Administrative Core

The Administrative (Admin) Core of the Penn INSPIRE Center will lead senior and emerging investigators in establishing, implementing, and evaluating a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary scientific agenda that leverages implementation science to optimize suicide prevention. Based at the Penn Perelman School of Medicine, INSPIRE will have interdisciplinary collaborations from the Penn Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the Penn School of Nursing. INSPIRE will integrate perspectives from psychology, implementation science, psychiatry, machine learning, health economics, and health information technology. Realizing the benefit of such a rich, interdisciplinary research endeavor requires strong and creative centralized leadership as well as efficient and effective coordination of services, logistics, and resources. Led by Center Co-Directors G. Brown and Oquendo, the Admin Core will be INSPIRE’s organizational, governance, and strategic-planning hub and will address three Aims. First, the Core will provide scientific and programmatic leadership to maximize integration, rigor, and synergy across Center components, investigators, and external affiliates. It will institute and coordinate an internal Center Steering Committee and Stakeholder Committee and an External Advisory Committee for transparency and input on governance, planning, and evaluation. Centralized administrative, fiscal, and organizational coordination of INSPIRE Cores and Research Projects will be effected by an experienced, efficient Administrative Support Team. Second, the Admin Core will ensure scientific innovation and responsiveness to evolving research, practice, and policy needs through the INSPIRE Pilot Studies Program that will support 10 pilot studies over the course of the Center. The Core also will establish the INSPIRE Suicide Prevention Scholars Program to engage and build capacity of both early-stage and established investigators who can make novel interdisciplinary contributions to the suicide prevention research evidence base. Third, the Admin Core will amplify the impact of our research and make INSPIRE resources available across scientific, practice, and policy communities through a dynamic INSPIRE website as well as other targeted mechanisms for wide, multi-sector dissemination of Center findings, research tools, and other products. Thus, through the Admin Core, INSPIRE Leadership will maximize generation of high-impact knowledge about suicide prevention strategies designed to be rapidly deployable in a wide range of settings. The Core’s management strategy will emphasize shared leadership, investigator support and mentoring, and intensive engagement of stakeholders at every level (planning, evaluation, research, and dissemination) to maximize impact.