CPCE is accepting applications for the fall 2018 cycle of our Pilot Grant Program, now through October 1. More details are available under Funding Opportunities below or on our website.
Spotlight on: IDWeek 2018
IDWeek is October 3-7, 2018 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. If you are attending, be sure to look for members of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Epidemiology & Antimicrobial Stewardship (IDEAS) research group! Highlights include:

  • Theo Zaoutis, MD, MSCE will participate in the Stewardship: Best Drivers of Change Debate on Wednesday 1:30 to 3:15 pm in location N 24

  • Julia E. Szymczak, PhD will discuss Communication Strategies in the Inpatient Setting, at a symposium Thursday 8:45 – 9:10 am in location N 24

  • Susan Coffin, MD, MPH will be a panelist at a symposium on Hot Topics in Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Thursday 10:30 – 11:45 in location: W 2001-2003

  • Kevin Downes, MD (pictured above right at IDWeek 2017) will present a poster, Cystatin C improves estimation of vancomycin clearance in critically ill children using a population pharmacokinetic modeling approach, Friday 12:30 - 1:45 pm in location S Poster Hall

Please visit the full schedule of CHOP and CPCE posters, presentations and panels at IDWeek 2018.
Upcoming Events
The Immigration Challenge: Within School Walls
Date: October 4, 2018
Time: 7:45 - 10:00 am
Location: Philadelphia Education Fund, 718 Arch Street, Suite 700N
The Philadelphia Education Fund presents the Education First Compact monthly speaker series. This month's topic focuses on the increase in immigration in Philadelphia, and what that means for the School District of Philadelphia, its principals, immigrant students and their families. Free tickets are available on a first come, first served basis. Registration is required to be eligible for a free ticket.

Research Discovery Day
Date: October 4, 2018
Time: 10:00 am - 3:30 pm
Location: Roberts Center for Pediatric Research, Room 1120-A/B
Vendors, hands-on training, activities, CHOP pet therapy, and more! Full agenda TBD. Learn more here.

Clinical Trials RAG Seminar: Real-life Adventures Traveling from Bench to Bedside: My Personal Journey from Idea to Trial
Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Location: Roberts Center for Pediatric Research, 2nd Floor, Conference Room 2-180
At this session Edward M. Behrens, MD, Chief of the Division of Rheumatology and the Joseph Lee Hollander Chair in Pediatric Rheumatology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, will talk about his path from patient encounter to Investigational New Drug (IND) to clinical trial with IL-18 inhibition for kids with the activating NLRC4 inflammasome mutation. Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to ClinicalTrialsRAG@email.chop.edu.

Philadelphia Symposium on Research Credibility & Excellence
Date: October 15, 2018
Time: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Location: The Union League of Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Symposium on Research Credibility & Excellence intends to convene leaders from academia, industry, federal agencies, and publishers to create a robust discussion of reproducibility and research integrity to reveal the “inside story” of how these issues are handled by institutions, journals, and federal agencies. Registration is now open. You can register at PhillyResearchSymposia.org.

Charting New Frontiers in Children's Health Policy & Practice
Date: October 22, 2018
Time: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm
Location: National Museum of American Jewish History
Join our PolicyLab colleagues as they convene regional and national leaders in children’s health policy to outline the emerging innovative solutions that will move the dial on child, adolescent and family health and well-being over the course of the next decade. The forum will feature morning and lunch-time plenaries about evidence-based policymaking at the national level, and breakout sessions with panel discussions highlighting innovative practice and policy on the most pressing issues facing child and adolescent health. Learn more here. 
CPCE in
the News
Recent Publications
An international multidisciplinary panel of experts in pediatric oncology and infectious diseases, including CPCE’s Dr. Brian Fisher, was convened to perform systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials for the prevention or treatment of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) in any population and to consider the directness of the evidence to children with cancer and pediatric hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) patients. Here the panel presents a guideline for the prevention and treatment of CDI in children and adolescents with cancer and pediatric HSCT patients. Future research should include randomized controlled trials that involve children with cancer and pediatric HSCT patients to improve the management of CDI in this population.

Children with advanced cancer experience high symptom distress, which negatively impacts their health-related quality of life. The relationship between income and symptom distress and health-related quality of life is not well described. The Pediatric Quality of Life and Symptoms Technology (PediQUEST) multisite clinical trial evaluated an electronic patient-reported outcome system to describe symptom distress and health-related quality of life in children with advanced cancer. Children from low-income families were found to experience higher symptom burden and worse quality of life.

The spread of extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacteriaceae (ESBL-PE) has dramatically increased worldwide, and this "evolving crisis" is currently regarded as one of the most important public health threats. The aim of the review is to summarize the updated published knowledge in an attempt to answer basic everyday clinical questions on how to proceed to effective and the best ESBL-PE treatment options based on the existing published data.

The care of children with hypoplastic left heart syndrome is constantly evolving. Prenatal diagnosis of hypoplastic left heart syndrome will aid in counselling of parents, and selected fetuses may be candidates for in utero intervention. In this review article, Dr. Joseph Rossano and colleagues summarized recent advances in the critical care management of patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. 

As high-quality health care becomes increasingly expensive, improvement projects are focused on reducing cost and increasing value. To increase value by reducing operating room (OR) utilization, Dr. Ron Keren and colleagues studied the effect of a dedicated team approach for posterior spinal fusion (PSF) for scoliosis.

In patients with pulmonary atresia, intact ventricular septum (PA/IVS) following right ventricular (RV) decompression, RV size and morphology drive clinical outcome. The objectives of this research were to identify baseline and postdecompression echocardiographic parameters associated with 2V circulation, identify echocardiographic parameters associated with RV growth, and describe changes in measures of RV size and changes in RV loading conditions.

Dr. Kristen Feemster and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study abstracting information from Web sites among a sample of 216 four-year colleges and universities from all 50 states and District of Columbia. The primary outcomes of interest included: type and number of vaccines required for school entry, vaccines recommended by schools for students, and vaccines supplied through student health services. They found that while most schools have immunization requirements, there is significant variation in number and type of vaccines required. 

Funding Opportunities
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 annual program is designed to stimulate highly innovative research from young investigators. To that end, three-year grants of up to $450,000 will be awarded to promote and support creative, paradigm-shifting cancer research unlikely to be funded through conventional channels.

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 Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance Small Grant opportunity is available to support projects in development. New or early investigators are encouraged to apply and will be afforded special consideration. The research project can be a pilot, continuation of ongoing research, or other projects that move forward clinical or translational research that furthers the CARRA mission. Preference will be given to research that is collaborative in nature, which leverage current CARRA network resources and/or will further develop the CARRA network.

The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics is a career-development award designed to enable junior faculty members to carry out innovative bioethics research. The program supports research that goes beyond current work in bioethics to help resolve pressing ethical issues in clinical care, biomedical research, and public policy, and creates a community that enhances future bioethics research by Greenwall scholars and alumni/ae.

The purpose of this program is to promote and support CHOP investigators in clinical effectiveness pilot research studies that will attract external support for large-scale studies. Selected proposals will be supported for up to a maximum of $10,000 for one year. Fellows and junior faculty from all CHOP departments and divisions, particularly fellows in their final year of fellowship transitioning to a faculty position at CHOP, are encouraged to apply.

Designated Frontier Programs must have three essential components: Distinctive clinical program that provides extraordinary care; associated translational research that advances the clinical program and has potential to generate the next breakthrough; and return on investment that can support our ongoing innovation in the years to come.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has issued a Call for Applications for its 2018 Culture of Health Prize, an annual program that honors outstanding community efforts and partnerships that are helping people live healthier lives. Through the program, up to ten communities will be awarded a $25,000 cash prize and have their accomplishments celebrated and shared broadly, with the goal of raising awareness and inspiring locally driven change across the country. Community partners can decide together how to use the funds to benefit their community.

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.
 
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 goal of the American Kidney Fund Clinical Scientist in Nephrology (CSN) fellowship program is to improve the quality of care provided to kidney patients and to promote clinical research in nephrology. The CSN 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. The fellowship may be granted yearly, with a maximum duration of two years for each fellowship. The maximum level of funding of $80,000 per year shall be used principally to support the candidate and his or her career development, including salary.

The annual program provides physicians who wish to pursue a career in cancer research with the opportunity for a protected research training experience under the mentorship of a highly qualified mentor after they have completed their clinical training. The award program will provide up to $460,000 over four years in financial support. In addition, the foundation will retire up to $100,000 of any outstanding medical school debt owed by a grant recipient.

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: