Short Term Research Training: Students in Health Professional Schools

Yale School of Medicine has a long tradition and record of accomplishments in training medical students for careers in academic medicine and research. This application is a competitive renewal of a training grant (Short- Term Training: Students in Health Professional Schools) that was first awarded in 1987-88 and is now in its 34th consecutive year. The purpose of the renewal is to provide intensive short-term training in research for selected predoctoral medical students in 93 of the most outstanding laboratories and training sites at the Yale School of Medicine. The specific training will range from fundamental molecular biology and cellular physiology to applied clinical research in areas related to heart, lung, blood, and sleep (HLBS) conditions. The program is designed to attract the most highly qualified Yale medical students into careers as physician-scientists in the biomedical sciences and HLBS domains. A recently conducted extensive follow-up documents a record of superb subsequent research training, research productivity, and faculty appointments (40.7%) among previously supported students. Trainees will be pre-doctoral medical students who have completed in good standing at least one year of the curriculum at the Yale School of Medicine. Twenty-four students per year will be selected competitively for this short-term training support based on the quality of a formal written proposal describing the planned research and the quality of the mentor and training environment. The ultimate goal of this program is to support a renewable physician scientist pipeline to accomplish NHLBI’s strategic objective of developing, diversifying, and sustaining a scientific workforce capable of accomplishing the NHLBI mission. This goal will be accomplished through the following specific aims: 1) to encourage our most talented students to participate in a mentored research experience in areas of interest to NHLBI during the early part of medical school and actively to pursue a research project throughout their four years of medical school; 2) to provide robust instruction in tenets of rigorous research with focused instruction on HLBS research, and; 3) to leverage our most select faculty members with NHLBI and NIH research support to offer research training in HLBS related areas to medical students in their laboratories and clinical researchgroups. This training program has shown exemplary performance over the past 34 years of continuous funding as tangibly demonstrated by the research productivity and achievements of its trainees. In the next funding cycle, it will continue to benefit from Yale’s well established medical student research infrastructure while continuing to align with evolving priorities in research and education. These efforts will ensure its enduring success in developing, diversifying, and sustaining a scientific workforce capable of accomplishing the NHLBI’s mission.