Project Summary: Professional Development Core Louisiana citizens experience significantly higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes/obesity, and cancer with significant disparities between subgroups of citizens. Unfortunately, there are not adequate numbers of investigators proficient in Clinical and Translational Research to address and diminish these health disparities. The overall objective of the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science (LA CaTS) Center Professional Development Core (PD Core) is to educate and train early-career and senior academic faculty state-wide to pursue clinical/translational research focused on improving health outcomes and reducing health disparities in Louisiana. The PD Core provides a degree-granting training program for early-career faculty (Scholars), a Masters in Clinical Research (MSCR), which provides mentorship, and access to a variety of educational research resources to aid Scholars from different health professions throughout the state. The PD Core research plans are based on the following specific aims: (1) further develop and refine programs that support clinical/translational research training, mentoring, and career development, and build a network of early career trainees that specifically supports under-represented groups in the biomedical workforce, (2) create, provide, and coordinate accessible resources to aid faculty and trainees in developing, initiating, executing, analyzing, and disseminating clinical/translational research and (3) facilitate and enhance Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives and training within our multi-institution statewide research community. The PD Core will implement the research plan by providing an academic “home”, the Roadmap Scholar Program, a 75% protected-time training period over two years that provides clinical and translational research training tailored to Scholars with a wider range of research experience (e.g., students to postdoctoral fellows) and from different professional disciplines (e.g., medicine, nursing, public health, social work). This cross-institutional structured approach has been developed to include collaborating LA CaTS institutions throughout the state of Louisiana. The PD Core plans to provide training and research resources, including courses in the MSCR curriculum on-site and by Distance Learning, access to a centralized clinical trial enrollment center, the state-wide virtual biorepository resource, and “team science” projects focused on health disparities and disease outcomes which promote research team collaborations. Distance Learning is key in providing Scholars access to all PD Core resources; therefore, a centralized compendium of MSCR courses and research tool kits will be provided via an asynchronous system. Overall, the PD Core intends to recruit, educate, and train Scholars from various health care disciplines and underrepresented groups (including a new scholar position specif...