Using AI to understand key success features in evolving CTSAs

A vital role for Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) evaluators is to first identify and then articulate the necessary change processes that support the research infrastructures and achieve synergies needed to improve health through research. The use of qualitative evaluation strategies to compliment quantitative tracking measures (e.g., number of grants/publications) is an essential but under-utilized approach in CTSA evaluations. The Clinical and Translational Science Institute of Southeast Wisconsin implemented a qualitative evaluation approach using appreciative inquiry (AI) that has revealed three critical features associated with CTSA infrastructure transformation success: developing open communication, creating opportunities for proactive collaboration, and ongoing attainment of milestones at the key function group level. These findings are consistent with Bolman & Deal's four interacting hallmarks of successful organizations: structural (infrastructure), political (power distribution; organizational politics), human resource (facilitating change among humans necessary for continued success), and symbolic (visions and aspirations). Data gathered through this longitudinal AI approach illuminates how these change features progress over time as CTSA funded organizations successfully create the multiinstitutional infrastructures to connect laboratory discoveries with the diagnosis and treatment of human disease.