Children's National experts present at Pediatric Academic Societies' Annual Meeting

Pediatric experts from Children's National Medical Center will be featured in 85 presentations, workshops, and posters at the 2009 Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting—the largest meeting for pediatric clinical research in the country. Presenters and topics include:

• Children's National obesity expert Nazrat Mirza, MD, will present the outcomes of her innovative and successful program that targets childhood obesity in the Latino community.
• Dana Best, MD, discusses additional findings for how second-hand tobacco smoke affects children—specifically a marked reduction of antioxidant levels.
• In the spring of 2009, Children's National Medical Center's Emergency Department (ED) became the first children's hospital nationwide that implemented universal rapid HIV screening for teens in the pediatric ED. In preparation for the universal HIV screening roll out Children's National conducted a survey among teens and their guardians to evaluate the history of HIV testing and risk behavior and the acceptance toward HIV screening among teens and their guardians. Natella Rakhmanina, MD, shows what was learned from this study.
• Leticia M. Ryan, MD, studies the correlations between forearm fractures, vitamin D insufficiency, lower bone mineral density, and the health disparities between low and high income neighborhoods in metropolitan Washington, DC.
• Linda Fu, MD, Mark Weissman, MD, and Denice Cora-Bramble, MD, present the Goldberg Center for Community Pediatric Health's award-winning approach to improving childhood immunization rates in Washington, DC.
• Jerome Paulson, MD, and Joseph L. Wright, MD, map out the ways that pediatricians can prepare residents to effectively advocate for children's health.
• A multi-disciplinary team of neonatal specialists from Children's level IIIC NICU, including Steven Baumgart, MD, Billie L. Short, MD, Penny Glass, PhD, and Taeun Chang, MD, talk about the application of a novel whole-body cooling treatment to prevent damage in oxygen-deprived newborns.

In addition, the Goldberg Center for Community Pediatric Health at Children's National Medical Center will be honored with the Academic Pediatric Association's 2009 Health Care Delivery Award during the PAS Annual Meeting for efforts that successfully raised the immunization compliance rates for young children (ages 19-35 months) in metropolitan Washington, DC.

Source: Children's National Medical Center