Research

The Pediatric Infectious Disease division at UAMS and Arkansas Children’s plays a leading role in several national research collaboratives, in addition to several investigators focused on discovery science and engagement in NIH-funded clinical research groups and pharmaceutical clinical trials. This includes:

• RECOVER: Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery About the Initiative | RECOVER COVID Initiative
  • The Pediatric Infectious Diseases section oversees a 14-state collaborative of sites contributing the RECOVER initiative to define and understand long COVID in children. The RECOVER hub based at ACRI is the first RECOVER pediatric team to meet its enrollment goal and serves as a leader for the national collaborative in implementing studies to understand this new disorder that will impact children for years to come.

• ECHO ISPCTN IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trial Network IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network – ECHO (echochildren.org)
  • The Pediatric Infectious Disease Division has been instrumental to several studies in the ECHO ISPCTN, including the critical leadership of the MoVeUP COVID-19 vaccine uptake study Improving Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake Using an mHealth Tool – Full-Text View – ClinicalTrials.gov and other multi-site trials. ECHO ISPCTN is an NIH-funded initiative in the Office of the Director that supports clinical trials in 18 states focused on rural and underserved areas (Research Summaries – ECHO (echochildren.org). Pediatric Infectious Disease has been instrumental in the success of all studies to date, including:
    • Rural Family Satisfaction with Telehealth Delivery of an Intervention for Pediatric Obesity and Associated Family Characteristics – ECHO (echochildren.org)
    • Best Practices for Conducting Clinical Trials with Indigenous Children in the United States – ECHO (echochildren.org)
    • Facilitators and Barriers to Pediatric Clinical Trial Recruitment and Retention in Rural and Community Settings: A Scoping Review of the Literature – ECHO (echochildren.org)
    • “Eat, Sleep, Console” approach shown to be more effective in caring for newborns with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome – ECHO (echochildren.org)
    • Conducting a Pediatric Randomized Clinical Trial During a Pandemic: A Shift to Virtual Procedures – ECHO (echochildren.org)

• International Pediatric Fungal Network (About Us – ipfn)
  • Arkansas Children’s is both a participant and leader (along with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) for the Pediatric Fungal Network, a collaborative group of investigators and centers focused on pediatric invasive fungal infections.
  • The DOMINIC study is currently enrolling (Research Studies – ipfn) and several other studies have been informative for the management of fungal infections in children.

• The Pediatric Infectious Diseases section is additionally involved in multisite research with the Collaborative Antiviral Study Group (About – Collaborative Antiviral Study Group (uab.edu)), the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society collaborative study of viral infections in transplant recipients (RePORT ⟩ RePORTER (nih.gov)), and several multi-site pharmaceutical trials. 
• The Pediatric Infectious Disease Section also includes discovery scientists focused on understanding the epigenetic mechanisms associated with pain, essential to our understanding of post-infection syndromes after COVID-19 and EBV, among others; and on identifying potential treatment pathways for fungal infections. Dr. Kim Stephens was recently (2023) awarded the inaugural Stacie Jones Junior Faculty Research Award for her significant success as a researcher in the Department of Pediatrics. Additionally, Dr. Jessica Snowden was awarded the UAMS institution-wide award in research mentoring based on her mentoring of basic and translational science mentees.
  • Juvaadi / Steinbach lab
  • Jessica Snowden lab
  • Kimberly Stephens lab
• The Section is a member of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Transplant Network (PIDTRAN), which was created by the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society’s Transplant Research Subcommittee and the Coordinating Center is housed within the Infectious Diseases Section at St. Jude’s.