Northwestern University Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training Application

The increasing need to train highly skilled rehabilitation researchers has become increasingly apparent. As the issues addressed by health services research have grown both in complexity and relevance to public policy in recent years, Northwestern University, with its exceptional faculty and resources, has a history of training outstanding scholars and scientists and has demonstrated its capacity to provide high quality training experiences in health services research. The University established the Center for Healthcare Studies (the Center) in 1996 to allow Northwestern to take a national leadership role in the field. During the past 15 years of Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training funding, the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation along with the Center have built an integrated, interdisciplinary, collaborative training program that has attracted and recruited an impressive group of 25 ARRT-funded, early-career scholars that includes numerous women and minorities. The vast majority of the graduates have established themselves as health services researchers. This application builds upon the success of 15 years of NIDRR, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Veterans Affairs, and industry support for postdoctoral training program under the auspices of the Center and seeks to capitalize on the strengths in health services research at Northwestern for an additional five years. Because health services research requires individuals from different fields and perspectives to understand complex health and health care issues, we recruit fellows across a wide range of disciplines. One of the most suc-cessful aspects of our program has been the interaction of fellows with complementary backgrounds, skills, and training needs. We have succeeded in establishing a well-functioning interdisciplinary program that involves a substantial number of health services research faculty who work closely with fellows to provide a rigorous and relevant interdisciplinary curriculum for training health services researchers. We have successfully leveraged NIDRR funding by integrating faculty and programs from diverse departments and centers into a unified health services research training program. An additional funding cycle will provide training to six post-doctoral fellows as part of the Center-led health services training program at Northwestern University. This project utilizes the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) as its clinical site. RIC is one of the most respected rehabilitation facilities, having been named 23 consecutive years as the outstanding rehabilitation hospital in the country. The Rehabilitation Institute Research Corporation (RIRC) is its research and education affiliate, and includes the largest education and training center of any rehabilitation facility in the nation. The program includes carefully matched mentors, didactic course work, original research, grant writing and scientific publishing over a two-year program. Six fellows will develop new skills to enhance their previous training in order to pursue a research career in rehabilitation-related health services research. This project will benefit the field, the trainees, and persons with disabilities by building research capacity in rehabilitation-related health services research. This enhanced research capacity will be applied broadly to address and ameliorate the health and function concerns of persons with disabilities and chronic illness.