Ten Essential Elements for Developing or Reforming a Biostatistics Core for a Cancer Center with (or Aspiring for) NCI Designation

• Activity Number: 557
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 3, 2016 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Consulting
• Author(s): Erin Moshier* and Umut Ozbek and Madhu Mazumdar
• Companies: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
• Keywords: core productivity tracking ; shared resource facility ; core program management ; program evaluation ; return on investment ; electronic data capture

Abstract

There are 69 NCI designated cancer centers (CC) in the US and biostatistical collaboration is pivotal in cancer research. Most academic health centers have developed statistical units but existence of a unit does not guarantee a strong Cancer Biostatistics Core (CBC). Here, we identify 10 elements for a successful CBC: 1)Director's full involvement in CC leadership team; 2)Statisticians fully dedicated to cancer research; 3)investigator-statistician dyads based on common interests in research; 4)financial support plan with a balance of institutional funding, NCI/contract grant funding, and fee-for-service; 5)engaged investigators for adequate support for statisticians in grant applications; 6)educational activities for statisticians; 7)and for investigators; 8)protected time for statistician's career growth; 9)website with information on personnel, services, and policies; 10)availability of EDC for logging/tracking services. We followed these steps to create a CBC for a newly designated CC. Success is quickly emerging with increases in annual rates from (2014 to 2015) in: service requests (131 to 155); funded grants (13 to 19); % FTE on grants (5% to 17%); publications (11 to 21).