THE STATE OF THE TRAUMA RESEARCH FIELD

Despite Important Strides in Care, Much Improvement is Needed

In June 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) published a report titled “A National Trauma Care System: Integrating Military and Civilian Trauma Systems to Achieve Zero Preventable Deaths after Injury.”

That report documented the work of the Committee on Military Trauma Care’s Learning Health System and its Translation to the Civilian Sector. The committee had convened to “study and evaluate progress toward better trauma care and outcomes, especially in the military sector; to understand how that progress relates to elements of a learning health system; to recommend how learning and improvement could be even better; and to understand how both trauma care and learning can best be translated between the military and civilian trauma care systems.” (Preface, xiv) (9).

The committee stressed that, despite dramatic improvements in acute trauma care over the last several decades, injury continues to be a perplexing problem, exacting a devastating toll—in terms of lives lost, quality of life diminished, and financial burden.

It is well known that clinical research improves patient care and saves lives. But while individual trauma research programs have seen some success, there has been no coordinated national effort to focus on a comprehensive research agenda, and there remain serious limitations in the diffusion of those gains over time in both the military and civilian sectors.

The NASEM report outlined 11 substantive recommendations toward achieving zero preventable deaths after injury and minimizing trauma-related disability. Among these, recommendations #7 and #8 pertained to the advancement of trauma research.

To address the NASEM report’s research recommendations, CNTR was awarded Department of Defense funding to develop a National Trauma Research Action Plan (NTRAP) that would:

• Identify research priorities across the continuum of care following a gap analysis of military and civilian research.
• Define optimal metrics to assess long-term functional outcomes in injured patients.
• Identify trauma research regulatory barriers, develop best practices for investigators, and define optimal endpoints for clinical trauma research.

The results of this work–the National Trauma Research Action Plan–are available to investigators on this site.