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Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Care Increases Access and Equity
 Integrating Behavioral Health and Primary Care Increases Access and Equity 1024 683 Mary Bates, PhD
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With mental health concerns on the rise, more primary care providers are integrating behavioral health services in their practices.  Despite increasing demand for behavioral health care, multiple barriers still exist that limit access for pediatric patients. In recent years, primary care settings across the country have responded by integrating mental health specialists into their practices.…

Salivary MicroRNAs: A Promising Biomarker for Persistent Post-concussive Symptoms in Children With Concussion
 Salivary MicroRNAs: A Promising Biomarker for Persistent Post-concussive Symptoms in Children With Concussion 1024 768 Lauren Dembeck
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The multidisciplinary study used children’s saliva and genomic analysis to identify promising biomarkers for persistent post-concussive symptoms. Predicting clinical recovery of children with concussion is challenging. While concussion symptoms typically resolve within one to three weeks, up to one-third of children develop persistent post-concussive symptoms (PPCS), including headache, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, and sensitivity to…

Functional Neurological Disorders: What Pediatric Neurologists Should Know
 Functional Neurological Disorders: What Pediatric Neurologists Should Know 150 150 Mary Bates, PhD
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The diagnosis is common, yet this group of disorders has been subjected to confusion and stigma throughout history. Functional neurological disorders are a collection of disorders in which patients experience neurological symptoms, such as numbness, weakness, seizure-like events, or abnormal gait or movements, but without a visible underlying pathology. Underlying mechanisms for these disorders are…

When Every Week Matters: Advancing a Treatment to the Clinic
 When Every Week Matters: Advancing a Treatment to the Clinic 1024 491 Natalie Wilson
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Illustrations of clock faces at different times and angles

Researchers and regulatory experts bring a potential new therapy for a deadly neurodegenerative disease from IND application to clinical trial enrollment in a matter of weeks, setting a new standard in translating therapies from bench to bedside. In October 2021, the Office of Research Regulatory Affairs (ORRA) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital submitted an Investigational New…

Optimizing the Body’s Natural Cancer Killers
 Optimizing the Body’s Natural Cancer Killers 1024 649 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
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Recent advances in the expansion and production of natural killer cells offers pediatric patients new hope for remission after high-risk cancer diagnoses. Natural killer (NK) cells are the innate immune system’s first line of defense for viral infections. Although these white blood cells don’t have the antigen-specific “memory” that characterizes T cells or the antibody-producing…

Moving Emergency Medicine Research Forward
 Moving Emergency Medicine Research Forward 1024 614 Abbie Miller
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Utilizing exception from informed consent studies and a national network of emergency medicine experts, clinician-scientists are advancing research to uncover best practices and improve care. Exception from informed consent (EFIC) is a special rule set utilized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to support research in emergency situations. The word exception is particularly…

Improving Racial Diversity and Equity in Clinical Trials
 Improving Racial Diversity and Equity in Clinical Trials 1024 511 Jeb Phillips
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There is now broad consensus across medicine that clinical trials must be more representative of minority populations. How can that be achieved? Last year, a group of Nationwide Children’s Hospital neonatologists published an unusually pointed critique of racial and ethnic representation in neonatal clinical trials in the Journal of Perinatology. They wrote that the lack…

Exploring Dopamine Genotype as a Moderator of the Effect of Parental Behavior on Children’s Self-Control
 Exploring Dopamine Genotype as a Moderator of the Effect of Parental Behavior on Children’s Self-Control 150 150 Daphne Vrantsidis, PhD
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Did you know developmental psychologists have found the secret to life success? It’s not eating your vegetables or doing your homework or anything else your parents or teachers told you growing up. It’s how long you waited to eat a marshmallow when you were 4 years old. Delaying gratification — waiting 5 minutes to eat…

First In Human
 First In Human 1024 752 Abbie Miller
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Top-down view of heart valves

The Heart Center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital has a long history of helping to bring innovations from the lab to the patient. The latest, the Autus Valve, aims to improve care and outcomes for children with pulmonary valve disease. In December 2021, Mark Galantowicz, MD, cardiothoracic surgeon and director of The Heart Center at Nationwide…

Novel Digital Storybook Intervention Aims to Support Children With Hearing Loss
 Novel Digital Storybook Intervention Aims to Support Children With Hearing Loss 1024 683 Abbie Miller
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Hear Me Read, invented and developed at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, is now being validated in a prospective clinical trial. For children who are deaf or hard of hearing, access to sound via hearing aids and cochlear implants and intensive speech therapy with highly trained verbal therapists are important parts of developing speech and literacy. “Children…

Novel Approaches to Gene Therapies for Patients With Rare Genetic Diseases
 Novel Approaches to Gene Therapies for Patients With Rare Genetic Diseases 150 150 Jessica Nye, PhD
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According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), nearly 7,400 diseases have been identified and classified as “rare” or “orphan” — “rare” because each afflicts fewer than 200,000 people in the United States and “orphan” because drug companies, unlikely to recoup research and development costs from such small patient populations, have historically found them too…

Building Baby Brains With smallTalk: From Foreign Language Learning at Home to Bridging Gaps in the NICU
 Building Baby Brains With smallTalk: From Foreign Language Learning at Home to Bridging Gaps in the NICU 1024 683 Jessica Nye, PhD
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smallTalk egg

The best language learners on the planet are children — especially babies. Your brain is most active in creating the language center of your brain, connecting neurons and creating the highways and pathways for processing language, during infancy. In fact, language learning begins in utero. The developing brain of a fetus starts to wire language…

Old Drug, New Use
 Old Drug, New Use 1024 575 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
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Nationwide Children's style illustration showing a row of houses with a prescription in front of it

Researchers have discovered an adult diabetes drug may provide a new and better way to treat children  with nephrotic syndrome.  Nephrotic syndrome is one of the most common kidney diseases seen in children. In most cases the cause is unknown. Nephrotic syndrome involves damage to the filtering units of the kidneys (glomeruli) leading to massive…

Improving Neuro-Critical Care Outcomes for Children in Sub-Saharan Africa
 Improving Neuro-Critical Care Outcomes for Children in Sub-Saharan Africa 1024 683 Abbie Miller
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Nicole O'Brien, MD

Nicole O’Brien, MD, is working with health experts in sub-Saharan Africa to develop Centers of Excellence for the use of transcranial doppler ultrasound (TCD).   The first time Nicole O’Brien went to Africa, she was not a doctor. In her words, she “wasn’t even close to medical.” She was staying in a small rural village…

NCHart-1 a New Approach to Estimating Total Body Surface Area Burn Percentages
 NCHart-1 a New Approach to Estimating Total Body Surface Area Burn Percentages 150 150 Abbie Miller
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The new chart reduces math errors, improving accuracy for better outcomes. When a child has a burn injury, immediate care is essential. Fluid administration and treatment resources needed are decisions made in the field by emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics. Both decisions hinge on what percent of the child’s skin has burns. This number…

Biofilm Bacteria Protected by a Form of DNA Resistant to Current Treatments
 Biofilm Bacteria Protected by a Form of DNA Resistant to Current Treatments 150 150 Lauren Bakaletz, PhD and Steve Goodman, PhD
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Researchers from Nationwide Children’s Hospital identify a structural component of the bacterial biofilm matrix in a novel discovery published in Cell that has strong implications as to how biofilms resist current treatments and how to create new therapeutics that will be effective.   Biofilms are communities of bacteria that are protected by an extracellular matrix…

How Patient-Derived Stem Cells are Changing the Trajectory of Congenital Heart Disease Research
 How Patient-Derived Stem Cells are Changing the Trajectory of Congenital Heart Disease Research 1024 683 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
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Small blood samples — and the patient-specific, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) they enable — turn into valuable research material for understanding congenital cardiovascular disorders, especially when united with modern genome sequencing and editing, animal models and three dimensional tissue growth technologies. Patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have a significant downside for studying most…

Teens on the Road: How Technology, Policy and Parents Influence Driving Safety
 Teens on the Road: How Technology, Policy and Parents Influence Driving Safety 1024 633 Abbie Miller
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Traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States. For teens, the stakes are especially high.

Microsurgery for Acute Flaccid Myelitis: Personalized Approach Leads to Remarkable Recoveries
 Microsurgery for Acute Flaccid Myelitis: Personalized Approach Leads to Remarkable Recoveries 1024 440 Lauren Dembeck
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Children from around the world are coming to Nationwide Children’s for specialized care for AFM with lower extremity involvement. Dr. Amy Moore invented many of the procedures that are leading to remarkable recoveries for these patients. After an ordinary cold, most people continue with life as usual; however, in some rare cases, a previously healthy…

Reconsidering Screening in Primary Care
 Reconsidering Screening in Primary Care 1024 683 Jeb Phillips
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2021 Bright Futures/AAP Recommendations for Preventive Pediatric Health Care (Periodicity Schedule) in color showing all of the screenings recommended across 34 patient visits through a patient's twenty-second birthday

Screenings are an important part of preventive care, but the growing list of recommendations is daunting. How do we prioritize the limited time we have with patients and families? There are 32 well-child primary care visits recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics in its Bright Futures “Periodicity Schedule.” The first is prenatal, the last…

Learning in Real Time to Overcome COVID-19 and MIS-C
 Learning in Real Time to Overcome COVID-19 and MIS-C 1024 491 Natalie Wilson
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Illustrations of clock faces at different times and angles

When multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) emerged in May 2020, the new condition made headlines. Although rare, MIS-C can appear in kids about a month after they’ve recovered from infections with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 — even if they haven’t felt sick at all. “We don’t know why some children develop MIS-C,”…

The 5,000 Babies Project: Screening Newborns for Early Diagnosis of Developmental Delay
 The 5,000 Babies Project: Screening Newborns for Early Diagnosis of Developmental Delay 150 150 Lauren Dembeck
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Democratizing health care requires equal access to early identification of infant neurodevelopmental disorders.  Delayed diagnosis of disorders that involve developmental delays, such as cerebral palsy, can lead to lifelong disability. Yet not all families have access to health care facilities employing highly trained specialists who can test for these developmental delays. Infants from minority families…

Dehumanizing Language in the Health Care System Harms Children With Incarcerated Family Members
 Dehumanizing Language in the Health Care System Harms Children With Incarcerated Family Members 1024 683 Rosemary Martoma, MD and Kelly Kelleher, MD, MPH
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Dehumanizing Language Causes Harm Labels and language matter. Language has the power to condemn or redeem, and words reflect our values and beliefs as clinicians, scholars, and members of the community.” – Bedell et al., Humanity: Person-First Language in Correctional Health Epidemiology, American Journal of Epidemiology Children with incarcerated family members frequently face stigma and…

She for She: Supporting Women in Orthopaedics
 She for She: Supporting Women in Orthopaedics 1024 575 Julie Samora, MD, PhD
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Julie Samora, MD

Julie Balch Samora, MD, PhD, MPH, an orthopaedic surgeon at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the hospital’s associate medical director for quality, is the 2021 President of the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society – the leading international organization championing women in orthopaedics. This column was adapted from her presidential address.   Shalane Flanagan is an American long-distance…

Leaving No Stone Unturned: Nationwide Children’s Joins Children’s Oncology Group Pediatric Early Phase Clinical Trial Network
 Leaving No Stone Unturned: Nationwide Children’s Joins Children’s Oncology Group Pediatric Early Phase Clinical Trial Network 1024 683 Natalie Wilson
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The Children’s Oncology Group (COG), the world’s largest and most recognized pediatric cancer research collaborative, recently selected Nationwide Children’s Hospital to join its Pediatric Early Phase Clinical Trial Network (PEP-CTN) through a peer review process. The COG PEP-CTN is a re-iteration of the COG Phase 1/Pilot Consortium and is comprised of 21 core member sites…

Growth Hormone is Still Important Beyond the Growing Years
 Growth Hormone is Still Important Beyond the Growing Years 1024 683 Rohan Henry, MD, MS
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The History of Growth Hormone The first reported use of growth hormone (GH) as treatment for severe growth retardation occurred in the 1950s.1 Since that time, growth hormone’s importance in growth promotion has been clear. Its role in promoting normal metabolism even after growth has ended, however, was only recognized in the late 1980s.2 Beginning…

A New Kind of Rectal Diversion in Classic Bladder Exstrophy
 A New Kind of Rectal Diversion in Classic Bladder Exstrophy 1024 754 Jeb Phillips
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  This article appeared in the Spring/Summer 2021 print issue. Download the full issue.   Medical illustrations by Mandy Root-Thompson for Nationwide Children’s Hospital Source: V. Rama Jayanthi, chief of Urology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital To learn more about the procedure and it’s applications, read A Surprising Approach to Classic Bladder Exstrophy.

A Surprising Approach to Classic Bladder Exstrophy
 A Surprising Approach to Classic Bladder Exstrophy 1024 754 Jeb Phillips
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A procedure developed at Nationwide Children’s Hospital comes with possible risks but can have a huge impact on quality of life. It’s become clearer over the last two years that a “good outcome” for children born with classic bladder exstrophy is in the eye of the beholder. One of the best outcomes, nearly everyone would…

Targeting DIPG: The Most Puzzling of Pediatric Brain Tumors
 Targeting DIPG: The Most Puzzling of Pediatric Brain Tumors 772 447 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
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Survival has dramatically improved for numerous pediatric cancers over the last several decades, with a notable and very deadly exception: diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). Now, a community of researchers and clinician-scientists have set the stage for a renewed — and better-armed — assault against this beast of a brain tumor. The past 50 years…

Lessons Learned Through a Global Pandemic
 Lessons Learned Through a Global Pandemic 1024 683 Lauren Bakaletz, PhD
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Lauren Bakaletz, PhD

As a microbiologist and vaccinologist, I spend nearly every day thinking about viruses and bacteria and the diseases they cause, as well as how to best prevent them from doing so. While in graduate school, we were taught about the great ‘flu’ pandemic of 1918 that infected one-third of the world’s population and killed 20-50…

Understanding Immune Responses to Build a Better Vaccine
 Understanding Immune Responses to Build a Better Vaccine 1024 606 Abbie Miller
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Researchers have used studies of respiratory syncytial virus and infant immune responses to develop a promising vaccine candidate. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an incredibly common yet potentially deadly pathogen. Almost everyone becomes infected with RSV during their first three years of life, but for certain populations — infants and elderly or immunocompromised people —…

Introducing a New SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Candidate
 Introducing a New SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Candidate 1024 512 Abbie Miller
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coronavirus

The new vaccine candidate takes advantage of the long and successful history of the measles vaccine. A team of researchers from The Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s have built a novel vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2. The candidate, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), used the measles vaccine as a vector…

Getting Children and Families Outside With PlayStreets
 Getting Children and Families Outside With PlayStreets 1024 683 Tiwana Henderson
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A PlayStreet initiative in 2019 from Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families helped more than 350 South Side residents get outside and play – safely. Research has found that children who play outside are more physically active and have stronger social skills that those who do not. Unfortunately, low-income neighborhoods with high rates of crime and lack…

How Important is Fasting for Pediatric Routine Cholesterol Screening?
 How Important is Fasting for Pediatric Routine Cholesterol Screening? 1024 575 Andrew Tran, MD
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A nonfasting lipid panel is a great first-line screening tool to use. While it is ideal to have a fasting lipid panel, this can be difficult to obtain in practice. For the purposes of screening, I think that it is much more important to go ahead and get the nonfasting lipid panel while the patient…

Protecting an ‘Open Future:’ Improving Fertility Preservation Decision-Making for Young Males With Cancer
 Protecting an ‘Open Future:’ Improving Fertility Preservation Decision-Making for Young Males With Cancer 1024 575 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
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Color photo of Black father holding infant on shoulder in front of nursery background with clouds on the wall

Evidence from a new study highlights the importance of family-centered decision processes and clinician facilitation in improving fertility preservation uptake prior to cancer treatment. Numerous cancer treatments can reduce fertility or render some patients entirely infertile, but fertility preservation (FP) services have historically had low rates of uptake. When a young person is diagnosed with…

One Year Reflection: Behavioral Health Pavilion Adds to Industry-Leading Model of Care During Pandemic
 One Year Reflection: Behavioral Health Pavilion Adds to Industry-Leading Model of Care During Pandemic 1024 538 Kaitlin Hall
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The full impact of COVID-19 on children’s mental health likely won’t be known for some time. But even before the pandemic, pediatric mental health was in a national crisis, with one in five children living with a mental illness, and suicide the second leading cause of death for children 10 and older. That means the…

Lauren Bakaletz Named 2021 Allen Distinguished Scholar in Pediatric Research
 Lauren Bakaletz Named 2021 Allen Distinguished Scholar in Pediatric Research 1024 575 Abbie Miller
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Lauren Bakaletz, PhD, director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis in the Abigail Wexner Research Institute (AWRI) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, was named the 2021 Allen Distinguished Scholar in Pediatric Research. The award is given in honor of former Nationwide Children’s CEO, Steve Allen, MD, and his role in growing the AWRI into a preeminent research institution.…

What Kids and Kidneys Can Teach Pediatricians About Racism in America
 What Kids and Kidneys Can Teach Pediatricians About Racism in America 1024 575 Ray Bignall
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O.N. Ray Bignall II, MD, FAAP, director of Kidney Health Advocacy and Community Engagement, explores how “race modifiers,” structural racism and health disparities are perpetuated in kidney care for kids, highlighting important areas primed for change.

The Role of Health Care Voice Assistants During a Pandemic and Beyond
 The Role of Health Care Voice Assistants During a Pandemic and Beyond 1024 576 Mary Bates, PhD
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The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the need for telehealth and other digital tools to deliver health care remotely. In a recent commentary published in NPJ Digital Medicine, researchers from Nationwide Children’s examined the state of voice assistants as an emerging tool for remote care delivery and discussed the readiness of health systems and technology providers to adopt these…

Paying for Telehealth After COVID-19
 Paying for Telehealth After COVID-19 1024 535 Jeb Phillips
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Collage of health technology tools

Telehealth has become an essential part of health care delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, but its future depends on reimbursement and other financial questions. Just weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, health care stakeholders across the country were talking about the expansion of telehealth as a silver lining, and how it seemed…

Intractable Epilepsy Linked to Brain-Specific Genetic Mutation
 Intractable Epilepsy Linked to Brain-Specific Genetic Mutation 1024 794 Lauren Dembeck
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DNA replication errors during development are revealed by genomic study. As part of an ongoing, collaborative study between neurologists and genomics experts at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, researchers have identified somatic mosaicism in the resected brain tissues of a child with treatment-resistant, intractable epilepsy. One of the two genetically distinct cell populations identified carries a pathogenic…

More to Telehealth Than Meets the Screen
 More to Telehealth Than Meets the Screen 1024 535 Abbie Miller
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Collage of health technology tools

Telehealth has become essential to American health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, but is it really the solution to our biggest access-to-care problems? When COVID-19 ignited stay-at-home orders, public and private insurers quickly relaxed the rules for covering telehealth visits. Health care systems responded in kind by rapidly expanding their telehealth capacity and training. Expanding…

The New Emergency Department — for Behavioral Health
 The New Emergency Department — for Behavioral Health 1024 575 Katie Brind'Amour, PhD, MS, CHES
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How pediatric hospitals are creatively tackling the unique care needs of a growing population of youths in crisis. From attention deficit disorder to anxiety or depression, mental health conditions affect about 1 in every 5 children. While some of these cases resolve, many children go on to adulthood with mental or behavioral health disorders, and…

Advances in Neonatal GERD
 Advances in Neonatal GERD 1024 683 Mary Bates, PhD
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Dr. Jadcherla

New studies from the Jadcherla Lab provide insights into diagnosing, classifying and treating GERD in infants. Differentiating gastroesophageal reflux (GER), which is defined as the passage of gastric contents into the esophagus, from GER disease (GERD), when reflux is associated with troubling symptoms, remains a challenge in infants. Symptom-based diagnosis and treatment of GERD has…

Obsessed with Zero: Reflections on the Career and Achievements of Richard J. Brili, MD
 Obsessed with Zero: Reflections on the Career and Achievements of Richard J. Brili, MD 1024 575 John Barnard, MD
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Richard J. Brilli, MD

In 2008, Richard “Rich” Brilli, MD, was recruited to Nationwide Children’s Hospital as its chief medical officer. Among other physician executive duties, he was charged with lowering the rate of preventable harm as leader of the hospital’s quality and safety programs. After a few months of learning about our organization’s culture and assessing our potential,…

Pediatric Vital Signs: Measuring and Improving the Health of a Population
 Pediatric Vital Signs: Measuring and Improving the Health of a Population 150 150 Jeb Phillips
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Nationwide Children’s Hospital and its community partners have begun an “audacious” project to help every child in their region. Despite the best efforts of primary care providers and children’s hospitals, some children do not receive the care they need. Patients can only spend a limited amount of time in a medical office; some who would…

A Collaborative Approach to Preventive Cardiology
 A Collaborative Approach to Preventive Cardiology 1024 575 Andrew Tran, MD
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Many of us have friends or family members who have had an early heart attack. The event is sudden, unexpected and sobering. Those who recover often make drastic changes to their diet and lifestyle, along with taking medications, and endeavor to delay and undo years of accumulated toll. However, these efforts can only go so…

How Domestic Violence Affects Child Development
 How Domestic Violence Affects Child Development 1024 575 Kristin Crichton, DO, MPH
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Domestic violence in the home affects more than just the immediate victim. If children are present to see and/or hear it, it takes a toll on their healthy, natural development unless they receive support to help them cope and heal. Children exposed to violence may experience issues with attachment, school engagement, academic success, relationships and…

Managing Lymphatic Flow Disorders: Expanding Care Through Collaboration
 Managing Lymphatic Flow Disorders: Expanding Care Through Collaboration 1024 683 Abbie Miller
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Alteration in the Lymphatic System Leading to Flow Disorders The lymphatic system plays a critical role in circulating a clear to yellow-colored fluid called lymph, which contains proteins, immune factors and cells throughout the body. It is also responsible for collecting fats and fat-soluble vitamins from the gastrointestinal tract in cloudy-appearing chylous fluid. This fluid…

Racism Revisited
 Racism Revisited 1024 683 Deena Chisolm, PhD
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Deena Chisolm, PhD, shares why it is essential for the research community to take action against systemic racism. Five years after the publication of this post on racism, the topic is as relevant as ever. In the wake of racial disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing incidents of police brutality costing the lives of unarmed Black people,…