Pediatrics
Our work in pediatric and adolescent medicine intersects with numerous clinical conditions and settings to advance access and delivery of high-quality care. To maximize our impact, we leverage strong partnerships with faculty at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, including the Pediatric Practice Research Group (PPRG), a network of community-based pediatric practices throughout the greater Chicagoland area that are available for practice-based study. Our faculty also include a number of pediatric-focused specialists, including pediatric urology and pediatric surgery.
Active Projects
Cardiovascular Health Trajectories from Birth Through Adolescence in a Diverse Cohort of Children
This generation of children is one of the first in centuries to have a shorter projected lifespan than their parents. One of the driving reasons behind this decline in health is due to the growing prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors particularly obesity among youth. The overarching goal of this proposal is to identify cardiovascular health trajectories from birth through age 20 among a diverse cohort of 7,000 children and their families who have already have clinical phenotyping to which we will add detailed behaviors and follow them longitudinally. Our innovative study design will allow us to define CVH trajectories for a diverse group of children from birth through age 20. These trajectories will then be used to create a CVH growth curve ready for use in clinical practice. The findings from this study will be critical in targeting prevention strategies to high-risk children and critical periods during the life course in order to prevent the loss of CVH in childhood and preserve and promote CVH across the life course. View Project Site
The SafeCare@Home4Kids Learning Lab: Designing Safer Healthcare at Home for Children
SafeCare@Home4Kids aims to understand and prevent safety issues at home for children with medical complexity. This study will bring together experts and patient families to better understand how family caregivers and home nurses can help identify, communicate and prevent safety issues at home for children with complex medical needs. The study will use this input to create a digital safety toolkit to help support families.
Outcomes and Affordability of Observation Status for Children (OASIS)
It is estimated that ~500,000 (34%) pediatric hospital stays each year in the United States (US) are designated as outpatient under “observation status” and often referred to as observation stays. The concept of observation status was created, initially, as a clinical designation, primarily for Emergency Department (ED) clinicians to “observe” the patient for a period of time to determine the need for inpatient care (e.g., inpatient admission). Over the past three decades, observation status has evolved and now is used as an administrative assignment for patients who have a “short-term” hospital stay, typically falling “under the 2-midnight rule,” as originally defined for Medicare patients and now widely adopted by commercial insurers and Medicaid agencies. Our team recently found that observation stays are now common for pediatric hospital stays, especially for children undergoing surgery. We focus on Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Pediatric QIs and propose to evaluate the impact of omitting observation stay data on these QIs using Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project state specific databases from 2010 through 2019.
Clinical Trial of ENhancing Recovery in CHildren Undergoing Surgery - ENRICH-US
The ENhancing Recovery In CHildren Undergoing Surgery (ENRICH-US) study will implement an enhanced recovery protocol for children undergoing gastrointestinal surgery in 18 US hospitals to evaluate whether it improves clinical outcomes.