Increasing the number of children from rural areas and minority families in clinical research can improve thehealth of all children by allowing us to better understand disease and treatment in a wider variety of patients.Nebraska is home to over 470,000 children, 27% of whom reside in rural areas. Nebraska also includes asignificant and growing minority pediatric population, over 30% of whom live in poverty. These children areoften underrepresented in clinical trials. Thanks to the outreach offered by the pediatricians and pediatricspecialists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and the affiliated Children?s Hospital &Medical Center (Children?s), the proposed Nebraska Pediatric Clinical Trials Unit (NPCTU) is well suited tofilling this gap in pediatric clinical trials by linking our well-established research infrastructure with our extensiveclinical expertise and diverse patient population to create a central home for pediatric clinical research inNebraska. Our clinical network includes over 30 outreach clinics throughout the state of Nebraska, as well asclinics in South Dakota and Iowa, and over 60 general pediatric and specialty pediatric clinics. The NPCTUpartners this clinical network with the robust research infrastructure of UNMC and Children?s, including aPediatric Research Office that supports more than 180 pediatric research trials and the UNMC Center forClinical Trials Research. These entities have extensive experience in providing administrative and clinicalsupport for the development of investigator-initiated studies and participation in multi-center, pharmaceuticaland NIH/CDC/HRSA sponsored trials. Thus, the affiliation between UNMC and Children?s creates anenvironment with excellent pediatric research capabilities. This proposal has considerable institutional supportand will integrate the extensive research and clinical resources available in Nebraska to build on currentstrengths to form a unified Nebraska Pediatric Clinical Trials Unit. In keeping with the goals of the InstitutionalDevelopment Awards Program (IDeA) States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network, our Specific Aims as aparticipant in this program are two-fold: 1) To establish the NPCTU as the home for pediatric clinical trialsin our region by developing a plan for communication with potential investigators and collaborators abouttrials, training opportunities and resources to support research. This proposal will also support the professionaldevelopment of the principal investigator and associated faculty, residents and personnel conducting clinicalresearch at UNMC and Children?s, while building on our existing program to conduct clinical trials research forchildren with a variety of conditions; and 2) To provide the underserved and rural populations of Nebraskaand surrounding states access to state-of-the-art clinical trials. Our clinical outreach network with accessto a wide variety of underserved populations uniquely positions the NPCTU to contribute to large-scale nationalpediatric trials.
Increasing the number of children from rural areas and minority families in clinical research canimprove the health of all children by allowing us to better understand disease and treatment in awider variety of patients. In Nebraska; we have well established clinical networks and researchtools to involve children throughout our region in studies as part of a nationwide clinical trialsnetwork. Our experience and expertise will help all of us to work together throughout thecountry to make children healthier.
| Snowden, Jessica; Darden, Paul; Palumbo, Paul et al. (2018) The institutional development award states pediatric clinical trials network: building research capacity among the rural and medically underserved. Curr Opin Pediatr 30:297-302 |
