Faculty members Steve Grambow, PhD and Sheng Luo, PhD along with Department of Medicine faculty, John Williams traveled to Beijing recently to lead a one week workshop, the culminating activity for a 10-week clinical research training certificate program for Chinese physicians at Beijing Friendship Hospital (BFH). This collaboration is the first of its kind for the Duke CRTP program and Beijing Friendship Hospital.
The certificate-based program was innovative in its use of a blended learning approach that included an online eLearning self-study, live webinars, and an in-person one week workshop. The eLearning included six weekly units covering both
research design and biostatistical concepts that were narrated in English but included full written translation in Mandarin (much of the translation was provided by Duke biostatisticians Siyun Yang, former member of the B&B Biostatistics Core and incoming PhD student in the B&B PhD Biostatistics Program, and Li Lin, biostatistician in the Center for Health Measurement). Steve Grambow, current CRTP director, and Bill Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus and founding director of CRTP collaborated on development of the eLearning curriculum for the program with consulting support from Jerry Gschwind, a senior learning strategy consultant with Symphony Learning Partners.
The live webinars were hosted in Durham and provided an opportunity for Duke program faculty to interact with participants in Beijing to discuss case studies and apply principles introduced during the eLearning self-study. Webinars were held either in the early morning or late evening due to the 12-hour time difference between Durham and Beijing. The final part of the program was conducted in-person at Beijing Friendship Hospital where Steve Grambow, Sheng Luo and John Williams in partnership with BFH faculty led a one week workshop where participants worked in teams to develop a clinical research study proposal.
Department Chair Liz DeLong of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics and Beijing Friendship Hospital President Shutian Zhang established a Memorandum of Understanding between Beijing Friendship Hospital and the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics in 2015 to develop collaborations in several areas, including biostatistics and clinical research education. This is the first program to emerge from this collaboration. Lisa Bourget and Arthur Huang from the Duke Global Health Innovation Center were integral to partnership development, program design and implementation of this groundbreaking program. Faculty member Yuanyuan Kong was the chief liaison from BFH and was instrumental to the success of the program.
Steve Grambow was impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of the program participants, “I have high hopes that this training program will be the first of many productive collaborations with Beijing Friendship Hospital and can serve as a model in promoting strategic partnerships with other international academic medical centers.” Discussions with BFH are already underway for a follow up training program.
