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The University of Rochester Medical Center’s Department of Pediatrics (URMC Pediatrics) is uniquely situated to translate bench discovery to bedside testing to community implementation. And it has a history of doing just that.
For example, work done in 1970s at URMC Pediatrics led to the development of a vaccine against the bacterium Hemophilus influenzae type b, a major cause of meningitis and other life-threatening infections of childhood. Drs. David H. Smith and Porter Anderson developed this vaccine which has virtually eradicated the morbidity related to infections caused by this organism. Now, 30 years later, this vaccine is used worldwide, and H. influenzae has virtually disappeared from hospital wards in the U.S. But URMC Pediatrics didn’t stop there. A vaccine is of little use if it is not cost effectively and efficiently delivered to the whole community even after the disease has seemed to disappear from hospital wards. One case of H. influenzae in a school-age child in one neighborhood could mean infection of many children too young to have received the vaccine.
URMC Pediatrics houses one of the country’s most outstanding health services research groups. This group has partnered with the Monroe County Department of Public Health to implement the delivery of vaccines and ensure compliance, follow-up, and appropriate repeat dosing in some of the country’s most economically and socially challenged neighborhoods. As a result, Rochester leads the nation in reducing inequality in vaccination rates.
Research at URMC is growing and thriving as we attain a balanced mix of basic, translational and clinical science. Learn more.
A new and exhilarating investment in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Learn more.
Aab Institute of Biomedical Sciences is the centerpiece of a 10-year, $400 million strategic plan to expand research programs in the basic sciences. Learn more.
URMC Pediatrics is now approaching childhood lung disease in the same way. Bench researchers at URMC Pediatrics are working on neonatal lung injury and childhood smoke exposure and its effect on the development of asthma. Clinical and translational researchers at URMC Pediatrics are working on methods to enhance the ability of the premature newborn to bring oxygen through the lungs and into the blood and tissues and to prevent secondhand smoke exposure. Finally, health services researchers at URMC Pediatrics are working in tandem with schools and public health organizations in Monroe County and nationally to enhance compliance with asthma treatment and attack prevention, decrease childhood smoke exposure, and decrease the rate of hospitalization of children with asthma.
Bench to bedside to community … it’s what we do best! And from our residency Research Track to the evidence base of Pediatric Links to the Community to the Pediatric Center for Biomedical Research to our Translational Biomedical Research PhD Program, it’s just what the doctors ordered!
Pediatric Research Newsletter
