As I discussed in an earlier post, the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program supports the development of infrastructure and capacity to enable investigators in IDeA-eligible states to become more competitive for NIH and other biomedical research funding opportunities. While the program has led to significant progress in the basic sciences, clinical and translational research in IDeA states has, for the most part, remained underdeveloped. To spur greater clinical and translational research in these states, NIH issued the IDeA Program Infrastructure for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR) funding opportunity announcement last year. We have just awarded the first grants, to the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute (lead institution: West Virginia University) and the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center (lead institution: Louisiana State University Pennington Biomedical Research Center). Among the activities these centers will pursue are partnerships and collaborations within and across IDeA states; clinical and translational pilot grants; clinical research education, mentoring and career development; clinical research design, epidemiology and biostatistics; and projects related to the specific health and research needs of their states. For more information on the IDeA-CTR initiative, please contact me by e-mail or call 301-435-0832.