CHA is a participating institution of the Harvard Catalyst, a consortium founded in 2008 of Harvard hospitals and resources dedicated to advancing clinical research. The Harvard Catalyst provides a vast array of exceptional research resources to investigators, including the ability to network with others with common interests throughout the entire Harvard community.

The Catalyst has created very powerful tools that facilitate clinical research and makes available education and training opportunities, pilot funding, core facilities, and numerous other services.

The Catalyst Regulatory Knowledge and Support program and the Community Health Innovation and Research program have partnered to develop resources to support community-engaged research: Community-Engaged Research (CEnR) resource. In addition, Community-Based Participatory Research Consulting is available as is the Community Health Innovation and Research Program (HC-CHIRP), which offers advice and training to Harvard researchers and community organizations seeking to conduct research in community settings.

Among the other resources is the Shared Health Research Information Network (SHRINE), which is an interactive database of patients seen at the Harvard hospitals who meet clinical criteria of interest, Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), which is a free, secure, web-based, and user-friendly electronic data capture (EDC) tools for research studies, and Pathology Specimen Locator, which is a distributed database developed and maintained by the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center indexing millions of archived benign and malignant human specimens that can be used for translational studies, such as biomarker discovery and validation.

All CHA personnel are encouraged to take advantage of the many resources, programs, and opportunities made available through the Catalyst to help support and advance the