Christi Madden, MPA, has joined the UAMS Translational Research Institute as its executive director.
Madden, a leader with more than two decades of research programmatic management experience, spent most of her career in her home state of Oklahoma at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC), where she worked in the Department of Pediatrics and at the Oklahoma Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
As executive director, Madden oversees all Translational Research Institute staff and services to UAMS researchers. She also serves as a liaison to the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds the UAMS Translational Research Institute with a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA).
“We are thrilled to have Christi on our team,” said institute Director Laura James, M.D. “In her roles at OUHSC, she managed several highly impactful public health research and quality improvement programs. Her skillset and research leadership experience will help our institute provide the highest quality service to our researchers and to our research participants.”
Madden’s management experience includes the IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network, the Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Improvement Cooperative, the Oklahoma Child Health Research Network and the Healthy Hearts for Oklahoma project.
She has also worked on several projects with rural communities across Oklahoma to implement community-driven initiatives to improve cardiovascular health, increase access to health care and mental health resources, and implement COVID-19-related research.
In 2022, she was recognized by the Public Health Institute of Oklahoma as one of the County Health Improvement Organization’s Top Ten People of the Decade.
“I am excited to be in this new role at TRI and look forward to working collaboratively across UAMS and with our partners such as Arkansas Children’s Research Institute and the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System to improve the health and health care of Arkansans.”
The Translational Research Institute is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, Clinical and Translational Science Award TR003107.