Who We Are
The Coalition for National Trauma Research (CNTR) is a research coordinating center and a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization uniting the trauma community across the continuum of care. Together we work to achieve federal research funding commensurate with the burden of disease and to enhance the infrastructure supporting high-impact, multidisciplinary clinical trials.
The core members–the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, the American Burn Association, the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma and the Western Trauma Association–are joined by stakeholder and affiliate member organizations. Together, our current members represent more than 174,000 multidisciplinary trauma care professionals including adult and pediatric trauma, burn, orthopedic and neurological surgeons; emergency physicians, trauma nurses and EMS providers; geriatric and rehabilitation specialists; pharmacists; and survivor and patient support communities.
Based in San Antonio, Texas, CNTR was first established in 2014 by a group of trauma community leaders from the National Trauma Institute, American Association for Surgery of Trauma, Eastern Association for Surgery of Trauma, Western Trauma Association and the ACS Committee on Trauma. Its first efforts were directed toward advocacy for federal trauma research funding. To that end, CNTR organized teams of trauma surgeons to meet with dozens of federal legislators and make a single, unified request: to appropriate $10M per year for use by clinical trauma investigators. Over three years, CNTR’s advocacy efforts helped to secure $30M in appropriated funding, now delivered to clinical trauma investigators through the LITES program, managed by the Department of Defense. The DoD has continued to add $10M a year to that program since 2017.
To further consolidate efforts, the National Trauma Institute (NTI) changed its name to CNTR in early 2020. CNTR invites representation from trauma- and emergency medicine-related specialties such as neurotrauma, orthopedic trauma, emergency medicine, burns, pediatric trauma, military medicine, trauma nurses and other stakeholder groups. CNTR now has three membership levels: Core, Stakeholder, and Affiliate.
To learn more about CNTR membership and benefits, see the Member page or contact Michelle Price, Executive Director, at Michelle@NatTrauma.org.
EAST is proud to be a core member of CNTR. Our participation in this coordinated effort by the trauma community directly addresses our vision to improve care of the injured by promoting trauma research and to stimulate future generations of surgeons to meet this important challenge. The EAST membership and the entire trauma community benefit from the rich research collaborations that CNTR has enabled through its multi-disciplinary group of member organizations.