NIH grant awards as a metric of clinical and translational research training effectiveness

The number of clinical research training programs has increased over the past 5-10 years, but few studies have quantitatively evaluated the effectiveness of these programs. The goal of this study was to evaluate the clinical and translational research training program at the University of Cincinnati by comparing the number of National Institutes of Health grants awarded to pediatric fellows who graduated from the MS degree program between 1995 and 2013 versus fellows who did not pursue an MS degree. Among 394 pediatric fellows, 16 of 81 (20%) MS alumni were awarded at least one NIH grant, as compared with 28 of 313 (9%) fellows who did not obtain an MS degree (p < 0.02). In multivariable analysis, MS alumni were more than three times as likely to have received at least one grant than were non-MS fellows (OR = 3.5, 95% CI [1.7-7.2]; C-statistic = 0.71) and MS alumni were more likely to obtain at least one K-series (OR = 4.1, 95% CI [1.6-10.2]; C-statistic = 0.74), M-series (OR = 11.8, 95% CI [3.4-41.4]; C-statistic = 0.81), or R-series (OR = 10.1, 95% CI [2.4-42.8]; C-statistic = 0.74) grant than were non-MS fellows. These findings suggest that graduate training in clinical and translational research prepares graduates for the highly competitive field of clinical and translational research.