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300 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 355-6000
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Pressroom:
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| Sala de noticias |
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| 1 de julio de 2003 |
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For Further Information:
Susan Craig
Public Affairs/617-355-6420
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Center for Biopreparedness at Children's Hospital Boston is founded
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Children's Hospital Boston has created a Center for Biopreparedness, after being identified as a national resource for public health preparedness by several federal agencies.
The newly created Center for Biopreparedness will oversee several projects related to the management of a biological, chemical or radiation event affecting children and their caregivers. The center will operate with an ''all hazards'' approach, meaning it will develop best practice management techniques for various types of hazardous events.
The center's projects will include:
- the establishment of guidelines for a pediatrics-focused hazardous materials response that can be used by emergency medical responders, schools, neighborhood health centers, community hospitals and parents,
- the development of training protocols for Emergency Department physicians and staff,
- continued development of syndromic surveillance and reporting tools that track electronic patient encounter data.
A contract from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), permitted the hospital to create its center of excellence in public health preparedness. This $700,000 award recognizes Children's Hospital Boston as a leader in emergency preparedness for children. The center will continue the groundbreaking advances the Children's Hospital Boston Emergency Department has made in systems development for identification and treatment of childhood diseases resulting from exposure to bioweapons, such as anthrax and smallpox. The center's projects also will be funded by other sources, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and the Sloan Foundation.
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''We may very well first find out about a bioterrorism or other type of hazardous material event by identifying illness clusters in our children,'' says Michael Shannon, MD, MPH, chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine at Children's. ''As a nation we must be prepared to protect our kids. As pediatricians, it is incumbent upon us to develop the protocols and practices to do so.''
The Children's center is determining what special equipment is necessary to treat a child involved in a hazardous substance exposure and is recommending specific supplies and protocols for treating children. When children are exposed to a contaminant, their reaction may be more severe due to less surface area of their skin and the higher dose of an airborne toxin that they may inhale due to having a smaller airway and lungs. In addition, exposure to a biological, chemical or radioactive substance may be harder to diagnose in children. Children may not be able to communicate, which also complicates diagnosis and treatment. A mass disaster also creates special concerns for response and treatment. This may involve a scenario where adult parents of children are brought to a pediatric hospital. The AHRQ contract will help emergency responders best plan for such a scenario.
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The award will also allow Children's Emergency Department researchers to continue to incorporate into practice the use of a statewide syndromic surveillance system, which helps identify outbreaks of disease by tracking Emergency Department visits. This system is able to detect bioterrorist attacks or other disease clusters by analyzing hospital visit data over time. In a recent Children's study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers demonstrated methods that achieve dramatic improvements in both the timeliness and reliability of detection, in some cases more than doubling the performance of current systems. These findings have a potentially wide impact on improving the surveillance systems that are currently being built around the country on the local, state and national levels.
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The Center for Biopreparedness calls on the expertise of specialists in such diverse disciplines as computer science, infectious disease, statistics, and pediatric disaster management. In addition to Dr. Shannon, experts include:
- Kenneth Mandl, MD, research director in the Division of Emergency Medicine, surveillance and informatics research,
- Gary Fleisher, MD, Pediatrician-in-Chief, pediatric disaster management and infectious disease,
- Fran Damian, Director of Nursing/Patient Services Emergency Services, MS, RN
- Donald Goldmann, MD, Senior Associate in Medicine, infectious disease and infection control,
- Ben Reis, PhD, computer scientist, mathematical modeling,
- Paola Sebastiani, statistician, infectious disease models, and
- Peter Szolovits, computer scientist at MIT, decision support.
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Children's Hospital Boston is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults for more than 130 years. More than 500 scientists, including seven members of the National Academy of Sciences, nine members of the Institute of Medicine and nine members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children's research community. Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children's Hospital Boston today is a 300-bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. It is also the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For more information about the hospital visit: www.childrenshospital.org..
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