MATCH’s Role in Research
MATCH Outcomes Research Center’s primary objective is to facilitate studies in liver or kidney transplantation using electronic health record data.  MATCH will accept ancillary proposals (see definition below) to use the data available within MATCH to conduct studies (at a cost to the investigator proposing the study).  MATCH is a collaborative with UC Davis as well as UT Southwestern, with additional collaborations that are pending.  If you are interested in the use of multi-site data for the conduct of your study, please let us know.   

Definitions
An Ancillary Proposal  is one that proposes to use the data available within MATCH and has hypotheses, specific aims, anticipated publications, and sufficient funding to support investigation(s) or analyses relevant to kidney or liver transplantation.  The scope of work addresses aims and objectives that are not currently supported by MATCH.  It is anticipated that a typical ancillary study could use existing data elements or propose to extract additional data elements/link MATCH data to outside sources of data, which will enhance the core data and align with MATCH’s overall mission. 

Ancillary studies may be submitted by investigators within UCSF or outside of UCSF.  Investigators who do not have any affiliations with UCSF will need to work with a UCSF investigator who is a member of MATCH (see the Membership tab on our website at match.ucsf.edu).   Ancillary studies will require external funding as there are no funds available to support these proposals within MATCH. Examples include funding by NIH research awards (e.g. R01), grants from academic institutions or private sources (e.g. private foundations), or internal UCSF funding. 

General Policies
MATCH welcomes proposals from individual investigators.   However, to protect the integrity of MATCH, such proposed studies will be reviewed and approved by the Executive Committee before their inception or before the submission of an ancillary proposal for external funding consideration.  All data will remain within MATCH and analyses will be performed by MATCH personnel. 

Obtaining Approval to Conduct an Ancillary Study
Investigator-initiated ancillary proposals for the use of MATCH Core Data will be reviewed by the Executive Committee in the order received, and comments will be collated and returned to the Investigator. The role of the Committee is to provide feedback to a potential ancillary study investigator regarding feasibility, potential issues of overlap with existing MATCH activities, and any concerns regarding the proposed science or methodology.    At that time the Investigator may address any issues that are raised and resubmit the proposal for reconsideration prior to a final decision on MATCH’s support for the study proposal.

The ancillary study proposal template is available through the link below. 
Download the MATCH Ancillary Proposal template

Multi-disciplinary proposals with investigator from different subspecialties, with different training/expertise, are strongly encouraged and will be prioritized for approval.

Considerations for Approval of Ancillary Studies

• Scientific merit and innovation
  Proposed study should be feasible in consideration of MATCH’s current bandwidth
  Investigators must have adequate resources to effectively complete the project, including:
  • Sufficient financial resources
  • Sufficient expertise in the proposed research area and expertise in the methodology
• Must document involvement of a MATCH analyst.  We also encourage involvement of investigators who are members of MATCH. 
• If pathology data are a main focus of the proposal, we strongly encourage inclusion of a pathologist as part of the investigative team.
• Must agree to cite MATCH support in the acknowledgements section of any publication that results from the proposed study.
• ​All proposed analyses will be conducted by MATCH (does not require release of data by MATCH). 

When overlap is identified between a newly submitted proposal and an already approved proposal, the degree of overlap will be assessed. To the extent possible, the proposing investigator will be provided with advice as to how their aims could be modified in order to avoid overlap with already approved aims.

MATCH support for ancillary intramural or extramural grant proposals
An ancillary study requesting MATCH support to conduct analyses for a proposed grant must receive approval before the grant is submitted.  Investigators are encouraged to discuss potential proposals with the MATCH team prior to submitting a concept proposal.    

The request for a letter of support for grant funding should begin at least 2 months before the due date of the agency to which it is anticipated that the proposal will be submitted. All investigators are strongly encouraged to contact MATCH as soon as possible to discuss such proposals.

Changes to Approved Ancillary Proposed Study
Once an ancillary study is approved, if a change occurs in the aims of the study (for example as a result of the grant review process), including any change in data elements to be collected or analyzed, such changes must be discussed and reviewed by MATCH before the proposal is (re-)submitted to a funding agency. If the changes are considered to be minor by the Director, the proposal will be approved by the Director. If the changes are substantial the proposal will be considered a new submission for re-review by the Executive Committee.  Approved ancillary study proposals are approved only for the aims described in the proposals. Expansions of scope in the body of the grant, beyond what is described in the approved ancillary study proposal are not approved.

Executive Committee Vote
A proposal will be considered approved only if >50% of the members of the Executive Committee who are eligible to vote approves it.  Votes from the Executive Committee will be based on review of the submitted proposal and de-identified versions of the reviews completed by assigned reviewers.  In the event of conflict of interest of any Executive Committee member, the individual in conflict will be expected to recuse themselves from the approval process. If the Director is in conflict, an alternate member of the Executive Committee will be appointed as a proxy Director to provide feedback and oversee Committee vote processes. 

If a member of the Executive Committee does not vote in the given time frame of two weeks, their vote will automatically counted as approved.

Budgeting your Proposal
Pre-submission consultation is highly recommended.

Costs that may be considered include:

• Data management effort for coordinating additional data extraction, cleaning, management, and analyses
• Statistical staff and MATCH team effort to oversee analyses
• Project management effort to implement the proposed study
• Coordinator support for chart review

A chartstring will need to be provided prior to beginning of data analyses. 

Proposals that do not demonstrate adequate progress
If requested, a written progress report on ancillary studies must be made periodically to the Executive Committee and the Monitoring Board.  Proposals that have not made sufficient progress one year after approval will be considered inactive, and the proposed concept will be open to other investigators in such settings after notification of the principal investigator leading the study.  

Data Access Policies, Human Subjects/Data Confidentiality
Confidentiality of UCSF data must be guaranteed in order to ensure the protection of human subjects. Individually identifiable data may not be released.

IRB approval to perform the proposed study will need to be obtained prior to the beginning of the actual analyses, and the assigned data analyst will need to be included on such an IRB proposal.  A copy of the IRB application should be provided to MATCH.

Data Management, Analysis, and Publication of Results of Ancillary Studies
Unless specifically arranged, all analyses will occur within MATCH and be conducted under the supervision of its biostatistician-investigators.  Outside of extraordinary circumstances, datasets will not be released for analyses outside of MATCH. 

Review of manuscripts prior to submission for publication
Penultimate drafts of all manuscripts will need to be submitted to MATCH Executive Committee for approval prior to submission for publication in order to ensure congruence between the study design and proposed aims. 

Acknowledgement
All manuscripts should include the following acknowledgement: 

“The data reported here were supplied by the University of California San Francisco Multi-Disciplinary Advancement of Transplant-Centered Health (MATCH) Outcomes Research Center and analyses were supervised by [insert name of investigator assuming responsibility for the integrity of the manuscript] in collaboration with a data analyst [insert name of analyst] affiliated with MATCH. This manuscript does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of MATCH Outcomes Research Center or University of California San Francisco Health or the University of California San Francisco.”

MATCH’s Additional Roles in Health Services Research
MATCH will also serve to:

• Connect interested investigators to existing prospective research cohorts available at UCSF (at no cost).  Interested parties who wish to potentially collaborate or learn about these existing cohorts can email us at at [email protected] for more information.
• Facilitate the enrichment of existing prospective research cohorts through crosslinkage with UCSF electronic health record data, provided the principal investigator responsible for the existing cohort approves the expansion. Existing cohorts are prospective research cohorts that were not initiated or created by MATCH but are currently maintained by different investigators through external funding mechanisms (outside of MATCH).  The list of Existing Cohorts that may be open to inquires surrounding collaboration are available at match.ucsf.edu under the “Kidney Research” and “Liver Research” tabs. We encourage the enrichment of existing cohorts--e.g. extending following up or refining phenotyping--via extraction of additional electronic health record data supported by externally funded ancillary proposals.  Ancillary proposals to existing cohorts will be processed as described above.

Version 4, Last updated 12/12/23