September 2015 will see the launch of the Translational Research Project (TRP), a new masters program at the University of Toronto that will be funded by the Institute of Medical Science.
The program will seek to facilitate the translation of scientific research findings into public health initiatives. Translational research focuses on the application of knowledge to the field of public health. Discoveries in the laboratory are contextualized within the current, real-world landscape to address the challenges that the health care system is afflicted with.
The TRP prompts student collaboration on projects, with an emphasis on a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle current public health challenges. The Capstone project, one of the innovative aspects of the TRP, requires students to identify a particular issue to which they then design a practical solution. Students work closely with mentors, hospital, and institute staff to address these issues.
To mobilize the research effectively, the TRP focuses on three aspects: deployment, breadth, and integration. The program helps students develop the skills necessary to undertake projects that target specific needs of the real world.
Dr. Joseph Ferenbok, director of the TRP, says that the program seeks to train students to “understand… the potential opportunities and risks along the ‘translational’ pathway” as well as to “actually try to apply science to solve health[care] needs.” The TRP’s end goal is to train people who can appreciate and help facilitate the most effective ways to translate knowledge into the health science field.
Experiential learning, the process by which one learns by ‘doing’, has its challenges. Because learning focuses on the experience of ‘doing,’ new adaptations must be made to improve this experience for students.
As Ferenbok puts it, “Experiential learners… will learn by doing, and in the doing, reflect on what they are doing and how things in the area of Health Science Translation should be done.”
Although the program has been specifically designed to help students launch their ideas, the TRP also seeks to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary for seeking funding. Ferenbok foresees that the success of the program depends on students’ comfort with foregoing a stipend. For some students, not having secure funding poses a concern — they want their projects to be fundable and to help them to secure jobs in the future. Ferenbok hopes that students will be able to appreciate that in return for secure funding, they will have to work on their own projects under someone else’s direction. “[Until] the government… private donors [can] establish an innovation fund [to] support early stage student projects,” Ferenbok notes, “funding remains a concern for potential students.”
On an international scale, the so-called gap between medical research and patient needs has been characterized as the “valley of death.” There is concern over the National Institute of Health’s lack of focus in applying, or translating, medical research into the real world to meet patient needs.
Although translational research may seem to be the solution to the issues that plague health care systems, it has its barriers and limitations. Generally, researchers are reluctant to move away from the tradition of conducting research, making a discovery, and finally publishing their findings. But, translational research poses other challenges that range from inadequate access to funding, to government intervention, to the general difficulty of revising public health policies.
The TRP encourages its students to be self-motivated and committed to learning, and wants to recruit students who are in control of their own ideas to help apply knowledge to real-world problems. “This form of education is for risk takers, for people who are not afraid to fail,” says Ferenbok.
