• Arkansas Center for Excellence in Birth Defects Research and Prevention

• Arkansas Children's Asthma Center

• Center for Applied Research and Evaluation

• Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit

The Arkansas Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of ten centers in the United States.  The goal of the center is to perform research on the causes and impact of birth defects.  The Arkansas Center will enhance and improve Arkansas’ existing birth defects surveillance system to allow for complete identification of all children born with birth defects in the state.  Researchers from the Center collaborate with the CDC and other state centers in performing a case control study to help identify the causes of birth defects.  Each center will identify 300 cases per year of children with birth defects and 100 control children without birth defects.  The Centers perform comprehensive interviews on the mothers participating in this study and collect biologic specimens on the children and their parents.  In addition, the Arkansas Center has been awarded grants from NIH and CDC to develop research agendas in the following areas: (1) genetic susceptibilities and maternal micronutrient intake as risk factors for neural tube defects and congenital heart defects, (2) intervention programs to educate women about the protective effects of folic acid; and 3) identification of environmental and genetic risk factors for Down syndrome. For more information, please visit our website at:  http://arbirthdefectsresearch.uams.edu/

Director: Charlotte Hobbs, M.D., Ph.D.

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The Arkansas Children’s Asthma Center (ARCAC) is a comprehensive asthma program encompassing state-of-the-art clinical care, education, and research. The ARCAC includes a multidisciplinary team of asthma specialists from Allergy and Immunology, Pulmonary Medicine, General Pediatrics, Emergency Medicine, and Pharmacology. Additional expertise is provided by clinical nurse specialists and respiratory therapists.

The clinical programs of the ARCAC have focused so far on providing high quality care in several settings - inpatient, outpatient, and the emergency department. The Center strives for continuity of care with referring physicians.

Education is a very important component of the Center’s activities. Patient and family education is conducted at each patient encounter regardless of setting. In addition, the ARCAC is involved in comprehensive education programs for physicians and other health care providers across Arkansas. Education-based research endeavors will soon be incorporated into the program’s activities.

For the future, the ARCAC will focus its education and research endeavors to impact two important problems. The first endeavor will be the development of a comprehensive asthma program designed to address the unique problems involved with caring for children with asthma in a rural setting. The second will be the continued development of diagnostic tools for evaluation of infants and very young children with asthma.

The Center for Applied Research and Evaluation (CARE) is a multidisciplinary group of researchers including faculty representing pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology, biostatistics, medical sociology, health economics, health services research, and nutrition. CARE is committed to improving the health of children and families through high-quality research focused on children, their families, and their communities. Research is ongoing in three primary areas: studies of child health and developmental status in relation to family, clinical, and nutritional conditions; epidemiologic and health services evaluation of child health care and child mental health care; and psychophysiologic studies of children with conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorders, toxin exposure, and malnutrition. CARE also houses an active consulting biostatistics group.

In 1994, Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) was selected as a site for one of seven original Pediatric Pharmacology Research Units (PPRUs) funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). These centers were established in response to concerns that many medications commonly used to treat a variety of childhood illnesses have not undergone carefully controlled clinical trials to establish safety and effectiveness in children. Approximately 75% of all currently marketed prescription drugs have never received approval for use in children from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. To address this problem, the PPRU Network focuses on studies which result in expanded pediatric labeling for drugs which are under investigation or have been recently marketed. Since its inception, the ACH PPRU has participated in more than 60 pre- and post-marketing clinical trials, including antiviral, antibiotic, antifungal, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, sedative-hypnotic, proton pump inhibitor, and histamine-2 antagonist studies.  In 1999, the network expanded to 13 sites and broadened its mission to include translational research and comparative trials. The ACH PPRU was awarded funding for five additional years beginning in 2004.

Pediatric patients from newborn to 18 years of age have completed studies lasting from a few hours to one month in duration. The majority of these studies involve collection of blood or other fluid samples to develop unique pediatric pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles. With vast experience in designing and conducting pediatric trials, the PPRUs are able to offer practical assistance emphasizing study design, methods for successfully recruiting and enrolling patients, minimizing unnecessary or impractical interventions, and collecting reliable data.