Participant & Clinical Interactions

YCCI will continue to focus its efforts on enhancements and innovations to optimize safety, efficiency, effectiveness, quality and regulatory compliance in the conduct of clinical and translational research, with special emphasis on improving infrastructure; reducing research burden, redundancy, and costs; and dissemination of successful tools and strategies across the CTSA network.

This has included the continued operation of the highly successful research facilities to support investigators in the design, implementation, and oversight of studies:

1. Hospital Research Unit (HRU) to support moderate- to high-risk protocols in the 14-bed unit in YNHH, which facilitates >$62M from NIH grants;
2. Church Street Research Unit (CSRU) outpatient unit, created to facilitate the performance of minimal and lower risk outpatient studies, which was renovated and expanded 4 fold this last year;
3. Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit (CNRU), located in the CT Mental Health Center (CMHC), a 12-bed inpatient and outpatient facility specifically for psychiatric research.

A major focus this cycle has been to leverage the size and strength of Yale’s clinical enterprise, which comprises the 6th largest hospital system in the country, a 1,200-member clinical practice group, two federally funded community health centers, and more than 300 practice sites around Connecticut. By removing barriers and creating an integrated infrastructure with centralized services to support research that extends across its entire hub, YCCI has connected the health system, community practices, and patients with opportunities to be gained from participating in innovative clinical research (see map above).