Promoting Child and Adolescent Research During Training

Psychiatric disorders are common in childhood and cause significant morbidity, mortality and disability. There is a critical shortage of physician-scientists in child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) to address this significant problem. Unfortunately, there are a dearth of programs that provide significant research training, forcing CAP fellows who desire a research career to commit to an additional 2-3 years of postgraduate research training beyond their CAP fellowship. This proposed R25-funded Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Research Training Track (CAP-RTT) will fill this critical training gap and national need. It will train the next generation of physician- scientists in CAP research and accelerate their trajectories to independent, productive research careers. This two year program, with an optional third year, will pair substantial dedicated research time with excellent clinical training in our CAP fellowship. Our Division provides an ideal setting to combine superb research and clinical training. Our CAP fellowship and Triple Board Program have a long history of attracting excellent trainees providing unparalleled training. We have a pool of potential CAP researchers for the CAP-RTT. The number of research-oriented residents potentially available to our program, stimulated this application. In 2019, the Division received more than $15 million for active grants (representing over $38 million in all years of funding for those projects). The Division's pioneering research in psychopathology, children's sleep, infant development, psychophysiology, and HIV clinical interventions has translated into new and effective treatments for children and their families. Other areas of interest include neuroscience, genetics, social science, prevention, health disparities, and health services research. Our faculty are skilled mentors in the Division's two NIMH T32 programs and participate in many other research training programs at Brown. Our program will combine an intensive longitudinal mentored research experience with an individualized research didactic curriculum and career development activities in a rich, multidisciplinary environment. The program will contain substantial protected research time, individualized mentored research training, a specialized didactic research curriculum, career development experiences for trainees, and a comprehensive evaluation component of the fellows and the program.