$2.1 Million Grant Will Boost Children’s Access To Clinical Trials

A $2.1 Million Federal Grant Will Help Boost Access For Children To Clinical Trials For Medical Treatment. It’s imperative that we, as a society, continue to advance our medical treatment options for patients as much as possible. For many, gaining access to clinical trials could mean gaining access to an experimental treatment that could help. For those afflicted with chronic or life-threatening illnesses, gaining access could mean an increased quality of life.

Better Access For Children in Louisiana

The grant will offer Louisiana’s children access to top-of-the-line health research while training young scientists in pediatric research. The five-year National Institutes of Health award will focus on improving clinical trial access in five areas:

• Care before and after birth
• Obesity
• Upper and lower airways
• Brain development
• Physical, mental, and social well-being

Better Health Accessibility For a Generation

This grant award will help researchers to focus on healthier outcomes for Louisiana’s children. This can mean a healthier population overall for the entire state.

Here’s what Pennington Biomedical Executive Director John Kirwan, Ph.D who is leading this study had to say about the importance of this grant award:

By bringing new scientific discoveries to Louisiana’s children, we can eliminate some of the barriers to care for many of our state’s children. We may also slow or even prevent the development of chronic diseases such as obesity and asthma, and the related health issues that continue into adulthood.”

Dr. Daniel Hsia, a co-investigator on this study said this study is critical. This is because Louisiana children face negative health outcomes, higher than many states. This is especially true in rural areas, where studies have found that rural children face significant challenges in terms of health issues and access to care.

Dr. Hsia also said that this grant award was an extension of the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. The aim of this program is to improve children’s health outcomes over generations. Children’s health is critical to ensuring the health of our entire population, and more access and options are always a positive outcome. Programs like this can help providers to understand how to improve upon health outcomes for children elsewhere as well.

GrantWatch recognizes the importance of children’s health and cutting edge research, we have an entire category focused entirely on medical and health so that those doing incredible work in this area can continue to do so.