Understanding and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care are national priorities. There is growing evidence that such disparities extend to the care of children. Our overall goals are to Detect, Understand, and Reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the emergency care of children. Through this proposal we will have the capacity to utilize the AHRQ funded Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) Registry, a comprehensive clinical registry of all pediatric emergency department (ED) visits from 7 EDs to detect racial and ethnic disparities in the management of children seeking care in the ED. Once we detect the magnitude of racial and ethnic disparities in health care provision, we can then seek to understand why such disparities exist, which can then inform interventions to reduce racial and ethnic disparities and achieve health equity. Through rigorous evaluation and use of multicenter comprehensive clinical data, this proposal will provide critical evidence and lay the framework for the next steps of our research mission - to develop and test interventions to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the provision of pediatric emergency care.
Eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in the provision of health services is a national priority. Since the emergency department (ED) is universally available for all children to access care, it is critically important to determine whether pediatric care in EDs is being delivered equitably. With this proposal, we intend to utilize the PECARN Registry, a large registry that contains comprehensive clinical data from all pediatric ED visits made to 7 EDs, to detect whether racial and ethnic disparities exist in health care delivery for children seeking care in the ED. This proposal will provide critical evidence and lay the framework for the next steps of our research mission - to develop and test interventions to achieve health equity in the provision of pediatric emergency care.
