Overview/Mission
PTCIB supports research and training focused on preventing, treating, and reducing all forms of childhood traumatic injury and critical illness across the continuum of care.
These activities include research to understand the biobehavioral, psychosocial, and pathophysiologic aspects of trauma; to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of trauma and critical illness in infants, children, adolescents, and young adults; and to reduce secondary injury and comorbidities.
- President's Task Force for Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children: Coordinates federal government efforts to explore, understand, and act together to improve children’s safety and environmental health. PTCIB participates in the subcommittee on climate, emergencies, and disasters.
- Action Collaborative on Disaster Research:
Co-chaired by PTCIB staff, provides subject matter experts with a space for discussing strategies to improve the quality of disaster research used to inform the U.S. response to health threats affecting children and other populations. In 2022, the collaborative convened a symposium on pediatric disaster science that focused on scientific needs related to disasters affecting children. - Pediatric Intensive Care Core Outcomes Set: A guide to ensure that outcomes most important to all stakeholders are considered in pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) clinical research programs
- The Functional Status Scale for Pediatric Hospitalization Outcomes: A Tool for Researchers: Helps measure functional status of children during hospital admissions
- Long-Term Ventilation Information and Decision-Making Support: Outlines the risks, benefits, and impact of long-term ventilation for families with a child who has or is at risk for chronic respiratory failure. Available in English and Spanish. Created as part of a PTCIB grant, the booklet addresses both invasive ventilation, such as a tracheostomy, and noninvasive ventilation, such as a continuous positive airway pressure machine.
- American Academy of Pediatrics Reports and Resources: Selected reports that provide information regarding the state of the science and best practices in the following areas related to PTCIB priorities:
- Access to Optimal Emergency Care for Children
- Child Passenger Safety
- Ensuring the Health of Children in Disasters
- Firearm-Related Injuries Affecting the Pediatric Population
- Inflicted Childhood Neurotrauma
- Management of Pediatric Trauma
- Prevention of Drowning
- The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress
- Access to Optimal Emergency Care for Children
- Institute of Medicine/National Academies of Medicine Reports: Selected publications and meeting proceedings that provide information regarding the state of the science and best practice in the following areas related to PTCIB priorities:
- Agency for Strategic Preparedness and Response Resources
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fact Sheets and Resources: Selected data sources that provide data tables and information in the following areas related to PTCIB priorities:
- CDC Technical Packages for Violence Prevention
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Quick Facts & Stats about Child Abude and Neglect
- Child Passenger Safety
- National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARSTM)
- Violence Against Children Surveys
- Youth Violence Quick Facts and Figures
- School Preparedness
- Pediatric Critical Care Medicine: Provides news on courses and conferences, clinical research, and clinical resources for all members of the health care team
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Common Data Elements (CDEs): Provides several libraries of CDEs, data standards, and accompanying tools to help investigators collect and record standardized clinical data for neurological disorders, including subdomains for pediatric populations:
- Federal Interagency TBI Research: Informatics system developed to share data across the entire TBI research field and to facilitate collaboration between laboratories as well as interconnectivity with other informatics platforms
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
- National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative (NCTSI): Transforms mental health care for children and adolescents affected by trauma by improving the quality of community-based trauma treatment and services and increasing access to effective trauma-focused interventions
- National Child Traumatic Stress Network: Funded through SAMHSA/NCTSI to raise the standard of care and improve access to services for traumatized children, their families, and communities
- Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recovery
- Child Welfare Information Gateway: A service of the Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families that promotes the safety, permanency, and well-being of children, youth, and families by connecting child welfare, adoption, and related professionals as well as the public to information, resources, and tools covering topics on child welfare, child abuse and neglect, out-of-home care, adoption, and more
- Health Research Services Administration: Selected resources that provide information in the following areas related to PTCIB priorities:
- Nationwide Emergency Department Sample: The largest all-payer emergency department database, created by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- Healthy People 2030 Objectives: Data-driven national objectives to improve health and well-being throughout the next decade that include topics on health behaviors such as injury and violence prevention and emergency preparedness, and settings and systems such as hospital and emergency services
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Databases: Research and data from NHTSA’s Office of Vehicle Safety Research and Office of Behavioral Safety Research
- National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention: Provides technical support and data for the Child Death Review and Fetal and Infant Mortality Review
- Office on Trafficking in Persons (OTIP): Addresses human trafficking, which often focuses on children and adolescents, by supporting and leading systems that prevent trafficking and protect survivors and help them rebuild their lives.
- Human Trafficking Prevention Month: Every January, OTIP works to raise awareness about human trafficking and empower the public to take action to prevent and respond to it. From this site, access events and activities, a prevention toolkit, and other useful resources related to educating the public on how to stop human trafficking.
- U.S. Fire Administration: Provides data, prevention, and training resources for fire prevention, mitigation, and response
- U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: Includes resources, statistics, and regulations about consumer products, including safety education and prevention resources for homes, indoor/outdoor activities, and recreation
- Ready.gov: Provides disaster and emergency resources for individuals, families, and businesses, including household preparedness research data
- World Health Organization: Selected data sources and reports that provide data and information in the following areas related to PTCIB priorities:
- Valerie Maholmes, Branch Chief
Main Research Areas: Childhood adversity, child traumatic stress, violence and violence-related injury, abuse, neglect, and maltreatment; training (child maltreatment, violence); psychological response/services to children experiencing/affected by trauma; trauma-informed care and systems; child protection; child welfare - Leah Gilbert, Medical Officer
Main Research Areas: Pediatric trauma (diagnosis, treatment, prevention); childhood adversity, child traumatic stress, violence and violence-related injury, abuse, neglect, and maltreatment; training (child maltreatment, violence); emergency medical and psychological response/services to children - Cinnamon Dixon, Medical Officer
Main Research Areas: Emergency medical services for children (EMSC) (prevention, diagnostics, interventions, treatment, utilization, quality); pediatric disaster science (preparedness, mitigation, response, acute recovery); pediatric unintentional injury prevention and trauma care; global health advancements in EMSC and pediatric disasters; education and training (unintentional injury prevention, EMSC and trauma care, disaster science) - Tammara Jenkins, Program Official/Nurse Consultant
Main Research Areas: Pediatric critical care and injury (general, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, ethics, end-of-life issues, environment of care, and psychosocial aspects of critical care); palliative care in the hospitalized child; acute care in the hospitalized child; training and career development (pediatric critical care, and acute care) - Lauren Jones, Extramural Support Assistant
- Zsuzsanna Kocsis, Program Analyst
- Laureen Lee, Staff Assistant
- Tessie October, Medical Officer
Main Research Areas: Pediatric critical care and injury (general, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, health care communication, decision-making, small business innovation); training (pediatric critical care, trauma, palliative care)
Highlights
- OTA-25-001: Post-Crash EMS Data Science Initiative (PDF 244 KB)
- Now Available: HEAL KIDS (Knowledge, Innovation, and Discovery Studies) Pain Program. NICHD is leading activities for the KIDS Pain Program, part of NIH's Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative® (NIH HEAL Initiative®), through two Requests for Application (RFAs), RFA-HD-24-011 and RFA-HD-24-012. Check out these newly posted Frequently Asked Questions and the recording from a technical assistance webinar related to the KIDS Pain Program and the RFAs on the HEAL Initiative website.
- PTCIB leads and participates in NICHD’s activities related to COVID-19, which includes co-sponsoring NOT-HD-21-026: Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Research on the Impact of the Covid 19 Pandemic and Risks for Abuse and Injury Among Vulnerable Children and Youth
- PTCIB also co-sponsors NOT-HD-21-048: NOSI: Research on Drowning Prevention
- Highlights from selected branch-funded research:
- Lurie Children’s Hospital Launches App to Help Screen Bruises in Young Children for Potential Abuse. Lurie Emergency Medical Physician Mary Clyde Pierce, M.D., used the evidence she and colleagues helped gather for an NICHD-funded study on the prevalence of bruising among infants in pediatric emergency departments (EDs) (PMID: 26233923) to develop the Lurie Children’s Child Injury Plausibility Assessment Support Tool (LCAST) app. According to the study, many cases of physical child abuse (PCA) are missed initially because early signs of abuse go unrecognized. Bruising is one of the most common signs of PCA and is missed as an early warning sign in up to 44% of fatal and near-fatal cases. Dr. Clyde Pierce and colleagues based LCAST on the study’s research that derived, refined, and validated a bruising clinical decision rule that specifies body regions on which bruising is likely due to abuse in infants and young children. Learn more about LCAST from this CBS News Chicago interview with Dr. Clyde Pierce .
- ED Pediatric Readiness and Short-Term and Long-Term Mortality Among Children Receiving Emergency Care. This cohort study of nearly 800,000 children who received care in close to 1,000 U.S. EDs demonstrated significantly lower odds of in-hospital death among children who received care at EDs with a high readiness to care for children. Additionally, for children followed beyond hospitalization, the benefit of high-readiness ED care continued for up to 1 year. (PMID: 36637819)
- Licensing Examination and Crash Outcomes Postlicensure in Young Drivers. This cohort study of more than 130,000 adolescents and young adults (16 to 24 years old) revealed that driver license applicants between the ages of 16 to 17 who underwent comprehensive licensing requirements (including graduated driver licensing, driver education, and behind-the-wheel practice) performed better on licensing exams than their older counterparts who were not subject to these requirements. Moreover, this younger population with comprehensive licensing requirements had lower crash rates 1 year postlicensure. (PMID: 35467733)
- Lurie Children’s Hospital Launches App to Help Screen Bruises in Young Children for Potential Abuse. Lurie Emergency Medical Physician Mary Clyde Pierce, M.D., used the evidence she and colleagues helped gather for an NICHD-funded study on the prevalence of bruising among infants in pediatric emergency departments (EDs) (PMID: 26233923) to develop the Lurie Children’s Child Injury Plausibility Assessment Support Tool (LCAST) app. According to the study, many cases of physical child abuse (PCA) are missed initially because early signs of abuse go unrecognized. Bruising is one of the most common signs of PCA and is missed as an early warning sign in up to 44% of fatal and near-fatal cases. Dr. Clyde Pierce and colleagues based LCAST on the study’s research that derived, refined, and validated a bruising clinical decision rule that specifies body regions on which bruising is likely due to abuse in infants and young children. Learn more about LCAST from this CBS News Chicago interview with Dr. Clyde Pierce
- Video: PTCIB Chief Dr. Valerie Maholmes Talks About TBI in Kids
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