# Training in Critical Care Health Policy Research

> **NIH NIH T32** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2020 · $596,632

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
The central goal of this Training Grant in Critical Care Health Policy Research is to train leading academic
physician investigators who are capable of improving the quality, safety, equity, and costs of critical care
delivery at the bedside, across populations, and alongside policymakers. Since its inception in 2010, this
program has trained or is currently training 26 such physician investigators. Among many metrics of our
success to date, of the 16 postdoctoral fellows who have completed their training, 13 (81%) remain active in
clinical research and either have or are on track to receive appointments as Assistant or Associate Professors
at leading academic medical centers. This application proposes to continue and enhance our program.
As a core part of this training program, fellows pursue the Master of Science in Health Policy Research
(MSHP) degree program offered by Penn's School of Medicine and its Wharton School of Business. The
program has been highly successful in attracting, training, and graduating fellows from its first nine cohorts.
Trainees receive an intensive, structured program of mentoring, didactic research training, and experiential
research over two years. The program includes core courses in health economics, health policy, qualitative
methods, and statistics; elective courses in advanced epidemiology or biostatistics, advanced health care
economics, health care policy, statistics, survey design and measurement, social policy and demography, and
grant writing; intensive mentoring in critical care health policy research by an extensive set of experts in the
field; participation in multidisciplinary research and professional development seminars; instruction in the
responsible conduct of research and regulatory affairs; and the development and completion of research
projects in critical care medicine supervised by a multidisciplinary mentoring team.
The program is designed for postdoctoral physician fellows with clinical experience in adult and pediatric
critical care. The definition of critical care encompasses care for adults and children with severe acute medical
problems, trauma, and post-surgical care in intensive care units (ICUs), cardiac care units, and emergency
departments. It also includes the examination of strategies to improve care for patients at risk for requiring an
ICU admission, and to improve long-term outcomes for patients who survive an admission and their families.
The program emphasizes research designed to answer policy-relevant questions regarding how critical care is
and ought to be organized, financed, managed, and delivered. This work is typically conducted by fellow-led
teams that build upon and enhance Penn's traditions of collaborative and interdisciplinary science.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9853359
- **Project number:** 2T32HL098054-11
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Scott D Halpern
- **Activity code:** T32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $596,632
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2010-05-01 → 2025-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9853359

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9853359, Training in Critical Care Health Policy Research (2T32HL098054-11). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9853359. Licensed CC0.

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