One RBHS: Year 1 Accomplishments

Our people are at the heart of a successful One RBHS. This goal is focused on developing, supporting, and promoting our workforce, including our students and trainees who represent our future. The growth and evolution of the RBHS community is centered on RBHS' core values and a commitment to principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

• RBHS appointed four positions to help recruit, provide outreach, and support programs for early-career diverse faculty and postdoctoral fellows in the biomedical sciences.
• RBHS Staff Mentoring and RBHS Advance-Engage-Mentoring programs flourished with wide representation and diverse participants.
• RBHS Virtual Cafés were conducted quarterly to provide an opportunity to connect, learn, build community, and provide support to colleagues.
• RBHS hosted professional development opportunities through the “Building Bridges for Impact & Growth” leadership program to develop participants’ skills as champions for diversity as well as supported faculty members to attend the AAMC mid-career minority faculty seminars.
   

This unifying theme goal focuses on developing the ideal RBHS workplace that fosters a positive environment to nurture, empower, and support the RBHS community to achieve excellence. The aim is to recognize and celebrate our different qualities and experiences and promote a climate of inclusion, respect, and belonging for all in the spirit of forming a beloved community. 

• Groups within RBHS hosted a series of events, networking opportunities, workshops, panels, and discussions to cultivate equity and inclusive excellence for all, including Equity Talks, Picture-a-Scientist with the RBHS Women and Gender Equity Council, and Beyond the Book with the RBHS Anti-Racism Taskforce.
• RBHS has been selected into the American Association for the Advancement of Science STEMM Equity Advancement (SEA) Change Biomedicine initiative that aims to advance institutional transformation in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• RBHS hosted a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Retreat bringing together more than 80 participants in March 2023.
• RBHS initiated the IDEA (Inclusion Diversity, Equity, and Advocacy) Mini-Grant Program for education and professional development, leading to multiple projects run by the RBHS DEI office. Students, residents, staff, and faculty have received funding support with every school represented and a total of 12-15 awards per year.
• RBHS has sponsored numerous online courses, trainings, and other workshops for professional development including Implicit Bias Training, Addressing Microaggressions, and Racial Healing Circles.
   

A unique aspect of RBHS is its comprehensive constellation of health professions schools that affords significant opportunities to contribute, excel, and lead in team-based and collaborative approaches to interprofessional education, clinical care, research, and community engagement.

• Completing a review of national programs and academic health centers across the country to benchmark interprofessional practices and review best practices for team-based approaches.
• Planning to leverage RBHS 10-year anniversary to highlight interdisciplinary partnerships.

Several enabling systems and administrative structures need to be enhanced for RBHS to fulfill its mission and succeed in implementing its strategic goals. This goal focuses on infrastructure needs and administrative functions, ensuring efficient systems, structures, and processes, and improving knowledge and information management.

• RBHS reinitiated the “Envisioning the Future of Academic Medicine” evaluation of the optimal structure of medical education at Rutgers by engaging several committees and provided a final report to the University Senate.
• The RBHS Physical Master Plan supports current capital planning and construction initiatives for renovation and modernization of existing space and building of new state-of-the-art collaborative and interdisciplinary platforms.

The new strategic plan presents an opportunity for RBHS to address identity challenges, grow its reputation, and enhance philanthropic collaborations. This goal focuses on building and promoting a singular, unique identity to unite RBHS across its schools, units, and mission areas in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

• RBHS is engaging in a “Powered by Health Sciences” advertising campaign that will communicate the value of training the next generation of health care workers and the life-saving research conducted at RBHS to make the world well.
• Completed redesign of RBHS website.
• Planning to leverage the RBHS 10-year anniversary to promote One RBHS branding and sense of identity.

RBHS represents New Jersey’s only comprehensive academic health care system. This goal is aimed at leveraging the comprehensive and unique aspects of RBHS to lead by improving the health of our communities through the delivery of the highest quality of, and access to, integrated and interprofessional clinical care and preventive health.

• RBHS forged a collaboration between Rutgers Business School, RWJUH–New Brunswick, and CINJ to leverage data analytics and innovation for improved ambulatory patient care, experience, and efficiency.
• Rutgers Clinical and Research Data Warehouse is being created by NJ ACTS (New Jersey Alliance for Clinical Translational Science) to inform limited data sets structure for investigations in care delivery and continuous quality improvement.
• RBHS received a grant award in summer 2022 to fund Well-Being Peer Support Programs to expand physician peer support programs and resources to assist health professionals and students in a multi-professional health care academic environment. 
• The Rutgers Health Service Corps (RHSCorps) is a new initiative established under the Vice Chancellor of Population Health to serve as a structure, process, and innovative clearinghouse to empower students and trainees to help contribute to population and public health activities across Rutgers and its New Jersey communities.
   

This goal focuses on fostering excellence in health professions and biomedical sciences education by leveraging the strengths of our interprofessional community, enhancing the teaching and learning infrastructure, and elevating the recognition of educators and educational administration across RBHS to recruit, train, support, and prepare a diverse and highly competitive New Jersey biomedical and health sciences workforce.

• RBHS has implemented a micro-credentialing and digital badging program across health professions education and research training programs.
• The RBHS Anti-Racism Taskforce Education and Curricula Workgroup has developed shared RBHS learning goals with curriculum mapping for antiracism and cultural humility.
• RBHS received HRSA federal earmark support of almost $1M to help expand the School of Nursing admissions capacity by 25 percent to help New Jersey address one of the largest RN shortages.
   

This goal focuses on building upon the existing strengths of established and emerging strategic research areas, identifying and cultivating new areas of impactful and innovative research, and growing a robust research enterprise to improve health in New Jersey, address health-related social inequities, and provide an engine for discovery, innovation, and economic development.

• The RBHS Office of Research has developed committees to evaluate core facilities to improve efficiency, reduce redundancy, and provide support for centralized core facilities available to researchers as well as a space committee to evaluate utilization of wet and dry laboratory space.
• RBHS has initiated a national search for the role of inaugural director of a new Center for Biomedical Informatics that is being launched to promote excellence in the broad area of biomedical informatics.
• RBHS has submitted competitive renewals for NIH Center Grants in three signature research areas: Cancer, Clinical and Translational Science, and Environmental and Occupational Health.

Research Facts and Figures:

RBHS ended fiscal year 2022 with over $488M in externally sponsored research and program awards. Awards from federal sponsors were up by 16% ($270M) from FY2021 with over $190M coming from NIH and more than $186M was received from the State of New Jersey and industry sponsors.

FY2023 is off to a robust start as well. Q1-Q2 YTD is up 23% from last year at this time with $298M in externally sponsored research and program awards. More than $152M (51%) of total awards are from federal sponsors and, of those, over $99M is from the NIH, up 4% from this time last year.

This goal is aimed at highlighting and enhancing our work around engaging with local and global communities to advance research, educational opportunities, and clinical care through service that addresses community-relevant health challenges and needs through ongoing collaborations to improve and sustain health. 

• Rutgers, led by RBHS, received a $10M grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the Rutgers Equity Alliance for Community Health (REACH) to address health disparities through community partnerships.
• The RBHS Taskforce on Valuing DEI and Community Engagement reviewed promotion and tenure guidelines to include recognition of DEI and Community Engagement efforts by appointment and promotion committees.
• Rutgers IRB, in partnership with NJ ACTS, adopted CIRTification community engagement training that focuses on developing community partner research skills and provides research ethics training for community organizations.
• RBHS developed and led the first all-chancellor-sponsored Rutgers Community Engaged Scholarship Symposium: Best Practices to Achieve Health Equity.
• RBHS supports community scientist training programs in Cancer and Clinical and Translation Science.