Clinical Academic Centers (CAC) are a unique opportunity to aggregate and consolidate research, teaching and healthcare provision in a collaborative strategy aiming at achieving excellence at all of those levels. This implies well-defined institutional vision and aims, as well as nationally and internationally aligned strategies bringing together the work of institutions integrated in the different formats of CAC.
In this context, CAC also have to endeavor to fully capacitate themselves to deliver adequate outputs resulting from collaborative work, which will maximize the possibility of capturing regional, national and international funding. Such collaborative work involves various stakeholders - university teachers, clinicians and other health professionals, researchers involved in fundamental, translational and clinical research – encompassed within the framework of CAC, as well as other institutional and community stakeholders. Finally, it is also fundamental that CAC collaborate with one another in networks that need to be further developed and consolidated. This is all the more important in present times where CAC also have to integrate aspects of preparedness for an age of uncertainty namely in terms of pandemics and climate change.
This session aims at analysing best practices and difficulties involving CAC, as well discussing the context of leveraging CAC in all their dimensions, at European level.