promising interventions were successfully
tested in clinical trials, but that this transfer from
bench to bedside only resulted in a transfer from
“bedside to the academic bookshelf,”2 with no
perceptible change in clinical practice or patient
outcomes. Translational research is now construed as
a continuum, with translation steps occurring from
theories and discoveries in the basic sciences, through
human testing and then through multiple translation
steps to application in a community setting and evaluation
of long-term outcomes and comparative effectiveness.