The Institute for Translational Medicine

The University of Chicago – Rush University Institute for Translational Medicine (ITM) was created in 2007 to assemble, integrate, and create the intellectual, administrative, and physical resources required to catalyze research and research training in Clinical and Translational Science. We have trained university scientists and health care providers as well as stakeholders from concerned communities to work together to determine the biological, behavioral, and social determinants of disease; to develop and test interventions directed toward those mechanisms; and to achieve these goals in a way that is rigorous, efficient, ethical, respectful of, and responsive to our communities’ priorities and values. The ITM has capitalized on outstanding intellectual and physical resources throughout UChicago, Rush, and ITM affiliate institutions – Loyola University Chicago, NorthShore University HealthSystem, Advocate Aurora Health Care, and Illinois Institute of Technology – and on substantial multi-institutional investments to build the sustainable infrastructure for a transformative, energetic, and self-improving home for clinical and translational research. Now, we pursue a bold guiding vision for “ITM 3.0” – that improving health requires accounting for and addressing social, environmental, behavioral, and psychological (SEBP) factors that can affect health. Focus on SEBP is critical because: 1) SEBP factors interact with human biology to exacerbate or cause disease and injury, and 2) illness of any origin can compound the negative effects of adverse SEBP factors. Since both SEBP and biological systems, and their interactions, determine health, our CTSA hub must provide investigators, trainees, and stakeholders with the resources and knowledge to account for and address health disruptors throughout both systems. Our strategy to implement this vision is to create new training mechanisms, research platforms, communications channels, and safeguards against harm to ensure that all ITM investigators and institutions approach health problems with a wider-angle SEBP lens in an ethical way. Then, our scientific, institutional, and community stakeholders can together design, test, and disseminate biological and/or SEBP-directed interventions at the levels of individual, community, and society to improve mutually defined health concerns. ITM 3.0 will work hand-in-hand with partners throughout Chicagoland and the nation, combining academic rigor with community wisdom to conceptualize, develop and deploy innovative and ethical interventions/practices to achieve our common goal.