History of the Coalition for National Trauma Research

CNTR advocates Tom Scalea, MD (left) and Elliott Haut, MD (right) meet with Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland during Trauma Research Advocacy Day in 2015.

In 2014, William Cioffi, MD, announced in his presidential address to the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma the formation of a new coalition of trauma societies that would work together to advocate for an increased federal investment in traumatic injury research. The group’s primary activity at that time was to participate in a Trauma Research Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, corresponding with the federal appropriations cycle.

Each year for five years, the coalition determined its ask, and National Trauma Institute staff identified key legislators on the Appropriations Committees in the House and Senate, recruited trauma surgeons from those states to participate, and organized dozens of meetings.

As an example, in 2016, 27 surgeons and 5 NTI and EAST staff members completed 152 visits to 37 Senate offices and 115 House offices and held a Congressional briefing. They covered delegations for 24 states! Through this particular effort, CNTR secured the sponsorship of Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) for a Dear Colleague letter to the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which was signed by 15 senators—all from offices that had received CNTR visits. A similar Dear Colleague letter on the House side was signed by 69 House members from 25 states and D.C. (20 of which were visited by CNTR).

In 2016, Dr. Cioffi reported on CNTR’s progress to the American Burn Association, encouraging that organization to join as a Core member—which they did several years later.

Official award for the National Trauma Research Action Plan project.

Annual Trauma Research Advocacy Days continued until the pandemic. Through its efforts, CNTR was responsible for an additional $10 million per year being added to the Trauma Clinical Research Program in the Defense Health Program RDT&E account for multiple years (it declined to $5 million in 2023). That funding made its way into DoD Broad Agency Announcements and other competitive funding mechanisms and has benefited the entire trauma research community. In the last year of our advocacy push, NTI organized 175 meetings for about 36 surgeon advocates—and in that year, NTI (dba CNTR) received an award from USAMRAA for the proposal “Developing a National Trauma Research Action Plan (NTRAP) for the United States, which was the first truly CNTR-specific award we received.

With NTI serving as the administrative muscle behind CNTR, and the lines becoming increasingly blurry between NTI’s efforts and those of CNTR, the board determined that NTI should just be CNTR. Thus, in 2020, NTI dissolved and officially changed its name to the Coalition for National Trauma Research. Dr. Cioffi stepped down at that time and a new board was formed, with Dr. Eileen Bulger as the chair.

Since 2020, CNTR has grown from the original 5 core members to a robust coalition of 25 core, stakeholder and affiliate members reaching more than 232,000 multidisciplinary members of the trauma research and care community—including adult and pediatric trauma, burn, orthopedic, and neurological surgeons; emergency physicians, trauma nurses, and EMS providers; radiologists; anesthesiologists; geriatric and rehabilitation specialists; pharmacists; and survivor and patient support communities.

CNTR has also diversified its funding base, adding PCORI, AHRQ, NIH and MTEC funding to its strong success with DoD projects and built a suite of investigator resources to support the entire community. CNTR’s array of services and tools includes comprehensive study management assistance, a regulatory toolkit, a national trauma research gaps analysis (NTRAP), a standing patient and caregiver panel, a clinical data repository (NTRR), and more.

The vision of CNTR’s founding board members has been realized, and as the organization engages in strategic planning through 2025–it’s official 5-Year Anniversary–it continues to map out new milestones, with its eye ever on a national research home with sustainable federal funding commensurate with the society burden of traumatic injury.