The Role of Prenatal Experience and Infant Sleep in the Development of Early Childhood Executive Function

In this seminar, Cathi Propper, PhD, will focus on early predictors of cognitive outcomes in preschool age children. Specifically, prenatal experience such as stress, inflammation, and nutrition play a critical role in shaping childhood developmental trajectories and they differ by sociodemographic status. Prenatal experience may also influence infant sleep across the first year of life, which may act as a mediator of the relationship between prenatal experience and cognitive outcomes.

Propper will present the results of a pilot study that examined these links in African American families and will provide details about an innovative naturalistic observation of infant sleep in the home that may help explain associations.

The Inclusive Science Program (ISP) focuses on increasing the inclusion of populations that have been historically underrepresented in clinical and translational research. The ISP Spring Seminar Series highlights research with a focus on diverse representation.

Presenter
Cathi Propper, PhD
Advanced Research Scientist
Director, Developmental Biobehavioral Core
Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute
UNC-Chapel Hill

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Adam Lee from NC TraCS and Stephanie Deen from UNC Health will be presenting on EPIC Updates and Health Informatics. They will provide an overview and success stories of using myUNCchart (myChart) for patient recruitment, review Epic@UNC security and feature updates and enhancements, and provide an overview and use cases for Best Practice Advisories within Epic for research studies.

Attendance at this event is pending approval for 1 contact hour of clinical research education on applications for Maintenance of ACRP's CCRC®, CCRA®, CPI® or ACRP-CP® certification designations

Presenters: Adam Lee (NC TraCS) and Stephanie Deen (UNC Health)

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Join Carolina Health Informatics Program’s (CHIP) virtual Analytics and Machine-Learning in Maternal-Health Intervention (AMMI) conference. The AMMI conference will provide a unique and much needed platform for multi-disciplinary researchers from maternal health, machine learning, informatics, and medical imaging on topics related to prenatal health. Through this event, CHIP aims to promote health equity in maternal and child health. This innovative virtual symposium will include keynote speakers, panel discussions, student poster sessions, and networking opportunities with the leading industry and academic researchers in machine learning and maternal health.

Headlining Speakers

Sarahn Wheeler, MD
Duke University Medical Center, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Janice Huckaby, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Maternal-Child Health, for UnitedHealthcare/Optum Population Health Solutions

Herbert Peterson, MD
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, Department of Maternal and Child Health, UNC Chapel Hill
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UNC Chapel Hill
Director, WHO Collaborating Center for Research Evidence for Sexual and Reproductive Health

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This is an online 3-part short course (held over three afternoons - 4/14, 4/15, 4/16 ) offered by the Odum Institute. Stata part 1 will offer an introduction to Stata basics. Part 2 will teach entering data in Stata, working with Stata do files, and will show how to append, sort, and merge data sets. Part 3 will cover how to perform basic statistical procedures and regression models in Stata.

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Join Carolina Health Informatics Program’s (CHIP) virtual Analytics and Machine-Learning in Maternal-Health Intervention (AMMI) conference. The AMMI conference will provide a unique and much needed platform for multi-disciplinary researchers from maternal health, machine learning, informatics, and medical imaging on topics related to prenatal health. Through this event, CHIP aims to promote health equity in maternal and child health. This innovative virtual symposium will include keynote speakers, panel discussions, student poster sessions, and networking opportunities with the leading industry and academic researchers in machine learning and maternal health.

Headlining Speakers

Sarahn Wheeler, MD
Duke University Medical Center, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Janice Huckaby, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Maternal-Child Health, for UnitedHealthcare/Optum Population Health Solutions

Herbert Peterson, MD
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, Department of Maternal and Child Health, UNC Chapel Hill
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UNC Chapel Hill
Director, WHO Collaborating Center for Research Evidence for Sexual and Reproductive Health

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This is an online 3-part short course (held over three afternoons - 4/14, 4/15, 4/16 ) offered by the Odum Institute. Stata part 1 will offer an introduction to Stata basics. Part 2 will teach entering data in Stata, working with Stata do files, and will show how to append, sort, and merge data sets. Part 3 will cover how to perform basic statistical procedures and regression models in Stata.

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PCORI Applicant Town Hall: Increasing Vaccine Confidence among Long-Term Care Workers (Expedited COVID-19 PFA)

This town hall will provide an overview of PCORI and the information applicants may need to submit a responsive application to the Increasing Vaccine Confidence among Long-Term Care Workers: Expedited COVID-19 Targeted PCORI Funding Announcement (PFA).

The targeted PFA will open on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. Applications will be due Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5pm ET.

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Join a live training session for the N3C Data Enclave. Users of all types can learn how to navigate the N3C, utilize the Enclave and resources it provides, and learn how to better achieve their analytical goals. This orientation is split into 2 sessions – Session A and Session B. These orientations are ongoing and will alternate week by week. Session A is recommended before attending Session B

Session B is for analysts, statisticians, data scientists, or anyone who wants to gain a broader understanding of the tools needed to work with the data.

Topics include:

• Focus on technical aspects of working with data in the secure N3C Enclave, including use of OMOP concept sets and N3C-specific tooling, such as the Concept Set Browser.
• Introduce commonly used analysis tools, such as Contour and Code Workbooks and corresponding workflows for simple analyses.
• Introduce the Enclave Knowledge Store, a mechanism for sharing and using community-developed code and data across projects.

Note: This orientation is held alternating Tuesdays | 8-9:30am PT/11am-12:30pm ET

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Please join the Office of Clinical Trials for a virtual town hall to learn about several initiatives underway to improve clinical research at UNC. Topics to be discussed will include: processes to reduce administrative burden, changes to the research fee schedule, remote consent options, subject injury language, and an update on OnCore Enterprise.

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The REDCap Hands-On Form Building Training Session will teach users to build forms using the online designer or data dictionary. This session will be a click along hands-on/lecture/demo.

Our current REDCap trainings are offered as webinar-only.

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About REDCap

REDCap is a secure web application that can be used to build and manage case report forms, surveys and other data capture mechanisms for clinical research. NC TraCS provides training classes to assist you in getting started with building REDCap data collection forms for your research projects.

Current REDCap training offerings include:

1. Forms (beginner)
2. Forms: Hands On (beginner)
3. Functions (advanced)
4. Open Session (Surveys and general questions)
5. Clinical Data Management (3-day)

For more information, please visit our REDCap webpage.

Machine Learning Seminar Series: Use Cases for Machine Learning – From predicting out-of-hospital deaths in claims data to identifying novel side effects of drugs using social media

In this session of the Machine Learning Seminar series, Nabarun Dasgupta, MPH, PhD, will provide an overview of Machine Learning vs Natural Language Processing. Dasgupta will discuss three examples of how he has utilized Machine Learning in research – from using an algorithm to predict out-of-hospital deaths in claims data to using Machine Learning to conduct systematic review searches.

Presenter
Nabarun Dasgupta, MPH, PhD
Innovation Fellow, Gillings School of Global Public Health
Senior Scientist, Injury Prevention Research Center
UNC-Chapel Hill

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When working with data, one thing is fairly certain: data is rarely in an optimal format. A misplaced space here, or an extra comma there, can mean the difference between two clicks and two hours of work. In this course, we will work with ways to isolate, extract, and transform data from webpages, text files, and published datasets using Python and Pandas. This Odum Institute class will also introduce regular expressions, a language for matching specific parts of text.

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This six-part orientation is strongly recommended for all clinical research personnel who are new to UNC or new to research. The series will introduce research personnel to the UNC offices involved in clinical trials, discuss the federal and local regulations governing conduct of research, and provide an overview of best practices utilized in the implementation of clinical research. It is recommended that registrants complete both the CITI Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and CITI Human Subjects Protection (IRB/Ethics) modules prior to attending the orientation.

Each session of the orientation will be held on Wednesday afternoons,1:30 to 4:30 pm. Research personnel are encouraged to attend all 6 modules, but may choose to attend only those of particular interest or relevance. The topics to be covered this week include:

• Introduction to REDCap (Clarence Potter) - 1:30 pm - 2:00 pm
• Investigator-Initiated Study Processes (Valorie Buchholz) - 2:05 pm - 2:35 pm
• ClinicalTrials.gov and ICMJE requirements (Monica Coudurier) - 2:40 pm - 3:20 pm
• Adverse Event Evaluation and Documentation (Marie Rape) - 3:20 pm - 3:50 pm
• IND and IDE Studies at UNC (Marie Rape) - 3:50 pm - 4:00 pm
• Post-Session Q&A Discussion 4:00 pm - 4:30 pm

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CRO Career Conversations: Clinical Research Coordinator

This panel discussion will highlight the role of Clinical Research Coordinators (CRCs). Learn about the aspects of clinical research that CRCs support including subject screening and recruitment, regulatory maintenance, data collection, and data management activities.

Panelists from NC TraCS include:

Susan Pusek, DRSc
Moderator
Director, Education Programs

Susan Pusek, DRSc has over 27 years of experience in clinical/translational research, training and administration. She began her career as a research coordinator and project manager for industry-sponsored, federally-funded and investigator-initiated phase I-IV clinical trials, health services research done in the community and epidemiologic studies. In her current role as Director of Education Programs at NC TraCS, Pusek now develops training programs, seminars and workshops for biomedical researchers and their teams.

Catherine Barnes
Personnel Development and Training Specialist
UNC Clinical Research Support Office (CRSO)

Catherine Barnes has over 5 years of experience in conducting and managing human subjects research, and is a Certified Clinical Research Professional through SOCRA. She also creates and manages various education sessions for research personnel, including topics like informed consent, source documentation management, phlebotomy and others. Her primary interests revolve around the education and retention of research personnel to ensure that they feel happy in their positions while growing professionally and personally.

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Contract research organizations (CRO) operate in many capacities to support the work of healthcare innovators and help move therapies from idea to market. NC Biotech’s CRO Career Conversations speaker series provides an introduction to key roles within the CRO industry and the opportunity to learn about career pathways, day-to-day responsibilities, and more from professionals currently in the field.

REDCap Functions is advanced training in using functions with your project such as Surveys, Randomization, Calendar/Scheduling, etc.

The session will cover Imports, Reusing Forms, Exports, Surveys, Data Quality Checks, Collecting Data Offline (REDCap Mobile), Subject App (MyCap), Pulling Epic Data, Special layouts (Shazam), Multiple Languages, and more.

Our current REDCap trainings are offered as webinar-only.

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About REDCap

REDCap is a secure web application that can be used to build and manage case report forms, surveys and other data capture mechanisms for clinical research. NC TraCS provides training classes to assist you in getting started with building REDCap data collection forms for your research projects.

Current REDCap training offerings include:

1. Forms (beginner)
2. Forms: Hands On (beginner)
3. Functions (advanced*)
4. Open Session (Surveys and general questions)
5. Clinical Data Management (3-day)

For more information, please visit our REDCap webpage.

COVID Clinical Trials: The Intermountain Healthcare Experience

This NIH Collaboratory Rethinking Clinical Trials Grand Rounds features Samuel M. Brown, MD, MS of Intermountain Healthcare and the University of Utah.

Presenters
Samuel M. Brown, MD, MS
Associate Professor and Director of Pulmonary/Critical Care Research
Intermountain Healthcare
Associate Professor, University of Utah

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Machine Learning Seminar Series: Introduction to CLARK 1.0 and 2.0

In this session of the Machine Learning Seminar series, Buck Bohac, PhD, will walk attendees through the process of using CLARK! and regular expressions for clinical research. CLARK! is a machine-learning classifier developed through a collaboration between NC TraCS and CoVar Applied Technologies, a Durham, NC-based machine learning company. CLARK! is designed to take clinical notes as input, and classify those notes based on features defined by the user as regular expressions.

Presenter
Buck Bohac, PhD
NC TraCS Data Analyst and Applications Specialist

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Join a live training session for the N3C Data Enclave. Users of all types can learn how to navigate the N3C, utilize the Enclave and resources it provides, and learn how to better achieve their analytical goals. This orientation is split into 2 sessions – Session A and Session B. These orientations are ongoing and will alternate week by week. Session A is recommended before attending Session B

Session A is for those who want to learn about N3C, as well as how to engage with project teams and access the data.

Topics include:

• Provide a general overview of N3C, including goals, organization, and community resources such as Domain Teams and Data Liaisons.
• Introduces the 3 data tiers available and important considerations for research driven by the data harmonization process.
• Discusses resources for training and help, as well as the Data Use Request (DUR) process required for researcher access.

Note: This orientation is held alternating Tuesdays | 8-9:30am PT/11am-12:30pm ET

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Join this month's COVID-19 journal club to discuss recent safety signals of the AstraZeneca and J&J Vaccines. This journal club will discuss Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia after ChAdOx1 nCov-19 Vaccination and Joint CDC and FDA Statement on Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine.

This event will be led by Joyce Pak and Claire Su, both are PhD students in the Epidemiology Department.

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The REDCap Open Training Session will review using surveys and provide ample time to answer any questions REDCap users might have.

Our current REDCap trainings are offered as webinar-only.

Register

About REDCap

REDCap is a secure web application that can be used to build and manage case report forms, surveys and other data capture mechanisms for clinical research. NC TraCS provides training classes to assist you in getting started with building REDCap data collection forms for your research projects.

Current REDCap training offerings include:

1. Forms (beginner)
2. Forms: Hands On (beginner)
3. Functions (advanced)
4. Open Session (Surveys and general questions)
5. Clinical Data Management (3-day)

For more information, please visit our REDCap webpage.

ACTIV-6: A Direct-to-Participant Platform Trial of Repurposed Drugs for COVID-19 in Non-hospitalized Patients

This NIH Collaboratory Rethinking Clinical Trials Grand Rounds features Susanna Naggie, MD, MHS, of Duke Clinical Research Institute and Elizabeth Shenkman, PhD, of the University of Florida.

Presenters
Susanna Naggie, MD, MHS
Associate Professor of Medicine
Duke Clinical Research Institute

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Machine Learning Seminar Series: Recent Machine Learning Developments for Advancing Precision Medicine

In this session of the Machine Learning Seminar series, Michael Kosorok, PhD, will present on recent developments in Machine Learning and how these developments will impact and advance Precision Medicine. Precision medicine is "an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person." This approach will allow doctors and researchers to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies for a particular disease will work in which groups of people.

Presenter
Michael Kosorok, PhD
W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor, Department of Biostatistics
Professor, Department of Statistics and Operations

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The Double Whammy: The Disproportionate Impact of Systemic Racism and COVID on Children of Color

Debra Furr-Holden, PhD, presents in this seminar of the "Interdisciplinary Conversations and Development of a Research to Practice and Policy Agenda” series. The series aims to increase awareness about the impact of disparities that contribute to children's ability to keep pace, which have broad dire effects on the neurodevelopmental trajectories of children growing in disadvantaged households and communities.

Presenter
Debra Furr-Holden, PhD
C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health
Director, Division of Public Health
Associate Dean for Public Health Integration
Director of the Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions
Michigan State University
College of Human Medicine

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