In addition to providing collaborative clinical research opportunities with both junior and senior faculty research mentors, the Clinical Research Fellowship Program at Columbia University provides for a wide range of didactic programs, thus ensuring a comprehensive experience in clinical research training.
Fellows are able take advantage of formal courses offered throughout Columbia University. Recently, fellows enrolled in the following optional University courses related to their individual research projects: Introduction to Biostatistical Methods; Applied Regression Analysis; The Randomized Clinical Trial; Issues and Approaches in Health Policy and Management; Introduction to Computer Applications in Health Care & Biomedicine; Radiobiology for Medical Physicists; Epidemiology; Basic Laboratory Methods in Patient Oriented Research; Probability; Analysis of Categorical Data; Genetics in Epidemiology; Cancer Epidemiology; Statistical Computing with SAS; Medicare and Medicaid: Policy Changes in an Uncertain Era; and Computational Neuroscience: Circuits in the Brain.
Fellows also participate in the following optional non-credit didactic programs:
- Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research’s (CTSA) Clinical Research Rotation: The goal of this two-week rotation is the development of a research protocol through interactions with clinical investigators and a biostatistician. In addition to meeting with clinical investigators, directors of clinical research core facilities, and CTSA leaders in clinical research training, as well as attending an IRB meeting, the focus of this program is on the process of asking and answering clinically important questions. At the end of the rotation, each participant presents her/his clinical protocol at a meeting attended by the CTSA Director and Clinical Research Resource’s Biostatistician, as well as program faculty. These formal presentations are characterized by discussions on key issues such as clinical relevance, recruitment, feasibility, ethics, confounders and biostatistics. Doris Duke Fellows are the only students invited to participate in this unique program.
- Writing for Research Publication: This workshop addresses rhetorical positioning and the development of detailed, readable, and unambiguous scientific texts, focusing on the analysis and practice of two critical
sub-sections, Introductions and Data Commentaries. The program also includes group editing of participants’ writing during which both the fundamental rhetorical principles discussed in the workshop are applied and the skills set required of a critical reader are developed and refined.
- Clinical Investigator Training Course: This Food and Drug Administration comprehensive three-day program (in Silver Spring, MD) addresses the design, conduct, and analysis of trials, regulatory considerations, the role of DSMB's and IRB's, preclinical and pharmacological issues, safety assessments, and the inclusion of vulnerable populations.