Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research

Network (PECARN)

Dan Kavanaugh: I'd like to go ahead and I guess we will hopefully have some more people join us. Is it okay to start as a tape? Okay. Before I introduce our speaker, I'd like to give a little bit of background of what you're going to hear. The Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network is a partnership between the Emergency Medical Services for Children Program within the Division of Child Adolescent and Family Health and also the Division of Research Training and Education within HRSA and CHB. And this is comprised of also five cooperative agreements with the University of California, Davis; the University of Michigan; Children's National Medical Center; Columbia University, and also the University of Utah. This initiative was developed in order to create an infrastructure through which clinical trials and observational studies in the field of pediatric emergency care could be conducted. Research is needed to validate the clinical merit of care that is given to identify ways of providing better care and also devise better ways to deliver that care. The MSC program, which sponsors this initiative, was first authorized in 1984 in order to improve the care of children within the emergency medical services system. In the first year of this program 20 years ago, the appropriation level was approximately $2 million. This past year, the appropriation level was about $19.5 million which has made it possible for the MSC programs support the infrastructure that is known as PECARN and our presenter today is one of the principal investigators for this project, Dr. Jim Chamberlain. Dr. Chamberlain is the Division Chief and Medical Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and is responsible for administration of the department. He participates in supervision and teaching of patient care during clinical rotations and the core curriculum weekly lecture and small-group seminars. Dr. Chamberlain is full-time of which 80 percent is funded for administration. In addition to clinical teaching, approximately 20 percent of his time is devoted to the training program. So I'd like to welcome Dr. Chamberlain.