A National Assessment of Cancer Center Shared Resources Metrics: Results from the First NACCSR Survey

Tracking core metrics is a critical component of centralized core facility management and is essential for ensuring that individual cores are efficiently operated, effectively evaluated, and optimally catalyze research. The National Alliance of Cancer Center Shared Resources (NACCSR) is a consortium of shared resource leaders from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) designated Cancer Centers. The NACCSR Core Metrics Committee (CMC) includes shared resource leaders from a dozen NCI-designated cancer centers. Presented here are the results of a recent CMC survey aimed at identifying core metrics critical to cancer center shared resources, including operations, usage, financials, and scientific impact. The end goals of this survey are to benchmark cancer center core metrics and to provide a base for recommendations on best practices for optimizing the tracking, evaluation, and presentation of core metrics. Moreover, these survey findings will inform evidence-based recommendations to the NCI on the essential core metrics to be incorporated into both the individual shared resource sections and the centralized shared resource management components of NCI P30 Cancer Center Support Grants.