Advocacy Pathway
Global Neonatal & Children's Health
Public Health
Esther Speer, MD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Pediatrics
Stony Brook Children's Hospital
Stony Brook, New York, United States
Joyce Javier, MD, MPH, MS (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
La Crescenta, California, United States
Children have unique and rapidly changing health care needs including psychosocial and developmental processes. Resolving early life diseases and adverse experiences will have lifelong benefits. However, today’s pediatric researchers face many financial, regulatory, institutional, and career choice challenges. Among these are an increasingly competitive funding environment, characterized by declining federal pediatric research portfolio purchasing power and lack of commercial interest in children’s studies. Clinical trials involving pregnant women and minors require extra safety standards, further increasing costs and human resources. For many academic pediatricians, high clinical volume competes with their engagement in meaningful basic and clinical research. The resulting diminishing and aging workforce of pediatric physician-scientists has consequences for discoveries and available therapies. Most pediatric clinical trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov were small-scale, single-centered, and not funded by industry or the federal government. Published pediatric studies comprise significantly less RCTs, systematic reviews, and therapeutic trials compared to adult studies. Consequently, approximately two thirds of all prescribed medications to children have insufficient evidence regarding their dosing, efficacy, and safety.
This session will highlight national trends concerning federal and non-governmental expenditures for children’s research, legislative and advocacy challenges, and opportunities. The speakers will discuss barriers facing pediatric therapeutic trials, as well as potential avenues to promote these trials such as the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act and the Institute for Advanced Clinical Trials for Children. Novel data-driven approaches to improve pediatric research infrastructure and productivity will be highlighted.
This session is endorsed by the Society for Pediatric Research and the SPR Advocacy Committee.
Speaker: Esther M. Speer, MD – Stony Brook Children's Hospital
Speaker: Jonathan M. Davis, MD – Tufts Medical Center
Speaker: Daniel P. Gitterman, PhD – UNC
Speaker: Florence Bourgeois, MD, MPH – Boston Children's Hospital
Speaker: Jennifer L. Zeitzer – Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology