SPR Sessions at PAS 2024

APS, SPR & Leaders dinner (invitation only)

APS SPR Journeys- Mini-Gordon Conference & Lunch – By Invitation Only

Friday, May 3, 2024
7:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET
Location: TBD

Description: The Power of Grit, Passion, Resilience, and Perseverance in Researcher Success.

SPR Presidential Plenary: Innovative Discoveries to Transform Child Health Across the Translational Spectrum

Friday, May 3, 2024
3:45 PM – 5:15 PM ET

Chair:

Workshop: Collaborative Development of Shared Curricula for Pediatrician-Scientist Development

Friday, May 3, 2024
3:45 PM – 5:15 PM ET

Leader(s)
Daniel Moore, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, Tennessee, United States

Co-Leader(s)
Audrea Burns, PhD
Associate Professor
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas, United States

Andrew Nowalk, MD PhD (he/him/his)
Associate Professor and Program Director
UPMC Childrens Hospital of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States

Debra Boyer, Md, MHPE (she/her/hers)
Chief Medical Education Officer/DIO
Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Colum, Ohio, United States

Misty Good, MD, MS (she/her/hers)
Division Chief, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States

Emma Mohr, MD, PhD (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor
Pediatrics
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
MADISON, Wisconsin, United States

Description: 

This workshop will build on the experience of the NPSCW (National Pediatrician Scientist Collaborative Workgroup), a group of over 30 pediatric physician-scientist training programs, to develop new concepts and approaches for physician-scientist curricula during residency training. The workshop will bring together PSTP directors; trainees, recent graduates, and candidates; division directors, fellowship directors, and chairs; representatives of NIH/foundation funding; and representatives of APS and SPR. Success in physician-scientist development demands a focus not only on immediate needs of trainees to succeed as scientists and physicians today but also a perspective on training that will meet future needs that are anticipated to arise as trainees transition to fellowship, faculty, and leadership. In 2022 and 2023, NPSCW hosted both a PAS Lab and workshop focused on understanding the futures that the pediatrician-scientist will face, which highlighted critical challenges such as developing leadership skills in team science, navigating academic promotion, integrating large data and other analysis methods, and responding to the emergence of AI. This year’s workshop will build on this understanding to identify critical current curricular needs, to increase awareness of present and future challenges, and to create collaboration among stakeholders to create a vision of a common curriculum that will provide a focus for delivery of key resources to benefit pediatric trainees broadly.

SPR & JPS Officers Dinner – (Invitation Only)

SPR Advocacy Committee Meeting (Invitation Only)

Regional & National SPR Research Cohorts Meeting – (Invitation Only)

Society for Pediatric Research Clinical Research Assembly

Description: This session will bring together four featured platform speakers (selected from high-scoring abstracts submitted to PAS 2024) with one invited speaker. This session will have two major goals. First, to break down silos and make important multidisciplinary connections between research projects that would normally be delegated to different PAS sessions. Second, to feature high-impact/high-quality research projects by SPR members that complement an invited speaker presentation.

Learning Objectives:
Identify approaches and barriers to conducting clinical trials in pediatrics
Understand how collaboration and information exchange across specialties could result in larger discoveries
Describe cutting-edge research methodology used to study large populations in pediatrics

Presentations:
8:00 AM – 8:05 AM ET Welcome and Introduction
Speaker: Todd A. Florin, MD, MSCE (he/him/his) – Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago

8:05 AM – 8:15 AM ET Associations Between Health Insurance Coverage Changes and Quality of Care for U.S. Children in 2021
Presenting Author: Alon Peltz, MD, MBA, MHS (he/him/his) – Harvard Medical School

8:15 AM – 8:25 AM ET Hospital Financial Health and Provision of Obstetric and NICU Services in the US
Presenting Author: Elizabeth Salazar, MD (she/her/hers) – Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

8:25 AM – 8:45 AM ET Investigating Wearable Device Data to Improve Children’s Health: Insights and Challenges
Presenting Author: Juan Espinoza Salomon

8:45 AM – 8:55 AM ET Optimizing HFNC Weaning for Patients with Bronchiolitis
Presenting Author: Alla Smith, MD (she/her/hers) – Boston Children’s Hospital

8:55 AM – 9:05 AM ET Oseltamivir and Risk of Serious Neuropsychiatric Events in Children and Adolescents
Presenting Author: James W. Antoon, MD, PhD, MPH – Vanderbilt University Medical Center

9:05 AM – 9:30 AM ETQ & A
Chair: Todd A. Florin, MD, MSCE (he/him/his) – Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago

Confound It! Understanding and Addressing Confounding Bias in Pediatric Clinical Research

Description: Confounding is a ubiquitous concern in observational research that can bias and even invalidate a study’s results. This hands-on workshop will provide practical skills that participants can use in their own research to better understand and address confounding. Upon completion, participants will be able to:
1. Explain the counter-factual conceptual model of confounding.
2. Identify the necessary characteristics of a confounder.
3. Select the optimal approach to address confounding, given the study design and research question.
Mixing brief didactic presentations with interactive exercises, workshop leaders (all with extensive experience in clinical research, including an epidemiologist) will engage participants to demonstrate the counter-factual model of confounding, essential characteristics of potential confounders, predict the direction of confounding bias, and elucidate the relative merits of various approaches to address confounding, informed by examples and input from participants. Then, facilitated by the workshop leaders, participants will form small working subgroups. Each subgroup will be provided with a research vignette (ie, a summary of a published study taken from the pediatric literature). Drawing from their own experiences and expertise, subgroups will complete a worksheet to evaluate their vignette, where they will describe the clinical question, research hypothesis, potential confounders, the optimal approach to account for confounding, and the likely limitations of the results. Next, each subgroup will present their vignette and worksheet responses with the rest of the participants, allowing for further discussion and input from the full group. We will conclude with a debriefing and review of take-home points facilitated by the workshop leaders.

Learning Objectives:
Explain the counter-factual conceptual model of confounding.
Identify the necessary characteristics of a confounder.
Select the optimal approach to address confounding, given the study design and research question.

PAS Enhancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Reception

SPR Regional Research Showcase Reception

Saturday, May 4, 2024
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM ET

Description: Showcase of emerging talent from each of the four SPR regional societies presenting brief “lightening-round” research talks. Session also includes time for networking. All attendees welcome.

Sponsored by:

Society for Pediatric Research Basic/Translational Research Assembly: Delineating pathways regulating development and disease at molecular and cellular resolution

Description: This session will bring together four featured platform speakers (selected from high-scoring abstracts submitted to PAS 2024) with one invited speaker. This session will have two major goals. First, to make important connections between research projects that would normally be delegated to different PAS sessions. Second, to feature high-impact/high-quality research projects that complement an invited speaker presentation.

Learning Objectives:
Identify approaches being used to identify new mechanisms of disease
Understand how collaboration and information exchange across specialties could result in larger discoveries
Describe situations where identification of cellular mechanisms has been or could be impactful for the health care of children

Presentations:
2:00 PM – 2:05 PM ET Welcome and Introduction
Speaker: Cristina M. Alvira, MD (she/her/hers) – Stanford University School of Medicine

2:05 PM – 2:15 PM ET Human amniotic fluid stem cell extracellular vesicles rescue features of lung development in human hypoplastic fetal lungs
Presenting Author: Kasra Khalaj, PhD, MSc – The Hospital for Sick Children

2:15 PM – 2:25 PM ET The accumulation of a squamous-like epithelial cell population within the nasal mucosa of children with severe RSV
Presenting Author: Charles A. Coomer, MD/PhD (he/him/his) – Boston Children’s Hospital

2:25 PM – 2:45 PM ET Invited Speaker TBD
2:45 PM – 2:55 PM ET The impacts of oligohydramnios and impaired type 1 alveolar cell spreading on lung development and pulmonary hypoplasia
Presenting Author: Danielle Callaway, MD, PhD (she/her/hers) – Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

2:55 PM – 3:05 PM ET Clinical Application of Convolutional Neural Network Modelling to Accurately Predict How Mutations Resulting in Congenital Heart Disease Disrupt Chromatin Folding
Presenting Author: Jingshing Wu, MD, PhD (she/her/hers) – University of California, San Francisco

3:05 PM – 3:30 PM ETQ & A
Chair: Cristina M. Alvira, MD (she/her/hers) – Stanford University School of Medicine

SPR Junior Section Networking Event & Reception

Saturday, May 4, 2024
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM ET

Description: Time for networking, socialization and to learn more about the SPR Junior Section. All trainees are welcome to attend.

SPR & European SPR Officers Meeting – (By Invitation Only)

SPR Presidential Plenary: Best of SPR Featured Science

Sunday, May 5, 2024
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM ET

Eat. Greet. Celebrate: SPR Awards & New Members Reception

SPR Mid-Career Research Coaching Program

SPR Grant Writing 101 Program – (Invitation Only)

The Changing Face of Neonatal Clinical Trials

Bots for Tots: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Pediatric Care and Research

PAS Opening General Session, Debbie Anagnostelis Keynote Speaker, and Joseph W. St. Geme, Jr. Leadership Award

Adolescent Medicine 1 & SPR Douglas K Richardson Award for Perinatal and Pediatric Health Care Research: “Human Papillomavirus and the intersection of epidemiology, mucosal immune and microbial environments and public health policy”

APS Plenary: Embracing the Diversity of our Mission & the 2024 Norman J. Siegel, Mary Ellen Avery, & David G. Nichols Awards