Research

Emory University's Department of Pediatrics and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine were awarded a four-year, $2.8 million grant to lead one of the six U.S. Research Node Centers for the prestigious Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN), the first federally funded pediatric emergency medicine research network.  

Claudia R. Morris, MD, Professor of Pediatrics in Emergency Medicine, and Co-Chair of the Center for Clinical and Translational Research (CCTR), will be the principal investigator (PI). Mark Griffiths, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in Emergency Medicine and Children's Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician, is the Emory and Children’s site Hospital Emergency Department Affiliate (HEDA) PI.  

PECARN has been funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration since 2001. It consists of 18 sites and 6 nodes, including the San Francisco-Oakland, Providence, Atlanta Research Collaborative (SPARC) node, which includes all three of Children's pediatric emergency department campuses in Atlanta. Under the leadership of Dr. Morris, the Emory DOP and Children's Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) Division joined PECARN in 2019, and their participation will continue over the next 4 years with this new grant award.  

PECARN performs "high-quality, multi-center research into the prevention and management of acute illnesses and injuries in children across the continuum of emergency medicine health care." It forms an infrastructure for clinical investigators to ask questions that are a priority in PEM. Once an investigator has a research idea, they pitch the idea to the network. If they get approval, they have a high success rate of securing federal funding to support the study.  

Being a part of PECARN has increased the academic productivity of the PEM Division. At least 18 DOP members are involved in PECARN studies or working groups that include not only PEM faculty, but also interdisciplinary champions in pediatric nephrology, critical care, asthma, trauma, and neurology.  

Each year, Children’s evaluates approximately 250,000 ill or injured children in its three pediatric emergency departments (Egleston, Hughes Spalding and Scottish Rite). Emory and Children’s has been the top enrolling site in many PECARN studies and is the only site representing a southern region in the U.S. 

Despite substantial illness burden and healthcare utilization conferred by pain from vaso-occlusive episodes (VOE) in children with sickle cell disease (SCD), disease-modifying therapies to effectively treat SCD-VOE are lacking. The aim of the Sickle Cell Disease Treatment with Arginine Therapy (STArT) Trial is to provide definitive evidence regarding the efficacy of intravenous arginine as a treatment for acute SCD-VOE among children, adolescents, and young adults. 

Emergency medical services (EMS) transport for mental and behavioral health (MBH) emergencies occurs frequently in children, yet little is understood regarding prehospital physical restraint use despite the potential for serious adverse events. We aim to describe restraint use prevalence and primary impressions among children with MBH emergencies. 

Mental and behavioral health (MBH) visits of children and youth to emergency departments are increasing in the United States. Reasons for these visits range from suicidal ideation, self-harm, and eating and substance use disorders to behavioral outbursts, aggression, and psychosis. Despite the increase in prevalence of these conditions, the capacity of the health care system to screen, diagnose, and manage these patients continues to decline. Several social determinants also contribute to great disparities in child and adolescent (youth) health, which affect MBH outcomes. In addition, resources and space for emergency physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and prehospital practitioners to manage these patients remain limited and inconsistent throughout the United States, as is financial compensation and payment for such services. This technical report discusses the role of physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners, and provides guidance for the management of acute MBH emergencies in children and youth. Unintentional ingestions and substance use disorder are not within the scope of this report and are not specifically discussed. 

In 2020, firearm injuries surpassed automobile collisions as the leading cause of death in US children. Annual automobile fatalities have decreased during 40 years through a multipronged approach. To develop similarly targeted public health interventions to reduce firearm fatalities, there is a critical need to first characterize firearm injuries and their outcomes at a granular level. We sought to compare firearm injuries, outcomes, and types of shooters at trauma centers in four pediatric health systems across the USA. 

Trauma Surg Acute Care Open. 2023 May 30;8(1):e001014. doi: 10.1136/tsaco-2022-001014.  

Emory University is the SPARC Research Node Center for the prestigious Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN), the first federally funded pediatric emergency medicine research network.   

PECARN, founded in 2001, is the nation’s first federally funded pediatric research network dedicated to research about the prevention and management of acute illnesses and injuries in children and youth across the continuum of emergency medicine health care. The network is comprised of 18 hospital emergency departments that care for more than 1 million injured and ill children every year and more than nine partner EMS agencies. These emergency departments represent academic, community, urban, rural, general and children’s hospitals.