Phase 2 Proposal

 Co-sponsors:  Steve Cummings and Mark Pletcher

Other sponsors and supporters:  Maria Glymour, Jacquelyn Torres, Tom Newman, Lydia Zablotska, Mike Nevitt, June Chan, and Isabel Allen

Background

Our academic time is fragmented, interrupted and often conducted in silos.  We make more progress, and generate good ideas, when we have long blocks of protected time to focus on a shared project, or a new area of collaborative research with other faculty.  Many organizations successfully use targeted retreats to create collaborative new directions.  Epi and Biostat should, too.

Proposal

Establish a fund for Intensive Scientific Retreats. Retreats would be proposed and conducted by groups of Epi and Biostat faculty. They would submit a proposal for support of a retreat that would be evaluated by the Chair and a small faculty committee.

The team proposing the retreat would submit a 1 or 2-page proposal describing 1) background and areas of focus, 2) goals and products (e.g. a strategic plan for a new research direction, new projects leading to grant proposals, detailed plans for a new Division, or learning a new area or skill, such as machine learning, that may be valuable to creating new research proposals), 3) description of the participants, involving at least 4 Epi and Biostat faculty, and potentially including others and UCSF and expert(s) / scientist(s) outside of UCSF, 4) duration (1/2 to 2 days), location, and plans for protecting the time and attention of attendees (e.g. no mobile devices), and 5) requested support for space rental (if needed), food during the retreat, reimbursement of external scientist/expert(s), materials or other anticipated expenses.

Examples (provided by co-sponsors and supporters of the Idea)

These retreats could be integrated into other Big Ideas, such as Diabetes, as a way to start or accelerate development of those projects.

Here are examples from faculty who support and co-sponsor this Big Idea:

• Planning a Center for Public Health (Kirsten's idea) that would work with local communities to provide accurate information on effects of environmental exposures and, potentially, initiate new studies.  The retreat would develop a comprehensive plan, resources needed, team, and timeline.  A goal would be to strengthen Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology in the Department.
• Introduce Epi Biostat faculty to “How to Use Actual UC-wide EHR data.”  Participants would bring or develop a project, and execute the beginning of that project - with code, table shells, and manuscript outlines done by the end of the retreat.  They would also establish a timeline for completion of the project.
• Plan the new Life-course Division, with its faculty mapping out the conditions, methodologies, collaborations and organization. Within this area, there are several potential topics that might benefit from retreats to map out research, teams, and proposals on social determinants of healthy aging; biological mechanisms of social inequalities in aging; life-course epidemiologic methods, and aging; social policies to reduce the population burden of Alzheimer's disease.
• A disease-oriented project on shortness of breath could start with a retreat to map out several causes -  age-related, environment-related, disease-related, economically-related.  Then develop a plan of research for each potential cause and methodologies to address it.
• A retreat could address a broad topic that would lead to more specific proposals for research and funding, for example (from Tom Newman): How to use epidemiologic methods to improve healthcare value or (from June Chan): novel uses of mobile technologies for epidemiologic and health research.

Costs

We propose that $20,000 be set aside for initially funding 3 retreats. Potential budgets would be included in proposals for Retreats.

Evaluation

A “Retreats Committee” (or Epi-Biostat leadership) would review the reports of the results of the retreat and subsequent accomplishment and products from the 1^st 3 retreats. and make recommendations about whether to continue and how to improve the Scientific Retreats program.  

This Big Idea meets the review criteria

1) It would engage a very broad and diverse group of Epi and Biostat faculty; essentially, any individual could propose or may participate in a retreat pertinent to their area of interest. 2) An essential goal of a retreat would be to plan future grant proposals and/or outreach to potential donors. 3) Successful retreats would lead to new projects and new collaborations that would, by nature, increase the visibility of the Department within UCSF and/or external communities. 4) This is essentially a pilot program of 3 retreats that would be evaluated based on their products.