What is "IDeA?"
The Institutional Development Award (IDeA) is a government mandated program that supports states with historically low levels of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The goals of the IDeA Clinical & Translational Research networks are to:
- Strengthen infrastructure supports for clinical & translational research
- Make investigators more competitive for research funding & programming
- Increase collaborative research in medically underserved communities
As pictured on the NIH General Medical Sciences homepage, roughly half of the United States are IDeA-eligible states, including Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire.
The NNE-CTR—which covers the IDeA states of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire—is one of 13 IDeA-CTR programs in the country. Read more to learn about the IDeA network and the other 12 CTR sites.
What is "CTR?" -- Clinical & Translational Research
Clinical research is medical research that involves human participants. This includes clinical trials, which engage patients to test new treatments and therapies for disease. Clinical research can also use volunteers to participate in studies focused on health beyond just treatment, such as preventing, diagnosing, or understanding human diseases.
Translational research is the application of clinical and other research to impact health in some way. This type of research often takes one of two approaches: 1) Bench-to-Bedside and/or 2) Bedside-to-Practice.