October 19, 2006
Health Sciences news briefs
HIPRC AND Children’s Hospital awarded $3.2 million to study pediatric trauma
The Haborview Injury Prevention & Research Center and Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle have been awarded a $3.2-million grant to study pediatric disability that occurs after a traumatic brain injury. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is also involved in the study. The five-year grant will allow UW researchers at Children’s Hospital and the HIPRC to study the incidence of pediatric traumatic brain injury at different levels of severity, and the disability caused by those levels of injury. Researchers will also examine how the disability changes over time, and identify risk and protective factors for disability due to traumatic brain injury.
The study will involve 1,000 pediatric patients at all ages up to 18, from King County, Wash. and Philadelphia County, Pa. Researchers will study disability in patients and families before the injury and at several points after injury. They will examine physical disability, as well as social, emotional, behavioral and academic disability. Researchers will also study factors such as quality of life, family functioning, and parenting stress. Frederick Rivara, professor of pediatrics and adjunct professor of epidemiology, is the study’s principal investigator.
Buck, Wasserheit, and Hayes elected to Institute of Medicine
Two UW medical school faculty members, Nobel laureate Linda Buck and infectious disease expert Judy Wasserheit, have been elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine, a section of the National Academy of Sciences. A UW clinical faculty member, Washington state health officer Maxine Hayes, was also elected to the IOM this week. The three women are part of an incoming class of 65 members and five foreign associates to join the institute, which has about 1,500 active members.
Wasserheit is professor of medicine in the Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the Clinical Research Division’s infectious disease program. She directs the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, an international research group working towards a safe and effective vaccine for HIV/AIDS. Wasserheit has also recently been named vice chair of the new UW Department of Global Health, an interdisciplinary group jointly administered by the Schools of Medicine and of Public Health and Community Medicine and chaired by King Holmes.
Buck is the associate director of the Basic Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and an affiliate professor of physiology and biophysics at the UW, as well as an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004 for her work identifying the genes and pathways that control humans’ sense of smell.
Hayes, a clinical professor of pediatrics and of health services, is the main spokesperson on health issues for the Washington State Department of Health in Olympia. She is a former medical director of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in Seattle, and has served the state Department of Health for 18 years, including eight years as state health officer. The UW School of Medicine now has 31 faculty members in the Institute of Medicine.
