N.M. Llewellyn is associate director, Evaluation and Continuous Improvement Program, Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1267-2720 .
A.A. Weber is program coordinator, Evaluation and Continuous Improvement Program, Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia.
Acad Med. 2023 Aug 1;98(8):896-903. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000005225. Epub 2023 Apr 10.
To understand how translational science efforts lead to outcomes, it is common to examine publications as a key step in the translational process. The National Institutes of Health's Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program aims to accelerate that process by providing support to investigators. Although it is challenging to measure the impact of such support on translational outcomes, CTSA-supported research that arises in research publications can advance translation through use of these publications in public policy and guideline documents from government health agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and other outlets. Using cutting-edge bibliometric tools, the authors evaluated how CTSA-supported research has extended its impact beyond academic silos to influence public policy literature. The authors identified approximately 118,490 publications that acknowledged receiving support from a CTSA hub, from the inception of the program in 2006 through 2021. Articles were queried in the Overton policy database, which indexes references to publications in global policy literature. The search revealed 13% of CTSA-supported articles were referenced in policy documents, significantly more than the expected proportion (10%) calculated by Overton. References came from 576 policy source outlets across 87 countries, predominantly the United States and Europe. The most frequent sources included guidelines in PubMed Central, the World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors illustrate the bridge from translational research to public policy with case studies of 6 articles based on CTSA-supported research and having notable policy impact. They found articles with greater clinical relevance, altmetric attention (i.e., nonacademic community/public attention), and academic citation influence were more likely to be referenced in policy literature. Study findings help to characterize the kinds of research that have influenced and may be expected to influence health policy in the future.
为了了解转化科学研究如何产生成果，通常将出版物作为转化过程中的关键步骤进行检查。美国国立卫生研究院的临床与转化科学奖（CTSA）计划旨在通过为研究人员提供支持来加速这一过程。虽然衡量这种支持对转化成果的影响具有挑战性，但在研究出版物中出现的 CTSA 支持的研究可以通过在政府卫生机构、政府间组织和其他渠道的公共政策和指南文件中使用这些出版物来推进转化。作者使用先进的文献计量学工具，评估了 CTSA 支持的研究如何将其影响扩展到学术领域之外，以影响公共政策文献。作者确定了大约 118490 篇出版物，这些出版物承认从 2006 年该计划启动到 2021 年期间从 CTSA 中心获得了支持。在 Overton 政策数据库中查询了这些文章，该数据库索引了全球政策文献中的出版物参考文献。该搜索显示，13%的 CTSA 支持的文章被政策文件引用，比 Overton 计算的预期比例（10%）高得多。参考文献来自 87 个国家的 576 个政策来源，主要来自美国和欧洲。最常见的来源包括 PubMed Central 中的指南、世界卫生组织和疾病控制与预防中心。作者通过基于 CTSA 支持的研究并具有显著政策影响的 6 篇文章的案例研究说明了从转化研究到公共政策的桥梁。他们发现，具有更大临床相关性、高关注度（即非学术社区/公众关注度）和学术引用影响力的文章更有可能被政策文献引用。研究结果有助于描述那些已经影响并可能在未来影响卫生政策的研究类型。
