ACCP is pleased to announce the return of the Clinical Research Challenge (CRC). This novel competition is targeted toward pharmacy students in the first 2 years of their first professional pharmacy degree program (P1 and P2 students for 4-year programs; P1 and P2 students for 3-year accelerated programs and the first 2 professional years of 0–6 or 0–7 year programs). Critically evaluating and applying primary literature is an essential skill for clinical pharmacists, and research and scholarship contributes to improved health outcomes for patients and advances in the profession of clinical pharmacy. This innovative and unique competition tests these key skills by offering teams of three pharmacy students the opportunity to participate in an online journal club and submit a clinical research proposal. NEW this year is the Letter of Intent round (more below). Plan now to participate in 2017.

Competition Overview

The ACCP CRC is a team-based competition. Teams of three students will compete against teams from other schools and colleges of pharmacy nationwide in an online format. All eligible teams will have the opportunity to compete in round 1: Online Journal Club. Only one team per institution may enter the competition. Institutions with branch campuses, distance satellites, or more than one interested team are encouraged to conduct a local competition.

Teams achieving the top 40 scores after round 1 will advance to the newly created round 2: Letter of Intent (LOI) submission. In the event of any ties, the top 40 scores will be determined by the time required to complete the online journal club examination. All exams will be time stamped. Time spent viewing instructional pages will NOT count toward total exam time.

The LOI submission round has been added to allow greater participation throughout the CRC and is intended to help students refine future full-proposal submissions. It will also allow the review panel to advance teams to round 3: Research Protocol Design according to the creativity and quality of their LOI submissions.

The Competition Oversight Panel will issue a request for proposals to address a clinically focused research question on a select pharmacotherapeutic topic or disease state (e.g., nephrology, infectious disease, hypertension). Eligible teams will submit an LOI based on the research question. Teams will then be given information regarding the research environment, including a specified budget and a timeline in which the proposed research must be completed. Eligible teams will have 2½ weeks to develop and submit a LOI online following the criteria outlined here.

Teams achieving the top 20 scores after the LOI round will advance to round 3: Research Protocol Design and be invited to submit a complete research proposal. Teams will be notified by e-mail by March 17, 2017 if they advance to round 3. Proposals are due by midnight (CST), Friday, April 14, 2017. For more information on round 3: Research Protocol Design, click here.

The teams with the top three research proposal submissions are requested to present their research design during a poster session at the 2017 ACCP Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. In addition, each member of said teams will receive a complimentary Annual Meeting registration and a cash prize. Click here for additional prize information.

Students are not required to be members of ACCP to participate. Team registration should be submitted online and must be initiated by a current faculty member at the respective institution. Students interested in forming a team should contact their ACCP faculty liaison. If no ACCP faculty liaison has been identified, another faculty member from the institution may initiate the registration process. The registering faculty member must confirm the eligibility of all team members online before a team will be permitted to compete in the CRC. The deadline to complete team registration and confirm eligibility is February 1, 2017.

For additional competition and calendar information, click here.