Center for Community Translation

Our hospital partnered with the University of Southern California and the City of Hope to launch the Los Angeles Basin Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) with support from the USC Provost and Dean of the Keck School of Medicine.  The overarching goal of this Institute is to change the culture of biomedical research locally and contribute to a change nationally to focus on interdisciplinary and collaborative research that has as its end goal the improvement of human health and health care. The CTSI will serve as an academic home for clinical and translational science, attract researchers to the discipline, train them in its culture and skills, and actively promote and support the development of bench-to-bedside and bedside-to-community research. While we will apply this vision to the breadth of biomedical research at CTSI institutions, we will take advantage of our location in the heart of one of largest and most heterogeneous cities in the world to improve the health of diverse urban populations.

Within the CTSI is the Center for Community Translation (CCT), which is housed at our hospital.  Under the direction of Dr. Michele Kipke, the CCT seeks to create a culture of academic-community partnerships and interactions in the areas of health and healthcare. This will be achieved by:

• Establishing mechanisms to determine the community’s health-related needs and concerns, and engage the community in a meaningful process of setting CTSI’s research priorities
• Fostering bi-directional collaborations and research partnerships between CTSI investigators, community-based healthcare providers, policymakers, and representatives from the lay community
• Promoting the delivery of evidence-based approaches to treatment, prevention, policy and health promotion in community settings through bi-directional education/trainings, and the translation and dissemination of CTSI research findings.