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Spotlight on:
New CPCE Faculty

CPCE welcomed new faculty at the start of the 2017-2018 academic year.

Nicolas Bamat, MD, MSCE is an attending neonatologist at CHOP and an instructor of pediatrics at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly a fellow in the Pediatric Hospital Epidemiology and Outcomes Research Training (PHEOT) program managed by the CPCE. He completed fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at CHOP and received a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interest is neonatal respiratory failure, with an emphasis on severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia, continuous distending airway pressure levels in infants requiring respiratory support, and neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

Kathleen Chiotos, MD, MSCE is an attending physician in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at CHOP and assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania with a secondary appointment in pediatric infectious diseases. She was formerly a fellow in the Pediatric Hospital Epidemiology and Outcomes Research Training (PHEOT) program managed by the CPCE. She completed a combined fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Critical Care Medicine at CHOP and received a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology program from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests are related to the epidemiology and treatment of multidrug resistant gram-negative infections as well as antimicrobial stewardship in the PICU setting.

Sabrina Gmuca, MD, MSCE is an attending physician in the division of rheumatology at CHOP and an instructor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gmuca seeks to enhance the care of children with a variety of rheumatic diseases. Her current research addresses amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome (AMPS), including juvenile fibromyalgia syndrome (JFMS), which is a major public health issue because of its high prevalence, related socioeconomic burden, and associated risk of opioid exposure. She is using large datasets to identify prevailing treatment regimens for JFMS as well as risk factors associated with opioid exposure. Dr. Gmuca is also interested in the cross-section of neurology and rheumatology. She previously received a CPCE Pilot Grant to investigate “Treatment and outcomes in Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO).” 

Michael L. O’Byrne, MD, MSCE an interventional cardiologist at CHOP and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. O’Byrne’s research focuses on improving outcomes in patients with congenital and acquired heart disease. This combines use of large observational datasets to assess quality of care and practice variation between hospitals, comparative effectiveness research, and patient-centered outcomes of patients undergoing cardiac procedures and their families. 

Hansel Otero, MD is an assistant professor of radiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a practicing pediatric diagnostic radiologist with special interest in advanced genitourinary and cardiovascular imaging. He received his MD from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas and is board certified in diagnostic radiology. He completed his radiology residency at Tufts Medical Center, pediatric radiology fellowship at CHOP, and two years of Management and Hospital Administration research fellowships at Brigham & Women's. His main research interest is in health services including imaging utilization and imaging related outcomes. 

Andrew Steenhoff, MBBCh, DCH is an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases, medical director of the Global Health Center, and director of the Pincus Global Health Fellowship at CHOP. He is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Steenhoff combines clinical and research skills to improve pediatric outcomes in the developing world. His research focuses on pediatric infectious diseases with a particular interest in tuberculosis, HIV, pneumonia and gastroenteritis. From 2008 to June of 2015, Dr. Steenhoff was based in Botswana. As a global health advocate, he seeks to optimize mutually beneficial collaborations between clinical and academic institutions in diverse settings. He has practiced clinical medicine in the United States, England, Botswana and South Africa.
Upcoming Events
Penn Health-Tech Fall Symposium
Date: November 1, 2017
Time: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm
Location: Smilow Center for Translational Research, Arthur Rubenstein Auditorium, 3400 Civic Center Blvd
The Penn Center for Health, Devices and Technology (Penn Health-Tech) unites Penn’s strengths in Medicine, Engineering, Business and Education to create technologies and advance science to solve the world’s existing and emerging health care needs. Features of the daylong symposium include opportunities to: join Penn and CHOP’s device ecosystem, learn about services and funding, meet our competition winners, and connect with Industry. Click here to learn more and to register.

Save the Date: CPCE/PolicyLab Visiting Speaker
Date: December 15, 2017
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Lilliam Ambroggio, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati.

1st CHOP Education Symposium
Date: January 24, 2018
The event will feature Grand Round Speaker Barbara Brandt, PhD, Director of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education. The CHOP Interprofessional Education (IPE) Committee invites staff from all departments to share their work and engage in shaping the future of learning. Submit an abstract that highlights your work in health professions education. Electronic submission forms are due by November 17, 2017.
CPCE in
the News!
Recent Publications
While prenatal surgery historically was performed exclusively for lethal conditions, today intrauterine surgery is also performed to decrease postnatal disabilities for non-lethal conditions. This research sought to describe physicians' attitudes about prenatal surgery for lethal and non-lethal conditions and to elucidate characteristics associated with these attitudes.

This research from Dr. Joseph Rossano and colleagues evaluates the associations between haemodynamic profiles and symptoms, end-organ function and outcome in children listed for heart transplantation.

In the primary care setting, there are racial and ethnic differences in antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs). Viral ARTIs are commonly diagnosed in the pediatric emergency department (PED), in which racial and ethnic differences in antibiotic prescribing have not been previously reported. Dr. Gerber and colleagues from the Pediatric Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) sought to investigate whether patient race and ethnicity was associated with differences in antibiotic prescribing for viral ARTIs in the PED.

In this multi-center comparison of palliative patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) stent and Blalock-Taussig (BT) shunt for infants with ductal-dependent pulmonary blood flow, adjusted for differences in patient factors, there was no difference in the primary endpoint, death or unplanned reintervention to treat cyanosis. However, other markers of morbidity and pulmonary artery size favored the PDA stent group, supporting PDA stent as a reasonable alternative to BT shunt in select patients.

Mature B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL) constitutes a collection of relatively rare pediatric malignancies. In order to utilize administrative data to perform large-scale epidemiologic studies within this population, a two-step process was used to assemble a 12-year cohort of B-NHL patients treated between 2004 and 2015 within the Pediatric Health Information System database.

Funding Opportunities
The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics is a career development award to enable junior faculty members to carry out innovative bioethics research. Applicants must be junior faculty members holding at least a 60% appointment in a tenure series at a university or non-profit research institute in the United States. Priority will be given to applicants who have not yet been considered for tenure, who have not received a comparable career development award, and whose work will have an impact on public policy, biomedical research, or clinical practice. The award supports 50% of a Scholar’s salary plus benefits for three years, plus $5,000 each year for limited project support and travel.

Grants of up to $20,000 are available to help support the research of faculty members or post-doctoral researchers affiliated with non-profit human service organizations in the United States and Canada. Areas of interest to the Fund are: studies to develop, refine, evaluate, or disseminate innovative interventions designed to prevent or ameliorate major social, psychological, behavioral or public health problems affecting children, adults, couples, families, or communities, or studies that have the potential for adding significantly to knowledge about such problems.

The American Kidney Fund Clinical Scientist in Nephrology (CSN) fellowship program enhances the training of nephrologists who wish to pursue an academic career and whose primary professional commitment is to scholarship in the provision of patient care. CSN fellows conduct prevention and outcomes research while receiving advanced training in essential skills such as medical ethics, biostatistics and epidemiology.

The one-year awards include $25,000 for predoctoral and medical students and $35,000 for postdoctoral students. The proposed training must be scientifically linked to autism and may be broadened to include training in a closely related area of scientific research, including but not limited to human behavior across the lifespan, neurobiology, pharmacology, neuropathology, genetics, epigenetics, genomics, epigenomics, immunology, molecular and cellular mechanisms, studies employing model organisms and systems, and studies of treatment and service delivery.

The American Society of Nephrology fights to prevent, treat, and cure kidney diseases by educating health professionals and scientists, advancing research and innovation, communicating new knowledge, and advocating for the highest quality care for patients. As part of this mission, the ASN Foundation is accepting applications for its William and Sandra Bennett Clinical Scholars Program. The goal is to produce the next generation of clinician educators by enabling applicants to improve their teaching skills through the acquisition of education tools and by supporting aspiring nephrology educators interested in conducting a project that advances all facets of nephrology education and teaching. To that end, grants of $100,000 over two years will be awarded in support of projects that explore any aspect of nephrology education.

Innovation grants are designed as seed funding for researchers with a novel approach to pediatric oncology scientific investigation. This may represent a change in research direction and/or an innovative new idea that moves away from an investigator’s prior research but for which a strong case is made for the potential impact on childhood cancers. Innovation Grants will support research proposals to be carried out by investigators who are already established, have a track record of peer-reviewed publications and evidence of successfully competing for extramural funding. The grant is for two years up to $125,000 per year for direct costs only. A no-cost extension is permitted if progress is demonstrated and budget properly justified.

Young Investigator Grants are 3 year awards designed to support scientists in the early stages of their research careers, such as postdoctoral or clinical fellows. Outstanding mentorship and demonstration of a career plan that shows commitment to pediatric cancer investigation are critical components of a successful application.

Alex’s Lemonade Stand Epidemiology Grants are $100,000 per year for two years. Funding allows investigators to pursue research studies in human populations, using epidemiological approaches, in order to significantly contribute to the understanding of childhood cancers. Hypothesis-driven research may focus on risk factors, early detection, prevention, effectiveness and treatment outcomes.

The American Gastroenterological Association is accepting applications for its AGA-Elsevier Gut Microbiome Pilot Research Award. The objectives of the program are to help early-career investigators establish their research careers and support research projects that represent new directions for established investigators. Projects must focus on the relationship of gut microbiota to digestive health and disease. 

The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood is intended to be an incubator of promising research and development projects that may ultimately enhance the development, health, safety, education or quality of life of children from infancy through seven years of age across the country. Each of its grants is made with the expectation that a successful project outcome will be of significant interest to other investigators or developers, within the grantee’s field of endeavor, and will be amenable to beneficial application or adaptation elsewhere. In essence, the foundation’s goal is to provide seed money for those imaginative endeavors, addressed to the needs of young children, which appear most likely to bear fruit on a national scale.

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has joined together with the Sohn Conference Foundation, dedicated to curing pediatric cancers, to establish the Damon Runyon-Sohn Pediatric Cancer Fellowship Award. This award provides funding to basic scientists and clinicians who conduct research with the potential to significantly impact the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of one or more pediatric cancers.

Last year, the NIH received approximately $30 billion in federal support. In spite of this amount, about 42,500 grants were not funded. To address these unfunded proposals, the NIH has a new Pilot Program that is designed to match researchers with nonprofit disease Foundations or with investments from private companies. Through a new collaboration between the NIH and the private contractor Leidos, researchers can now upload their unfunded NIH Proposals into an online portal at the Online Partnership to Accelerate Research (OnPAR). Foundations and other potential funders can review the NIH scores, and decide whether they might be interested in funding the Projects. Currently, this Pilot Program allows researchers with priority scores better than the 30th percentile to submit their abstracts. Interested Foundations might ask that a researcher send their full NIH Application along with its scores. The consensus opinion is that there are a lot of worthy grants being submitted to the NIH, but there is only so much funding available. OnPAR is one way of trying to match researchers with private Foundations. 
About CPCE
We are a pediatric research center dedicated to discovering and sharing knowledge about best practices in pediatric care by facilitating, organizing and centralizing the performance of clinical effectiveness research -- research aimed at understanding the best ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases in children. CPCE’s multidisciplinary team conducts research on a diverse range of clinical effectiveness topics grouped within four areas of research: