Kansas City,
17
June
2020
|
16:05 PM
Europe/Amsterdam

Children's Mercy Investigators Receive Supplemental Funding for COVID-19 Research

Five Children’s Mercy investigators have received supplemental funding to add a COVID-19 component to their current studies.

Mark Clements, MD, PhD, Pediatric Endocrinology, received $30,000 as a foundation grant for COVID-19 emergency funds from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Emily Hurley, PhD, MPH, Health Services and Outcomes Research, and Melissa Miller, MD, Emergency Department, received $27,600 for an investigator- sponsored clinical trial research from Merck Research Laboratories.

Rangaraj Selvarangan, PhD, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Christopher Harrison, MD, Infectious Diseases, received $300,000 for a COVID-19 supplement to New Vaccine Surveillance Network supported by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Clements’ “Emergency Funding to Support Underserved T1D Populations Impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic for the Children’s Mercy Hospital” project received funding for a one-year period. The general purpose of the grant is to help individuals in need who have Type 1 Diabetes. Dr. Clements plans to use the funding for his clinic in a number of ways that include expansion of psychology services to meet the anticipated increase in need by our most vulnerable families and development and dissemination of electronic education materials in print and video form. He also plans to use the funding on increased staffing to outreach to families and assist families in uploading self-management devices to support direct-to-home telehealth care as well as training them to navigate telehealth software.

Drs. Hurley's and Miller's “SexHealth Mobile” project receives funding for a two-year period. The primary objective of this exploratory study is to describe effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women with substance-abuse disorders, particularly regarding access to care. They hypothesize that COVID-19 will result in unique disruptions to women’s access to substance-abuse treatment and sexual and reproductive health care before, during and after the apex of the pandemic. Kathy Goggin, PhD, is a co-investigator on the project.

Drs. Selvarangan's and Harrison’s funding is a supplement to the current CDC-funded Kansas City-New Vaccine Surveillance Network (KC-NVSN) program. New funding will allow expansion of the program’s scope for COVID-19-related activities during the current COVID pandemic period to increase the number of days the study enrolls in the emergency department and in-patient setting to seven days a week. The study will also begin enrolling a wider age range of participants, from newborn to 18 years old. The team will also use the funding to expand the surveillance network outside of Children’s Mercy.

 

Summary

Five Children’s Mercy investigators have received supplemental funding to add a COVID-19 component to their current studies.

About Us

Children’s Mercy Kansas City is an independent, non-profit, 390-bed pediatric health system, providing over half a million patient encounters each year for children from across the country. Children’s Mercy is ranked by U.S. News & World Report in all ten specialties. We have received Magnet® recognition five times for excellence in nursing services. In affiliation with the University of Missouri-Kansas City, our faculty of nearly 800 pediatric specialists and researchers is actively involved in clinical care, pediatric research and educating the next generation of pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists. The Children’s Mercy Research Institute (CMRI) integrates research and clinical care with nationally recognized expertise in genomic medicine, precision therapeutics, population health, health care innovation and emerging infections. In 2021 the CMRI moved into a nine-story, 375,000-square-foot space emphasizing a translational approach to research in which clinicians and researchers work together to accelerate the pace of discovery that enhances care.