The goal of this grant is to develop and prioritize a national research agenda that will define the scope and identify the direction of pediatric burn research and outcomes measurement. Through the proposed research development/consensus conference of burn care clinicians and child health care experts: (1) the key research issues and questions that must be addressed to promote improvements in the delivery of health services to pediatric burn patients will be identified; and (2) a consensus will be developed on the priorities for future research in outcomes measurement for children with burns. Consensus building techniques such as Delphi and nominal group techniques will be used. Medical and surgical advances over the last 25 years have dramatically decreased the mortality of children with major burn injuries. Successful treatment, however, is enormously expensive, and even after survival is assured, the pediatric patient may require protracted surgical, medical, psychological, and rehabilitation interventions over many years. Despite the magnitude and costs associated with childhood burns, there has been relatively little health services research on pediatric outcomes measurement, specifically addressing the impact of burn injury and medical treatment on the lives of children and their families. This grant will support a critical meeting of stakeholders who will use, as a framework for developing the national research agenda, recently developed pediatric outcomes tools that assess the pediatric burn survivor's health status in 9 domains. With the reliable, valid, and clinically sensible outcomes instruments, the entire pediatric age group is now covered with condition-specific instruments. This permits researchers to address specific health services hypothesis and outcomes questions- and through the establishment of a national research agenda- ultimately help to promote improvements in health services delivery to the highly-specialized pediatric burn population.
