Committee Description:
The Clinical Investigations Committee is charged with promoting scholarly activities, in general, and in particular original research among Academy members and helping to educate USAFP membership in areas of research and scholarly activity.
Clinical Investigations Membership:
1. Members at Large – primary oversight by Vice Chair CIC
- Application Requirements
- Any USAFP member in good standing may serve as an at-large member of the CIC.
- Committee members serve until they resign and notify the CIC chair.
- If members do not attend committee meetings or participate in committee business for 3 consecutive years, it will be assumed that they have resigned their committee membership.
- Key Duties may include:
- Manage and execute “Rise with Research Forum” during the annual meeting
- Create and administer the “omnibus survey” for the annual meeting
- Accept and assist with newsletter writing assignments
- Determine and award Residency Program Scholarly Awards
- Assist with measuring scholarly horsepower of USAFP by reporting & contacting USAFP member authors of articles in big 5 family med publications
2. Research Judges Subcommittee – primary oversight by Chair CIC
- Application Requirements
- Research judges will be selected by application review and formal vote of sitting USAFP judges from a qualified applicant pool.
- Active duty judges will be appointed to a single term of four years. This term may be extended by 12 months at the discretion of the chair. Judges may re-apply for a second term; their applications will be considered along with other qualified applicants as above in 2a. Active duty judges may serve a total of two terms.
- Civilian judges will be appointed to an initial term of 3 years. Following this term, civilian judges may serve for any period of time agreeable to the individual and the CIC committee chair. The term of service may be ended by the Chair or the individual at any time.
Key Duties include:
- Annual Research Competition: This forum is held during the Annual Meeting and is open to all members of the Academy. Typically, there will be eight judges for the competition — (2) Air Force, (2) Army, (2) Navy, and (2) civilians. A judges’ session to review grading criteria and to promote judging consistency is held twice a year. These sessions typically occur at the Judges Workshop in the fall to review guidelines for reviewing abstracts and interpreting hypotheses, methodology, results, and analysis when funding is available. Additionally, the judges meet at the Annual Meeting. Abstracts are accepted in categories determined by the research judges. There are separate resident and staff subcategories.
- Research Seminar: A seminar is held annually during the Annual Meeting. The purpose of the seminar is to enhance and promote the general scholarship of USAFP membership. Programming of the seminar is at the discretion of the CIC members and chair with approval of the USAFP Annual Meeting Chair(s). Past topics include: (1) developing a research question, (2) writing a protocol, (3) case report design, (4) guidelines to oral, written and visual presentations, (5) clinical investigation and educational research design, and (6) basic statistics in medical research, to name a few. Faculty have been both military and civilian; practice-based clinician and university-based researchers. Materials from past workshops are posted on the research page of the USAFP website.
Duties of the committee members vary according to the tasks of the committee. General duties include communicating with the chair, completing tasks assigned by the chair, and attending the committee meetings at the Annual Meeting and other meetings as required. If a committee member is unable to fulfill his/her committee obligation, the chair should be notified at once. If a committee member resigns from the committee, the chair should be notified immediately.
