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Spotlight on: PAS 2018

The Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) Meeting is May 5 - 8 in Toronto.

Among this year's presenters is PHEOT Fellow Natalie Stavas, MD , who has been awarded an Academic Pediatric Association Research Award for Best Abstract by a Fellow based on her abstract titled, “Perceptions of caregivers and adolescents of the use of telemedicine for the child sexual abuse examination.” She will present this work on Sunday May 6 at 4:30 p.m. in Convention Center 701 A.

Click here to view the PolicyLab, CPCE, and General Pediatrics schedule of posters, presentations, and panels. Please note the schedule is being continuously updated as PAS releases schedule information. If you are participating and do not see your event on the list, please e-mail us.

We'll be posting updates to Twitter throughout the conference. Follow @CHOP_CPCE for timely reminders and more information about CPCE presentations at #PAS2018.
Upcoming Events
Neonatology Clinical Research Symposium
Dates: May 9 - 10, 2018
Location: The Union League of Philadelphia
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is sponsoring a research symposium in recognition of the retirement of Barbara Schmidt, MD, FRCP(C), MSC, and Haresh Kirpalani, BM, MRCP, FRCP, MSc. This course is designed to highlight evidence-based medicine and innovative, randomized clinical trials in Neonatology. Learn more here.

CHOP Quality and Safety Day 2018
Date: May 15, 2018
Time: 8:00 am - 4:00 pm
Location: Stokes Auditorium, CHOP Main Hospital
Paula Davis-Laak, JD, MAPP, will present the keynote address, “Thriving in Healthcare: Your Blueprint for Stress Resilience.”  Register for the conference or submit an abstract that highlights the way your team has applied the CHOP Improvement Framework, Safety Behaviors for Error Prevention, or other strategies. Abstracts are due Friday March 30, 2018 at 5:00 pm.

Penn MSHP 2018 Implementation Science Institute
Dates: June 19 - 21, 2018
Location: Jordan Medical Education Center
The purpose of the Implementation Science Institute is to provide participants with the tools to design and execute rigorous implementation science research. The Institute will give an introduction to the foundations of implementation science, cover implementation strategies and sustainability, tips for grant writing and skill development. Limited scholarships will be available for affiliates of CHOP. Register here or contact mshp@mail.med.upenn.edu for more information.
CPCE in
the News!
Recent Publications
Viral myocarditis is an inflammatory condition in which leukocytes infiltrate the myocardium, leading to necrosis and fibrosis of myocardial tissue. Serum troponin (Tn) is a cardiac biomarker that is often elevated in viral myocarditis, but limited data are available on its prognostic significance. Dr. Joseph Rossano and colleagues retrospectively studied data from six large children's hospitals to test the hypothesis that abnormal serum Tn is associated with mortality in children hospitalized with myocarditis. Although they did not find any association with mortality, they did find that abnormal Tn in the first 72 hours of hospitalization for myocarditis was associated with the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and intravenous immunoglobulin.

The management of newborns for risk of early-onset sepsis (EOS) is one of the most common clinical tasks conducted by neonatal clinicians. The neonatal early-onset sepsis risk calculator (SRC) is a web-based tool that allows clinicians to calculate the risk of EOS in infants. The SRC was implemented as the primary means of EOS risk assessment among infants born at ≥36 weeks' gestation at a large, academic, birth hospital by a multidisciplinary team of obstetric, neonatal, and information technology staff. Post-implementation, empirical antibiotic use among newborns ≤72 hours old declined by 42% and laboratory testing declined by 82%. The significant declines in empirical antibiotic administration and laboratory test use observed in this study suggest that widespread use of the SRC could have a major impact on the care of newborns in across the United States. 

Dr. Mostoufi-Moab and colleagues previously reported significant gains in pQCT measures of tibia trabecular bone mineral density (BMD) and cortical structure following completion of therapy in children and adolescents with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The objective of this study was to examine changes in DXA measures used in clinical practice and expressed as Z-scores using robust national reference data.

Risk assessment in heart transplantation is critical for candidate selection, but current models inadequately assess individual risk of postoperative mortality. This research sought to identify risk factors and develop a scoring system to predict mortality following heart transplantation in children. Dr. Andrew Glatz and colleagues hypothesized that patients at higher risk of post-transplant mortality could be identified via preoperative factors not currently accounted for in commonly used risk models. In this single-center pediatric cohort, they found that post-heart transplantation mortality could be predicted using patient-specific risk factors and that the cumulative effect of these risk factors predicted mortality with high specificity. These risk factors should be studied and validated further, with the goal of estimating an individual's risk for post-heart transplant mortality based on granular preoperative characteristics. 

Alarm fatigue has been linked to patient morbidity and mortality in hospitals due to delayed or absent responses to monitor alarms. This brief report from Dr. Christopher Bonafide and colleagues investigates alarm rates at 5 freestanding children's hospitals during a single day and the types of alarms and proportions of patients monitored. They found wide variability in physiologic monitor alarm rates and the proportion of patients monitored across the 5 hospitals. Because alarm fatigue remains a pressing patient safety concern, further study of the features of high-performing (low-alarm) hospitals systems may help identify barriers and facilitators of safe, effective monitoring and develop targeted interventions to reduce alarms. 

Funding Opportunities
The mission of the American Society for Hematology is to further the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disorders affecting the blood, bone marrow, and immunologic, hemostatic and vascular systems through the promotion of research, clinical care, education, training, and advocacy in hematology. To that end, ASH is accepting proposals from hematologists whose research would not otherwise be accomplished due to cuts in NIH funding. The Bridge Grants program will provide at least thirty one-year awards annually, in the amount of $150,000 each, to ASH members who applied for an NIH R01 grant or equivalent but were denied funding due to budget cuts. Grants will support projects in basic, translational, patient-oriented, or outcomes-based research.

The Anna Lalor Burdick Program seeks to empower young women through education about healthy reproduction in order to broaden and enhance their options in life. The program focuses particularly on young women who have inadequate access to information regarding sexual and reproductive health, including comprehensive and unbiased information on contraception and pregnancy termination. The ALB Program awards a small number of grants in the range of $10,000 to $35,000, with an average grant size between $15,000 and $25,000. Concept papers are due May 1 and November 1.

The foundation awards grants for research focused on issues faced by care providers that, when implemented, will improve health, nutrition, and/or developmental outcomes for infants and young children. Projects can address the etiologic mechanisms of disease; new, improved, or less invasive diagnostic procedures; the reduction or elimination of side effects; the alleviation of symptoms; new, improved, or less invasive therapies or treatments; dosage or dosing requirements or mechanisms for drugs, nutrient supplementation, or other therapeutic measures (under or overdosing); and preventative measures. The total requested grant size should be no more than $350,000.

The purpose of the Reach Awards program is to advance the foundation's mission to find cures and better treatments for childhood cancers by providing support that helps move hypothesis-driven research into the clinic. To that end, the program supports late translational studies needed to ultimately initiate a clinical trial. Priority will be given to projects that, if funded, will result in the initiation of a clinical trial within two to three years. Grants of up to $250,000 will be awarded over two years.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has issued a Request for Proposals for its Evidence for Action: Making Health a Shared Value program. The purpose of the program is to improve the foundation's understanding of the Action Area 1 drivers and outcomes related to health, well-being, and equity, particularly with respect to disadvantaged children and families. To that end, the foundation seeks evidence on the extent to which Action Area 1 drivers — mindsets and expectations, sense of community, and civic engagement — can be changed through intervention at the individual or population levels, resulting in better health, well-being, and equity outcomes.

The Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation is accepting Letters of Intent from investigators for basic science, clinical, population/epidemiologic, and translational research on cardiomyopathies affecting children age 18 and younger. Grants of up to $50,000 will be awarded to studies focused on the causes, diagnosis, or treatment of dilated, hypertrophic, restrictive, arrhythmogenic right ventricular, and left ventricular non-compaction cardiomyopathy. The grants are designed to provide seed funding to help secure long-term funding by the National Institutes of Health and other major granting institutions.

Through the FWW Research Awards program, the foundation will award grants of up to $25,000 for research projects, with an emphasis on cardiovascular disease, female cancers, the role of hormones in disease, and/or stage-of-life health concerns such as pregnancy and menopause and diseases disproportionately affecting women. 

The Rheumatology Research Foundation is accepting applications for its 2018 Scientist Development Award, an annual program designed to provide support for a structured, formal, clinical, or basic science research training program for rheumatologists or health professionals in the field of rheumatology. Grants of up to $225,000 for up to three years will be awarded to individuals in the early stages of their careers or those without significant prior research experience who plan to embark on a career in biomedical and/or clinical research in arthritis and rheumatic diseases. 

The American Legion Child Welfare Foundation supports organizations that contribute to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual welfare of children. The foundation awards grants for the dissemination of information about new and innovative programs designed to benefit youth or information already possessed by well-established organizations. Projects must have the potential to help American children in a large geographic area (more than one state).

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: