How to Get Involved

All current clinic sites are listed under the TuPACT IRB. However, if you want to start non-TuPACT research, please get in touch with the executive board or research chairs to get started!

  • If you have an idea of something you’d like to study, we can provide clinic leaders with de-identified data from REDCap

  • TuPACT can add and customize your data input for your clinic into REDCap so your patients can be tracked as well

  • Once accepted or published, please remember to send it to the executive board to add to the website

  • Contact Information:

    • SCC Principal Investigators:

  • TuPACT is an IRB approved retrospective study aimed at helping clinics improve and providing patients with the care they need. Our goal is to answer some of the following questions:

    • What patient populations do we serve?

    • What needs do they have?

    • How are clinic resources and services utilized? Are they meeting our patients’ needs?

    • Are we effectively encouraging continuity of care?

    • If our patients don’t follow up, our efforts are largely ineffective

    • What new services/programs/interventions would most help our patients?

    • How do we improve funding for our clinics?

    Student volunteers fill out the RedCAP Survey at the end of every preceptor/screening clinic shift. Clinic leaders ensure that volunteers fill out the survey. Clinics have the opportunity to use questions already on the survey OR add new questions to the survey that fit your research interests.

    RedCAP is a HIPAA compliant database approved by Tulane’s IRB for the safe collection of protected patient health information.

  • If you’d like to start a research project, the first step is to set up a meeting with the SCC co-chairs to discuss your ideas. If you’re not exactly sure what you’d like to do, we can help you come up with a few ideas. Once you have a clear, well-defined research question, you will fill out a project proposal form and email it to us. After we have approved it, we will submit it to the SCC executive board and then to Dr. Pope for final approval.

    Note: please do not contact Dr. Pope directly with research questions.

    Depending on the scope of your project and whether you plan to use TUPACT data, you may need to submit an IRB proposal. The SCC co-chairs will give you more detailed information on this during our meeting. When these steps are finished, you will complete your project and continue to update the SCC co-chairs with any significant changes. Any abstracts, manuscripts, or presentations related to SCC should be submitted at least 2 weeks prior to the abstract submission deadline for review by the research chairs and Dr. Pope.

    The flowchart below lists all of these steps, and it will also be included as an attachment to this email.

  • Once your project is approved, please continue to update the research chairs with any significant changes to your research question or project design (for example, adding another source of data or evaluating additional variables).

    We also strongly encourage you to add any general progress updates to the monthly SCC GBM slide for your project.

    Please email the research chairs with any abstracts related to SCC research at least 2 weeks in advance of the abstract submission deadline. Manuscripts and posters should also be sent to the research chairs for approval.

  • If you have a project idea that requires funding, please reach out to the research chairs and they can connect you to funding resources. Please do not apply for a grant or other outside funding until your project is fully approved.

  • The following are places that SCC projects have been published or are anticipated to be published. Again, please note that any abstracts related to SCC must be submitted at least 2 weeks prior to the abstract deadline for review by the research chairs and Dr. Pope.

    Conferences:

    • Student Run Free Clinic Conference

    • IHI

    • Society for General Internal Medicine

    • TRICS

    • AAFP National Conference

    Journals

    • Free Clinic Research Collective: https://www.themspress.org/journal/index.php/freeclinic/index

    • Student Run Free Clinic Journal: https://journalsrc.org/index.php/jsrc

    • Medical Student Press: http://themspress.org/

    • Medical Education: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/13652923

    • Academic Medicine: https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/pages/default.aspx

    • Advances in Health Sciences Education: https://www.springer.com/journal/10459

    • MedEdPORTAL: https://www.mededportal.org/

    • Help with creating an IRB-approved project

      • https://research.tulane.edu/hrpo/investigators

      • https://medicine.tulane.edu/student-affairs/student-resources/research-opportunities

    • Citi training: https://medicine.tulane.edu/clinical-translational-unit/investigators/required-online-trainings

    • Tulane IRB site: https://tulane.my.irbmanager.com/Dashboard/PortalHome.aspx

    • TUPACT survey: https://redcap.sph.tulane.edu/redcap/surveys/?s=LXLPAED9CR

  • If there’s something you’d like to see in future newsletters or if you have feedback on this one, you can let us know through this google form. It can be submitted anonymously, but please include your Tulane email if you’d like us to follow up with you.