Multicenter clinical trials are essential for evaluating interventions but often face significant challenges in study design, site coordination, participant recruitment, and regulatory compliance. To address these issues, the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences established the Trial Innovation Network (TIN). The TIN offers a scientific consultation process, providing access to clinical trial and disease experts who provide input and recommendations throughout the trial’s duration, at no cost to investigators. This approach aims to improve trial design, accelerate implementation, foster interdisciplinary teamwork, and spur innovations that enhance multicenter trial quality and efficiency. The TIN leverages resources of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program, complementing local capabilities at the investigator’s institution. The Initial Consultation process focuses on the study’s scientific premise, design, site development, recruitment and retention strategies, funding feasibility, and other support areas. As of 6/1/2024, the TIN has provided 431 Initial Consultations to increase efficiency and accelerate trial implementation by delivering customized support and tailored recommendations. Across a range of clinical trials, the TIN has developed standardized, streamlined, and adaptable processes. We describe these processes, provide operational metrics, and include a set of lessons learned for consideration by other trial support and innovation networks.

Diversifying the simplified landscape of corn and soybeans in the Midwest is an emerging priority in both the public and private sectors to reap a suite of climate, social, agronomic, and economic benefits. However, little research has documented the perspectives of farmers, the primary stakeholders in diversification efforts. This preliminary report uses newly collected survey data (n = 725) from farmers in the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa to provide descriptive statistics and tests to understand what farmers in the region think about agricultural diversification, including their perspectives on its benefits, barriers, and opportunities. For the purposes of the study, we define diversification as extended rotations, perennials, horticulture, grazed livestock, and agroforestry practices. We find that a majority or plurality of farmers in the sample believe that diversified systems are superior to non-diversified systems at achieving a range of environmental, agronomic, and economic goals, although many farmers are still forming opinions. Farmers believe that primarily economic barriers stand in the way of diversification, including the lack of affordable land, low short-term returns on investment, and lack of labor. Farmers identified key opportunities to increase diversification through developing processing capacity for local meat and specialty crops, increasing demand for diversified products, and providing more information on returns on investment of diversified systems. Different interventions, however, may be needed to support farmers who are already diversified compared to non-diversified farmers. Building on these initial results, future studies using these data will develop more detailed analyses and recommendations for policymakers, the private sector, and agricultural organizations to support diversification.

Dyads can be challenging to recruit for research studies, but detailed reporting on strategies employed to recruit adult–adolescent dyads is rare. We describe experiences recruiting adult–youth dyads for a hypertension education intervention comparing recruitment in an emergency department (ED) setting with a school-based community setting. We found more success in recruiting dyads through a school-based model that started with adolescent youth (19 dyads in 7 weeks with < 1 hour recruitment) compared to an ED-based model that started with adults (2 dyads in 17 weeks with 350 hours of recruitment). These findings can benefit future adult–youth dyad recruitment for research studies.