In This Issue
Research Spotlight: NIH Grant Supports Cancer Survivorship Research
Upcoming Events
Recent Publications
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NIH Grant Supports Cancer Survivorship Research
Lisa Schwartz, PhD, recently received R01 funding from the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) for a project titled “Self-Management of Adolescent and Young Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer.”
Because of significant treatment advances, over 80% of children diagnosed with cancer become long- term survivors. However, 70% of survivors develop chronic or life threatening late effects from treatment, and these often emerge during young adulthood. Guidelines recommend annual long-term follow-up care for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors. Unfortunately, as risk for late effects increases in young adulthood, engagement in cancer-related care decreases, around the time of transition from pediatric to adult-focused care.
The new R01 project will: 1) determine patterns and predictors of transition readiness, self-management skills, and engagement in long-term follow-up care, and test the transactional relationships among these variables, among 600 AYA cancer survivors over two years, and 2) evaluate and calibrate a new measure of AYA transition readiness. The project extends Dr. Schwartz’s prior R21-funded work with AYA cancer survivors.
Dr. Schwartz also received a new grant from the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, titled “Impact of Pediatric Germline Testing in a Pediatric Cancer Predisposition Clinic.” This project aims to evaluate the perceived experience and psychosocial impact of germline testing, evaluate behavioral and familial outcomes for those with positive findings, and use qualitative interviews to further evaluate experiences and impact for those with cancer predisposition.
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Upcoming Events
Save the Date: Career Pathways in Global Health
Date: April 6, 2019
Time: 10:00 am - 1:00 pm
Location: Perry World House, 3803 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA
Global health is less about geography and more of a lens through which one approaches health care delivery and outcomes in the larger global context. The career paths in this field are as vast as the topic itself. Come learn about the career trajectories and work lives of featured speakers regarding local and global public health research and practice. More details available
online.
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Recent Publications
Alarm fatigue has been increasingly recognized as one of the most significant problems in the hospital environment. One of the major causes is the excessive number of false physiologic monitor alarms. An underlying problem is the inefficient traditional threshold alarm system for physiologic parameters such as low blood oxygen saturation. In this paper,
Dr. Christopher Bonafide and colleagues propose a robust classification procedure that can identify and silence false low blood oxygen saturation alarms, while ensuring zero misclassified clinically significant alarms.
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) and other vaping devices have seen extraordinary growth in use in the past 10 years, and companies are accelerating their development of new products and marketing efforts. In turn, researchers have increased their efforts to determine how e-cigarettes affect health, how marketing these products impacts adolescents and how the use of e-cigarettes may affect adolescents' use of other tobacco products. This review, co-authored by CPCE & PolicyLab faculty member
Dr. Brian Jenssen provides updates on the topic of e-cigarette research.
New research from
Dr. Aletha Akers and colleagues sought to characterize the messages mothers share about contraception and condoms during parental discussions with young adolescents about reproductive health topics. They found that mothers conveyed a broad range of information about contraceptives and condoms to young adolescents, centered around four key themes: general facts about condoms and contraceptive methods, consequences of sexual behaviors and advantages of safe sex, effectiveness of condoms and contraceptive methods for preventing pregnancy and STIs, and direction to where adolescents could find additional information about condoms and contraception.
CPCE core faculty member
Dr. Aletha Akers and colleagues interrogated barriers to intrauterine device use among adolescent and young adult women in the United States, focusing on the potential impact of the length of IUD insertion procedures for this specific population. Their analysis found that IUD insertion duration was longer for adolescents than young adults, but not significantly so. However, they found that the procedure duration does not keep adolescent and young women from using an IUD, and that providers should not withhold IUDs from this population based on their age alone.
Rapid antibiotic administration is known to improve sepsis outcomes, but it can be difficult to diagnose sepsis early, due to complex presentation. Drs.
Balamuth,
Bonafide,
Grundmeier, and their colleagues, have found that using accessible electronic health record data, a model can be developed to recognize infant sepsis at least four hours prior to clinical recognition. There is potential for these models to get more precise through additional training examples, suggesting that in the future clinicians will be better able to diagnose sepsis and administer antibiotics much earlier.
Central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) are the most common healthcare-associated infection in neonates and children. CPCE Director,
Dr. Theo Zaoutis, participated in a study looking to establish national benchmark data around rates of CLABSI in NICUs and PICUs, as well as in pediatric oncology units. The nationally representative CLABSI rates determined for pediatric patients could be used to benchmark and to serve as baseline data for the design and evaluation of infection control and antimicrobial stewardship interventions.
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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.
CPCE E-News is edited by
Holly Burnside. Please feel free to contact us with questions or feedback.
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