R Baby 2020 Grant Updates
With your support for almost 16 years, R Baby’s commitment and years of innovative granting has helped front-line responders and hospitals be better prepared for an unknown like the COVID-19 pandemic. Our grants, such as tele-medicine and in-person and virtual simulation training programs, set the groundwork for our partners to be able to quickly pivot for the needs that arose from COVID. Because of your support, R Baby is saving lives.
R Baby Foundation’s lifesaving pediatric training for ERs went virtual in 2020, with exciting results! Since R Baby Foundation’s inception in 2006, our vision has been to save as many babies’ and children’s lives as possible, and in 2020, we were able to use our team’s combined decades of experience to support our mission through the use of innovative virtual simulation technology.
According to Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at Yale University Dr. Marc Auerbach, who receives funding support from R Baby for ImPACTS, “The virtual simulations have been an effective method to maintain pediatric training and attention to the importance of pediatric readiness during times when pediatric patients are even less common in community hospitals. The simulations have led to improved provider confidence and have allowed for the flexibility of children’s hospitals to partner with community hospitals without travel. This has also allowed for more frequent interactions.”
A common thread in the feedback we received was that without simulation training, many medical professionals would not have received any pediatric education at all last year! Our virtual training has allowed medical staff from all walks of life to learn remotely while contending with our “new normal” including a mom attending with her own child on her lap, to a participant at their workstation in an ER, to someone attending from their treadmill!
Despite the hurdles and challenges 2020 brought, R Baby Foundation is proud to meet people where they are in order to continue supporting our mission to save babies’ and children’s lives, by ensuring more providers and emergency rooms are equipped with the knowledge and tools to provide specialized and proper pediatric care.
YALE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE–IMPACTS: PEDIATRIC TRAINING IN ERS TO RAISE PREPAREDNESS FOR CHILDREN
Led by the Yale School of Medicine, ImPACTS provides cycles of pediatric simulation-based assessment and
training to Community ERs where most children are seen. The ImPACTS team initially assesses the ER’s pediatric equipment and supplies and then provides critical pediatric emergency training where most needed. The ERs then receive post-training assessment to identify additional areas of support. Read more here:
COLUMBIA PRESBYTERIAN–INSPIRE: THE LATEST PEDIATRIC EDUCATIONAL TRAINING SHARED VIRTUALLY GLOBALLY
Sponsored by R Baby since its inception as POISE, this collaborative medical education research network develops and shares novel educational training modules, webinars and other resources that result in measurable improvements in the health outcomes of acutely ill infants and children. While the advent of COVID-19 has resulted in uncertainty for many organizations, INSPIRE has continued to grow and thrive even under these adverse conditions. INSPIRE reached 492 sites in 46 countries! Read more here:
JOHNS HOPKINS: PEDIATRIC SIMULATION TRAINING FOR COMMUNITY ERS
At three hospitals in Maryland, training was provided using a high fidelity mannequin with content expertise. All three of the hospitals have dedicated small pediatric emergency rooms but are staffed only with general pediatricians and not with anyone with pediatric emergency medicine training or expertise. Two babies’ lives were saved this year as a direct result of our simulations! Babies presented to two separate emergency rooms had their illness recognized and appropriately treated due to the physician having previously participated in a simulation of the scenario. Read more here:
UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI MEDICAL CENTER TRAINING THROUGH THE PEDIATRIC ADVANCED RESUSCITATION TRAINING AND EMERGENCY READINESS (PARTNER) PROGRAM PROVIDES RESUSCITATION EDUCATION AND TRAINING TO PROVIDERS IN 8 RURAL HOSPITALS ACROSS MISSISSIPPI
The Pediatric Advanced Resuscitation Training and Emergency Readiness (PARTNER) program provides resuscitation education and training to providers in rural hospitals across Mississippi. Many small community based emergency providers do not have the resources necessary to provide optimum clinical stabilization foryoung patients who present with life threatening medical emergencies. This gap can be a result of an infrequency of pediatric encounters, the lack of specialized equipment, the funding available to pay for training or even inadequate staffing levels. Read more here:
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH: STILLBIRTH RESEARCH FOR PREVENTION
Through support from The Riley Fund for Stillbirth Research, the University of Utah focus has been on unexplained stillbirth and umbilical cord accidents. This work has resulted in one published paper, one paper about to be submitted, and additional ongoing work and research.
Through the study, they noted that about 19% of stillbirths in a large U.S. cohort of stillbirths were attributable to umbilical cord abnormalities using rigorous criteria. This work is the largest published study of stillbirths associated with umbilical cord problems and was published in the leading journal in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Read more here:
GORYEB CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL: PEDIATRIC SEPSIS RESEARCH AND NEW TRAINING TO SAVE LIVES
Thanks to the continued support of the R Baby Foundation Goryeb Children’s Hospital has made significantprogress in developing and implementing a dedicated pediatric sepsis program. Despite the pandemic, they’ve made excellent progress in sepsis data collection with over 40 variables per patient to reduce the time from diagnosis to intervention. Read more here:
MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL: findERnow APP
R Baby continues to team up with the experts at EMNet at Massachusetts General Hospital to fund the pediatric version of the app, findERnow. The app includes pediatric information to help parents and caregivers find the closest ER more likely to be prepared for their child. Read more here:
ADDITIONAL COVID FUNDING
R Baby raised targeted funds and donated professional 3D printers to Columbia University Department of Emergency Medicine in order to quickly be able to make as many masks as possible for their employees and patients, creating 100-200 face masks on site a day. Thousands of these masks were created and shared with other sites in need. In addition, it allowed the creation of prototypes for other innovations, like box protection during intubations, also shared with other hospitals.
Additionally, R Baby donated a neonatal ventilator to Morristown Medical Center allowing an existing ventilator in the NICU to be retrofitted to treat adults with coronavirus impacting approximately 25 neonates and 30 adult patients during this crisis.