Abstract
The United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials (USCIIT) Group is an inclusive, grassroots "network of networks" with the dual missions of fostering investigator-initiated hypothesis testing and developing recommendations for strategic plans at a national level. The USCIIT Group's transformational approach enlists multidisciplinary investigative teams across institutions, critical illness and injury professional organizations, federal agencies that fund clinical and translational research, and industry partners. The USCIIT Group is endorsed by all major critical illness and injury professional organizations spanning the specialties of anesthesiology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, neurology, nursing, pediatrics, pharmacy and nutrition, surgery and trauma, and respiratory and physical therapy. Recent successes provide the opportunity to significantly increase the dialogue necessary to advance clinical and translational research on behalf of our community. More than 200 investigators are now involved across > 30 academic and community hospitals. Collectively, USCIIT Group investigators have enrolled > 10,000 patients from academic and community hospitals in studies during the last 3 years. To keep our readership "ahead of the curve," this article provides a vision for critical illness and injury research based on (1) programmatic organization of large-scale, multicentered collaborative studies and (2) annual strategic planning at a national scale across disciplines and stakeholders.