The Evaluation Key Function Committee (KFC) meets monthly via phone conference, and the most recent was held on August 17 and attended by Dr. Harriet Nembhard, Ph.D. and Andrea Lazarus, CTSI administrator. The next face-to-face meeting will be October 3-4 in Rockville, MD; Nembhard will attend on behalf of the Penn State CTSI.
This committee is in the process of finalizing a CTSA Logic Model for the inputs, activities, and outputs of the initiative. It is intended to give a broad overview of the connections between activities at the level of the NIH, the CTSA consortium, and sites, and the short term, medium term, and long term goals.
The committee also is developing an evaluation white paper. This whitepaper is expected to be a high-level policy document designed to describe the challenge of evaluating translational research and why evaluation is essential for meeting that challenge. It will make a number of general recommendations regarding such topics as the scope and coverage, management, quality and independence, and transparency of CTSA evaluation.
