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We strongly recommend that all fellows pursuing a career in patient-oriented research obtain formal training in biostatistics, epidemiology, and study design. There are several ways to obtain such training.

Some trainees enroll in a degree-granting program from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Training program funds are available to support fellows accepted into our National Institutes of Health-sponsored T32 Program to enroll in the Master of Public Health (MPH) Degree Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Acceptance into the MPH path is a competitive process. Acceptance factors include the qualification of the fellow, the track record of the chosen research mentor to support previous mentees, and the research proposal.

Other fellowship programs are available on the Longwood campus. Many of which can result in the awarding of a master’s degree:

• The Harvard Catalyst Program funds the Harvard Medical School Scholars in Clinical Science Program. Enrollment in the program is competitive. The program covers tuition. Students completing the program are awarded Master of Medical Science degrees from Harvard Medical School.
• The KL2/Catalyst Medical Research Investigator Training Program is a mentored two-year research and education program offered to senior fellows and junior faculty.
• The NLM Biomedical Informatics and Data Science Fellowship provides training in quantitative research techniques. All fellows completing the Biomedical and Data Science Research Training (BIRT) Program are eligible to receive a Master of Biomedical Informatics degree from Harvard Medical School.

We will support your application to any of these programs to ensure you receive the training necessary for your career trajectory.

Our fellowship program has limited monies available to cover tuition for non-matriculating coursework. We also encourage fellows to work with their research mentors to identify grants and other funding opportunities to cover the cost of tuition. Additional funding may be available through the division under exceptional circumstances for individual fellows.

Graduate programs at Harvard and MIT

Trainees can complete relevant coursework in their field of interest. For trainees in the basic sciences, the course catalogs offered by the graduate programs at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, and the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Program in Health Sciences and Technology are open to them. In many/most cases, these courses can typically be audited at no cost. If this is not the case, the division has monies that can be made available on a case-by-case basis. Course availability is included on the links below:

• Harvard Medical School: Division of Medical Sciences
• Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
• Master’s Programs in Clinical Research

Clinical effectiveness program

The Summer Program in Clinical Effectiveness was established as a joint effort between
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. This 16-week program (eight weeks each summer over two years) provides basic and advanced education in epidemiology, biostatistics, and clinical investigation, leading to a Master of Science in Medicine. The first summer curriculum is a full-time, eight-week commitment during which trainees have no clinical responsibilities. During the summer program, research protocols are designed with close supervision from the program directors, an advisor at HSPH, and a research mentor(s) from the home institution and the HMS Fellowship in Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition. If a graduate of this program wishes to obtain an MPH, successful completion of the program will provide approximately one-quarter of the credits needed for an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health.

T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is located within two blocks of Boston Children’s Hospital. The school offers in-person and online programs, including master’s degree programs in maternal child health, epidemiology, nutrition, health policy, decision science, and clinical investigation.

The Master of Public Health (MPH) degree is the most widely recognized professional credential for leadership in public health. The program emphasizes active, student-directed learning, problem-solving, and the acquisition of skills essential to the practice of public health. The program is organized around career-oriented concentrations, including:

• clinical effectiveness
• epidemiology
• global health
• health and social behavior
• health management
• health policy
• occupational and environmental health
• quantitative methods

In addition to the common core curriculum, each concentration offers specialty electives and a selection of areas of interest, allowing students to explore in-depth one or more spheres of relevance to their career goals. The concentrations and areas of interest also enable students in the interdisciplinary MPH program to establish a second “home” in one of the school’s academic departments, such as Health Policy and Management or Population and International Health.

Clinical research relates to investigations conducted with human subjects or on the material of human origin such as tissues, specimens, cognitive phenomena, or other data for which an investigator directly interacts with human subjects or for which material can be linked to an identifiable individual. Clinical research includes patient-oriented, community, and population-based research studies.

The Institutional Centers for Clinical and Translational Research (ICCTR) at Boston Children’s is an interdepartmental academic research and service program that provides assistance and education on all aspects of research methodology and study implementation practices to clinical investigators across all divisions and departments.

Support is provided to investigators at all stages of protocol development and study conduct. The ICCTR collaborates closely with the Committee on Clinical Investigation to ensure that research is designed to maximize benefits and minimize risks to human subjects enrolled in clinical trials.

Courses include:

• introduction to clinical research
• orientation for new study coordinators
• introduction to biostatistics with SPSS
• power and how to get it
• do-it-yourself data management
• beyond chi-squares: drawing inferences from tables
• statistics for small sample size studies
• introduction to statistical genetics