ORWH, in partnership with the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), is launching a pilot program, the Team Science Leadership Scholars Program (LSP). This program will support and train scholars by helping them acquire and hone team science leadership and mentoring skills. The LSP will develop a cohort of scientists who can lead complex, high-impact research programs in academia, industry, and the public health sector. It also aims to create a framework for teaching mid-career scientists the skills they need to be successful mentors.

Dr. Lindsey Criswell, NIAMS Director, and Dr. Janine Clayton, ORWH Director, describe the LSP as a "joint initiative that aligns with NIAMS' goal of supporting team science and collaboration with the ORWH vision of preparing leaders in women's health research." Read more in the recent NIAMS Letter to the Director message. 

The goals of this program are to:

• Improve women’s health by supporting the research and development of scholars who specialize in women’s health as it relates to autoimmunity and immune-mediated diseases and in related scientific and clinical topics. 
• Develop scholars' skillsets in team science through immersive cross-sectorial collaborative experiences to enable them to become effective leaders of large consortia. 
• Enhance scholars’ leadership and mentorship experiences by expanding their networks outside of their current places of employment so they serve as effective mentors for future generations of team scientists focused on improving women’s health.
• Integrate emerging leaders with unique scientific questions and approaches, including data science analysis, that can leverage the infrastructure, samples, cohorts, and/or data of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Autoimmune and Immune-Mediated Diseases program (AMP® AIM) to advance improved outcomes for women with autoimmune and immune-mediated diseases and advanced other scientific topics.
• Integrate and synergize the scholars’ work with the AMP AIM program's scientific goals. Projects need to address important scientific questions that enhance the reach and impact of AMP AIM. Projects should benefit from the investigators, infrastructure, clinical information, samples, and data that are to be collected, but also bring a unique question, approach, or opportunity to the AMP AIM network.

ORWH will contribute $2.5 million to support the pilot project which will be embedded in the scientific and operational structure of the AMP AIM. AMP AIM will deepen the current understanding of autoimmune diseases—such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriatic spectrum diseases, and Sjögren’s disease—which afflict more than 25 million Americans. AMP AIM consists of public–private partnerships between NIH and nonprofit organizations and pharmaceutical companies that generate pre-competitive, disease-specific data that will be publicly accessible by the biomedical community for further research.