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Spotlight on: New K Awards

CPCE congratulates Stephanie Doupnik, MD, MSHP and Brian Jenssen, MD, MSHP for receiving NIH Career Development (K) awards!
Although youth suicide attempts result in approximately 60,000 hospitalizations annually, most inpatient medical hospital units do not currently implement practices to ensure patients’ safety and continuity of mental healthcare after hospital discharge. With K23 funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Doupnik plans to address this critical need, with the ultimate goal of reducing youth suicide attempts. Specifically, her first aim is to use Medicaid claims combined with national survey data to identify hospital characteristics associated with higher vs. lower rates of youth completing mental health follow up visits after suicide attempt hospitalization. Using findings from Aim 1, combined with a literature review and qualitative interviews, Dr. Doupnik’s second aim is to develop a youth suicide prevention toolkit to aid inpatient medical units in implementing processes for safety planning and ensuring continuity of mental health care. Finally, her Aim 3 is to pilot test the toolkit, which will lay the groundwork for a future prospective multicenter trial to study the toolkit’s effectiveness at ensuring safety and follow-up care. 
Pediatricians are uniquely positioned to protect children from secondhand smoke exposure by educating, motivating, and initiating tobacco dependence treatment for parents who smoke. Dr. Jenssen’s K08 project, funded by the National Cancer Institute, aims to do just that. His specific Aim 1 is to develop framed messages to optimize initiation of tobacco cessation treatment for parent smokers presenting with their children for outpatient pediatric care. Aim 2 is to develop a clinical decision support system to effectively prompt the consistent delivery of tobacco cessation treatment messaging to clinicians and parents. Aim 3 will pilot test the intervention developed in Aims 1 and 2 to improve parent tobacco cessation rates, in preparation for a large-scale pragmatic trial.
Upcoming Events
Emotional Intelligent Relationships, Management, and Leadership: Leadership with a Little ‘L’ and the Role of Emotional Intelligence: What, Why, and How
Date: July 25, 2018
Time: 8:00 - 9:00 am
Location: Stokes Auditorium, CHOP Main Hospital
Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Director of Research for the Pediatric Advanced Care Team at CHOP, and Steven D. Handler Endowed Chair in Medical Ethics will give the first in a series of summer Grand Rounds covering the theme of leadership in medicine.

Clinical Trials Research Affinity Group (RAG) Seminar
Date: August 7, 2018
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Location: Roberts Center, 2nd Floor, Conference Room 2-160
Martha A.Q. Curley, RN, PhD, FAAN, Ruth M. Colket Endowed Chair in Pediatric Nursing at CHOP, will present "Team Science - Answering Complex Clinical Questions Together." See the event flyer for additional information.

CHOP/Penn Networking Event
Date: August 8, 2018
Time: 5:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: Stoner Courtyard, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology
PROSPER is hosting a CHOP/Penn research staff networking event at the eighth annual Summer Nights Concert Series at Penn’s Museum. The West Philadelphia Orchestra will perform. Admission is free with your CHOP or Penn ID badge! Learn more here.

Know Your Community
Date: September 12, 2018
Time: 11:30 am - 2:00 pm
Location: Colket Translational Research Building, Room 1200A
The goals of the event are to: create a forum to identify and facilitate networking opportunities and promote greater collaboration amongst individuals conducting community based research, present research resources in the greater Philadelphia area and to highlight best practices and procedures for engaging the public, and create increased communication within and across research organizations. CPCE's Richard Aplenc, MD, PhD, MSCE will give opening remarks; Sandra Amaral, MD, MHS, and Lindsay Waqar, MPH, CCRC are speakers. Learn more and register here.

If you have other events to share, please let us know by e-mailing CPCE@email.chop.edu.
CPCE in
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Recent Publications
Ambulatory surgical procedures now comprise approximately three quarters of all surgeries performed in the United States. Surgical site infections (SSI) are uncommon but can lead to significant increases in cost, morbidity, and mortality. The objective of this study was to prospectively derive and validate a prediction rule for detecting cases warranting investigation for surgical site infections (SSI) after ambulatory surgery. Our researchers concluded that automated prediction rule derived from both structured and narrative EHR data using the random forest machine learning algorithm can be used to screen for surgical site infections after ambulatory surgery with high recall (sensitivity) and acceptable precision (positive predictive value).

Juvenile spondyloarthritis (SpA) is a term that encompasses a group of conditions characterized by inflammatory arthritis, enthesitis, HLA-B27 positivity, acute anterior uveitis, inflammatory bowel disease, and psoriasis.The arthritis of juvenile SpA (JSpA) can be peripheral or axial (sacroiliac joints or spine). While the diagnosis of peripheral arthritis can typically be made by clinical examination, confirmation of sacroiliitis often requires imaging. In this study, Dr. Pamela Weiss and colleagues aimed to evaluate the diagnostic utility of pelvic radiographs versus magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the sacroiliac joints in children with suspected sacroiliitis.

Pulmonary mucormycosis diagnosed immediately after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation frequently portends a poor prognosis. In this report, Dr. Brian Fisher and colleagues describe two cases in children that were treated successfully to highlight the efficacy of a multidisciplinary approach. Despite diagnosis in the immediate post- transplant period and requirement for ongoing immunosuppression to prevent or treat GVHD, both are long- term survivors due to early surgical debridement with transfusion support and prompt initiation of targeted antifungal therapy. In the absence of evidence- based treatment guidelines, survival of pulmonary mucormycosis is achievable even in high- risk patients with a multidisciplinary team to guide management.

Rapidly distinguishing between children who are dangerously ill and children who are ill but will recover with minimal or no intervention is one of the key challenges of pediatric emergency care. In order to avoid discharging children with dangerous illnesses like sepsis, some emergency departments have sought to use discharge vital signs as an adjunct to clinical judgment, often by mandating reevaluation of patients with an elevated heart rate. The aim of this study was to identify emergency department heart rate values that identify children at elevated risk of emergency department revisit with admission.

Funding Opportunities
Community Access to Child Health, a program of the American Academy of Pediatrics, provides support to pediatricians looking to collaborate with others in their communities so that all children have access to needed health services. Planning and Implementation Grants of up to $10,000 will be awarded to individual pediatricians and fellowship trainees in support of the planning of innovative community-based child health initiatives aimed at ensuring that all children have medical homes and access to healthcare services not otherwise available in their community. Resident Grants of up to $2,000 will be awarded to pediatric residents to support the planning and/or implementation of community-based child health initiatives.

The foundation is accepting Letters of Intent from community-based organizations working in the areas of HIV/AIDS care and direct services, education, and research. Grants will be awarded in support of developing or established programs, with emphasis on the direct benefit to clients or the target audience.

The Pardee Foundation provides support to investigators in United States nonprofit institutions proposing research directed toward identifying new treatments or cures for cancer. The foundation particularly encourages grant applications for a one year period which will allow establishment of capabilities of new cancer researchers, or new cancer approaches by established cancer researchers. It is anticipated that this early stage funding may lead to subsequent and expanded support using government agency funding.

The Lymphoma Research Foundation is dedicated to finding a cure for lymphoma through an aggressively funded research program and by supporting the next generation of lymphoma researchers. To advance this mission, the foundation is accepting applications for its LRF Clinical Investigator Career Development Award program, which is designed to support physician-investigators at the level of advanced fellow or junior faculty member who will contribute to the development of new lymphoma therapies and diagnostic tools. The grant provides a total of $225,000 to grantees over three years, including salary support in the amount of $70,000 per year.

Grants of up to $130,000 over two years will be awarded to junior faculty researchers for innovative translational research projects in hematology/oncology (with a focus on hematologic malignancies) that can be either based around a clinical trial with strong correlative science or laboratory investigation.

The Thrasher Research Fund provides grants for clinical, hypothesis-driven research that offers substantial promise for meaningful advances in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of children's diseases, particularly research that offers broad-based applications. The fund awards small grants of up to $25,000 to new researchers to help them gain a foothold in the area of pediatric research. The program will consider a variety of research topics important to children's health. 

The Conquer Cancer Foundation works to conquer cancer by funding breakthrough cancer research and sharing cutting-edge knowledge with patients and physicians worldwide, improving quality of and access to care, and enhancing quality of life for all who are touched by cancer. To that end, CCF is accepting applications for its Career Development Award, an annual research program that provides funding to clinical investigators who have received their initial faculty appointment to establish an independent clinical cancer research program. A single grant of $200,000 over three years will be awarded for a patient-oriented project that could include a clinical research study and/or translational research involving human subjects.

The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood supports innovative, creative projects and programs with the potential to significantly enhance the development, health, safety, education, and/or quality of life of children from birth through age five. The foundation provides funding in the areas of early childhood welfare, early childhood education and play, and parenting education.
 
The Gerber Foundation is accepting concept papers for research projects focused on improving the health, nutrition, and/or development of infants and young children. In particular, the foundation is looking for practical solutions that can be rapidly implemented on a broad scale and within a predictable time frame to clinical application. Major target areas include new diagnostic tools, new treatment regimens, symptom relief, preventative measures, assessment of deficiencies or excesses (vitamins, minerals, drugs, etc.), and risk assessment tools or measures for environmental hazards, trauma, etc. Grant amounts will range up to $350,000.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is accepting applications for the 2015 Warren H. Pearse Women's Health Policy Research Award. The annual program includes a single grant of $10,000 for research that explores an aspect of healthcare policy that assists, defines, or restricts the ability of a physician to deliver health care to women in either the general population or a specific area. Applicants must be a junior fellow or fellow of the college at the time of application.

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: