Assistant Professor Atrium Health Wake Forest School of Medicine Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States
Background: Despite great progress in recruiting and retaining learners into child health research careers, major workforce shortages persist. Existing child health and volunteer research opportunities provide great exposure to the field, but most projects involving learners do not reach completion during the learner’s time on the team. More importantly, they rarely lead to a first-authored publication by the learner. Thus, there is an urgent need to promote and empower learners at all levels to lead their own independent research projects that culminate in a first-authored publication in a high-impact, peer-reviewed journal. Objective: Describe the effect of a novel and innovative pediatric transdisciplinary research training program on learner research productivity as measured by first-authored publications in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals. Design/Methods: We initiated an unfunded pediatric transdisciplinary research training program to support our research team at a single institution in January 2022. The program empowers learners at all levels (high school students through clinical fellows) to lead independent research projects with coach-mentoring from program faculty. Given the small sample size, this is a descriptive report of the annual total number of learner first-authored publications on our team before program initiation (2018–2021) and after program initiation (2022–2023). Results: From 2018–2021, learners had two first-authored publications over 4 years. After initiation, leaners had seven first-authored publications over 2 years (a 600% increase). These publications represented projects that were presented as abstract presentations at national and international conferences as works in progress.
Conclusion(s): Our transformative, novel, and innovative pediatric transdisciplinary research training program substantially increased the annual number of learner first-authored publications in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals. Crucially, these publications represented the culmination of studies conceptualized and led by learners. Planned analyses will investigate the effect of our program on learner first-authored publications by underrepresented-minoritized and female learners. We are currently scaling our program across the institution, including having secured R25 funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Our program demonstrates the early success of a new way to empower learners through completion of independent research projects they are passionate about to prepare for a future career in child health.
