Goals

To achieve these goals, DCTS faculty leverage every opportunity through informal consultations to develop a collaborative relationship with CT investigators to promote the rapid development of innovative research ideas and the rapid dissemination of valid research findings. Typically, this is a long-term process that begins with providing study design, epidemiological, and statistical methods assistance in the development of a research proposal, proceeds (most often iteratively) with the acquisition of funding, and, over the course of actually conducting the study, produces findings and publications.

The goal of our DCTS includes collaboration with investigators to optimize the often complex trade-offs between research innovation, its potential medical/public health impact, and the required investments of time and resources. DCTS aims to reduce the number of iterations required to successfully obtain research funding and to publish research findings. Although our faculty contribute to traditional epidemiology, biostatistics, and research design courses at UTHealth Houston, the DCTS promotes the educational goals of our Department most when we apply new approaches to problem-based learning in updated “classrooms”: whenever our research teams connect and communicate, regardless of how or where.