Overview
The overall objective of the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science (LA CaTS) Center is to:
- Unite the major academic, research and clinical care institutions in the state of Louisiana to coordinate and enhance clinical and translational science.
- Extend the benefit of clinical-translational science to the community on a state-wide basis.
- Improve the public health.
Emerging from the devastation and public health crisis of 2005 Hurricane Katrina, and with strong motivation and support from the state of Louisiana, the three vanguard institutions – Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC), Tulane University and LSU Health Science Center in New Orleans (LSUHSC NO), have joined forces to establish the LA CaTS Center to achieve these goals. To achieve all of the LA CaTS Center’s goals, other statewide research and healthcare institutions will be incorporated over a period of years, including LSU A&M, LSU Health Care Services Division, LSU Health Science Center in Shreveport (LSUHSC S), Ochsner Clinic Foundation, Research Institute for Children (RIC) at Children’s Hospital in NO, and Xavier University.
These objectives will be achieved on a state-wide basis by strategic programs designed to:
- Improve clinical research training.
- Enhance and extend informatics.
- Provide a series of strong and easily accessible scientific cores.
- Support clinical-translational research infrastructure including support for pilot and collaborative research funding, support for novel approaches to clinical research activities and a focus on innovations to the process of clinical research.
- Harmonize, streamline, and facilitate regulatory and research procedures at key participating institutions.
- Develop safe and ethical oversight programs for patient’s protection.
- Provide a dedicated program to stimulate involvement in community based participatory research. The partner institutions now propose to focus on public health by promoting clinical and translational research activities in the state of Louisiana to an even higher, more synergistic level to benefit all state residents, but especially to underserved populations.
Mission
The LA CaTS Center theme is to provide access to and benefits of clinical and translational research for underserved populations.
LA CaTS Center mission is to develop the discipline of clinical and translational science, to increase the quantity, efficiency and speed of clinical research, to train the next generation of clinical and translational scientists, and to bring the benefits of clinical and translational research to the underserved population in Louisiana.
Louisiana routinely ranks in the most extreme decile for mortality from chronic disease, and many deaths are lifestyle related. Age-adjusted mortality from cardiovascular disease in Louisiana is 258 per 100,000 per year and compared with US national averages of 243. Likewise, cancer deaths are notably higher in the state relative to national norms, 211 versus 195 per 100,000 per year (US DHHS, 2004). In Louisiana, 40% of the populations lives at or below 200% of the poverty level (a component of the Index of Medical Underservice), compared with 31% nationally (LA DHHS, 2006; US Census Bureau, 2006). In Louisiana, 38% met criteria of the Index of Medical Underservice, compared with the national average of 27% (US DHHS, 2007). Using this criterion, all Louisiana parishes (counties) except one qualify as medically underserved (Nichols, 2006). Overall, the quality of life in the state is heavily adversely impacted by the public health burdens of medical underservice and high rates of chronic disease. The simultaneously high incidence of poverty combines with these other factors to create an environment of mutually reinforcing health deficits from which recovery is challenging. The overall theme targeting underserved populations resonates in each of our goals and each of the Key Functions we have selected to fulfill our goals.
To learn more about the LA CaTS Center, visit www.lacats.org
