T32 Trauma Research Fellowship Program

Trauma is a significant public health problem that accounts for 278,345 deaths/year, is the number 1 cause of death from ages 1 to 44, and accounts for 36.8% of all life-years lost. Additionally, in 2019 injury cost the US economy $4.2 trillion. According to Dr. A. Britton Christmas, “even a 5% reduction in trauma burden translates to 10,000 lives and $33 billion saved yearly.” Millions of civilians, as well as military personnel, are directly affected by traumatic injury. Traumatic injury affects all ages, races, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, and it is estimated that approximately 20% of civilian deaths and 25-50% of military deaths were potentially preventable. These measures point to serious gaps in injury and critical illness that could be closed with more and better research.

To keep pace with the changing epidemiology of trauma, this T32 Research Program has shifted its research focus to resuscitation, TBI, and trauma-induced coagulopathy (TIC), leveraging our legacy research as well as newer programs and faculty. Due to the large and varied research interests of the faculty, we are also continuing to focus on burn and adding a focus on cellular therapies. The fellows supported by this training grant will become clinical and translational scientists who are able to perform valid and reproducible research to improve the understanding of the body’s systemic responses to major injury and to foster a more rapid application of this knowledge to the treatment of traumatic injury.

The Center for Translational Injury Research (CeTIR) is dedicated to translating laboratory research and clinical data through clinical research to improve the outcomes of injured patients. This successful multidisciplinary research center is under the leadership of Drs. Cox and Fox, the respective PI and Program Manager (PM) of the T32 program. CeTIR is the primary research center for the division of Acute Care Surgery and other participating faculty and provides administrative, clinical, and laboratory research staff and support for the operationalization of research for participating faculty. Six Primary Faculty Mentors and 17 Resource Faculty are CeTIR investigators.

Charles S. Cox, Jr, MD
Program Director

“The T32 training program in trauma and burn research is designed to provide the post-doctoral trainee with a firm foundation and background in injury research. There is a broad and diverse portfolio of laboratories, programs and investigators that support the trainee in their pursuits. The end result should be a trainee who can formulate and answer critical questions that pertain to trauma/burns/critical care.”

– Dr. Charles S. Cox, Jr