Advance-CTR
Date
April 23, 2026
Hosting Brown University's Inaugural Bridging the Research-Practice Gap Retreat
BRIDGE, Advance RI-CTR, and Prov/Bos CFAR collaborate to host this inaugural half-day networking retreat for researchers.
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On the morning of March 24th, Ruben Martinez, PhD, walks the Atrium of The Warren Alpert Medical School greeting researchers, clinicians, and students, cool and collected, with a cup of coffee and a smile.
After months of planning, meetings, writing and organizing, researchers gathered for the inaugural Bridging the Research-Practice Gap Retreat, the brainchild of Dr. Martinez hosted in collaboration with Brown Research on Implementation and Guide Evidence Use (BRIDGE), Advance RI-CTR, and the Providence/Boston Center for AIDS Research (Prov/Bos CFAR).
The theme of this inaugural half-day event was "Going the Last Mile of Translation."
A struggle researchers in many fields face is translating their often years of evidence-based work into real-world practice, so that people's lives can be improved sooner. For young researchers, the road is long and unclear. And even for experienced researchers, new roadblocks are always popping up.
Thus the Bridging the Research-Practice Gap Retreat was created as a way for researchers (and those working alongside researchers) to network, collaborate, and gain new insights—whether it be funding insight, scale-up support, data analysis or research collaboration.
The half-day retreat began with welcoming remarks from Dr. Martinez and a lively panel discussion from practiced researchers with ties to both Brown University and Brown University Health and facilitated by Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Hannah Frank, PhD.
After breakout sessions covering integrating community into the research process, publishing research in a way that gets it in front of the right eyes, and making research actionable for policymakers, attendees were treated to a networking lunch where researchers could break bread over their areas of interest and take one step closer to moving their research findings into practice.
“ That is the power of having researchers talk to federal health policy staff! ”
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The retreat closed with an illuminating keynote from Rani Elwy, PhD, on "How You Can Impact Federal Health Policy."
"We've been doing so much to move evidence into practice, both here in Rhode Island, and also throughout the country," said Dr. Elwy during her keynote. "But I felt that one of the things that was really missing from my own personal skills was to try to understand about policy." Dr. Elwy's talk focused on her illuminating work in Washington, D.C. with lawmakers and the power that storytelling has when trying to turn your research into policy.
"When you talk to people, what is your story of yourself? Why is it that you're doing what you're doing? What is the story of us, those in the room that we can all impact together? And what's our story from now? What's the action step that we need to take?"
Dr. Ruben Martinez closed the event with a warm "Thank you—thank you, thank you, thank you!" to the more than 50 attendees with bright eyes towards the future. “Next year will be different," he said, already planning out how the event might grow in years to come. "We see this as a bookend to the Community-Engaged Research Retreat, which is also done here at Brown.”
If you missed the retreat and would like to get a sense of what it was about, check out the recordings on the Advance RI-CTR YouTube channel. We hope to see you next year.