the performance of small-scale studies. Some research may rely on secondary data sources supplemented by limited data collection by the fellow. Fellows may also utilize data recorded in medical records and other non-computerized sources. Whatever the method of data acquisition, the fellow is responsible, under the supervision of his/her research preceptor, for study design, data acquisition and manipulation, computer and statistical analysis, and the written and oral presentation of the results. At certain points in the process the fellow is asked to present a report of work-in-progress at one of the regularly scheduled Fellow Research-in-Progress meetings. The purpose is to assist the presenter by helping the fellow with particular research issues he/she is grappling with at a particular time. The presentation also exposes his/her research plan or preliminary results to scrutiny. In conducting the research, the fellows will carry out tasks often performed by a research assistant in a funded project: data collection, data abstraction from clinical records, data coding, computer data entry and file manipulation, and computer programming for statistical analysis. We believe it is important for fellows to perform, under supervision, research assistant tasks so that they are aware of the steps required to perform research. In the long run this experience should enable them to better design future studies and better supervise research staff. Nonetheless, the faculty can provide their staff to assist the fellow, primarily by helping him/ her learn how to perform these research tasks. They may help in recruiting study participants, in designing data collection forms and in collecting data, etc. During the course of the Program, fellows in the Research Track are expected to conduct at least two research projects. The nature of the projects and their timing is subject to the approval by their mentor. These projects should involve different types of research methodology, topics, and preceptors. In general, we recommend that a fellow get a single project started as soon as possible after commencing the program and that consideration of a second potential project be delayed. However, some background reading and consultation with faculty on the subject of potential second projects could be initiated earlier, as long as it would not detract from the principal objective of successfully initiating the first project. Once the first project is well on its way, the fellow can begin planning for the second, while simultaneously carrying out the first. In helping fellows choose their research projects, their mentors will prioritize ones that address the needs of medically underserved, urban populations. The focus is on the care of individuals who live in the inner city, particularly special populations defined by ethnicity (minority), primary language (often non-English), culture (often foreign), and economic status (often poor). In their research projects, fellows will gain experience in performing research involving such populations, addressing the important health issues confronting these populations, and using research methods appropriate to the populations. |