Monthly News & Opportunities

May 7, 2025 | Vol. 2 #5

May is National Trauma Awareness Month--Make Your Voice Heard!

In the wake of a recent upheaval in federal research funding, CNTR has joined two large consortia--the Defense Health Research Consortium (DHRC) and Research!America. DHRC focuses on protecting and growing the DoD Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, while Research!America more broadly advocates for the entire medical research and development ecosystem.

Through our participation in these coalitions, we've amplified the voices of our 25 member organizations by signing on to letters to House and Senate appropriators requesting funding for AHRQ and rejecting proposed FY26 funding cuts to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and to testimony presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee on the importance of CDMRP to keeping America's edge in innovation.

As CNTR is stepping up its advocacy activities, National Trauma Awareness Month is the perfect opportunity to let your own representatives in Congress know how crucial federal funding is to saving lives.

Please take a minute to send a message to Congress--we've provided a quick link to your representatives and a draft message at the button below.

Send Congress a Message

EAST Call for Registry-Based Randomized Controlled Trial Proposals is Now Closed

The CNTR Scientific Advisory Committee is reviewing pre-proposals. Invitations for full proposals will be issued on June 1, 2025. For the full schedule, visit the EAST-RRCT page.

CNTR Receives Grant to Develop an AI-Supported Decision Tool

CNTR received a one-year $200,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to support the development of a custom large language model (LLM), trained for the generation of adaptive clinical decision guidance.

Project PI Lacey LaGrone, MD, MPH, MA, said the goal of the LLM is to accelerate the movement of research-generated evidence into clinical practice--from an average of 17 years to mere months--and to democratize the development and dissemination of peer-reviewed clinical guidance.

Clinicians, evidence synthesis experts, and clinical informaticists will collaborate with AI regulatory and ethics experts on this project. They''ll supervise the development of a process whereby content generators and arbiters of quality partner with genAI model developers to accelerate their respective tasks. This process will enable the development of more complex outputs, faster.

Titled "Evidence to Practice: Bridging the Gap for All of Us," the project is an outgrowth of Dr. LaGrone's Design for Implementation: the Future of Trauma Clinical Guidance conference series.

CNTR will provide project management throughout the period of performance.

CNTR Investigator Resources

DoD Extends Contract to Implement the NTRR

CNTR has completed the specification of common data elements (CDEs) for use in trauma studies and the integration of the National Trauma Research Repository with the Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research (FITBIR) Informatics System.

With a two-year contract extension, CNTR will continue socializing use of the NTRR, creating educational materials, adding resources for investigators, and recruiting investigators to upload their study data.

Learn More about the NTRR

Anesthesiologists Propose Re-Engagement in Trauma Anesthesia Research

In the May 2025 issue of the ASA Monitor, a publication of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (a CNTR stakeholder member organization), Tomas Drabek, MD, PhD, FASA, Justin Richard, MD, and Monica Vavilala, MD, argue that patients can benefit from more trauma anesthesia research. "With recent opportunities such as those provided by the Coalition for National Trauma Research, our specialty should strongly consider answering questions relevant to anesthesia and peri-operative care of the traumatically injured patient through collaborative venture," they suggest.

Dr. Drabek is the ASA representative to the CNTR Stakeholder Advisory Council and the Scientific Advisory Committee.

Read the article.

Patient-Centered Outcome Measurement Set Identified

The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM), an independent not-for-profit organization focused on improving how healthcare is delivered to patients, completed its work to identify a minimum set of health outcomes that matter most to people who have experienced traumatic physical injuries.

Several members of CNTR's I-REP Patient & Caregiver Panel participated in the ICHOM workgroup. Trauma care providers around the world are encouraged to start measuring these outcomes to better understand how to improve the lives of their patients. For more information on the full recommendation set as well as details on the workgroup who developed it, visit the ICHOM website.

Visit ICHOM

Nominate Your Trauma Program or Trauma Center Network for 2025 National Certification Champion Honors

The Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing (BCEN) invites trauma programs, trauma centers and trauma center networks to submit nominations for the BCEN 2025 National Certification Champion Award.

The annual award program recognizes organizations in three categories (small, large and health system) for their commitment to emergency, transport, trauma and burn nursing excellence through specialty board certification.

Nominate your trauma program by Monday, June 16.

Make a Nomination

Make a Donation to CNTR this Memorial Day

This Memorial Day, consider honoring a loved one or thanking a trauma team with a donation to CNTR that will support research that saves lives.

Read our Case for Support highlighting how CNTR's mission is essential to developing the evidence that underlies delivery of the best care possible--for every patient, every time.

As a donor, you'll join the Friends of CNTR Giving Society, and when your cumulative giving reaches $500, we'll send you our commemorative lapel pin.

Donate Now

Coalition for National Trauma Research | Research@NatTrauma.org | FAQs