National Trauma Registry For Children

Project Overview

The Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Program has provided funds to design and plan a National Trauma Registry for Children (NTRC). The purpose of the NTRC project is to promote the development of further strategies to improve the quality of care for children who have experienced traumatic injury. Accordingly, this priority is designed to stimulate and devise innovative strategies for collecting uniform data elements characterizing pediatric trauma and clinical management of pediatric injuries. Resulting data will allow clinical and epidemiological questions to be explored using a more expansive and richer source of information than could be obtained using regional and statewide systems.

The EMCS program published the grant guidance for this project in April of 2002. The grant guidance divided the project into two components: 1. Data Identification, Collection and Use Planning; and, 2. Registry Design and Technology Planning. Applications were due in June 2002 and subsequently reviewed by an expert panel. Awards were made in September 2002 to the University of Pittsburgh and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

The project described is supported by grant number 1H72 MC 00004 01 and grant number 1 H72 MC 00002 01 from the Health Resources Services Administration/Maternal Child Health Bureau (HRSA/MCHB) Emergency Medical Services for Children Program (EMSC).

Data Identification, Collection and Use Planning Grant: The objectives of this grant include: 1)define a set of data variables including a description of how the collected data elements could be used by participants for reporting and benchmark purposes;2) describe how the NTRC could be used for prospective data collection for research or epidemiological queries;3) assess various functional and rehabilitative outcomes measures of pediatric injury, along with recommendations for inclusion in a NTRC;4) describe strategies for NERCO financing and ensuring long-term value, including incentives for hospital participation.

Principal Investigator: Karen Guice, MD, MPP, kguice@earthlink.net

Registry Design and Technology Planning Grant: The objectives of this grant include: 1)recommend specific registry parameters, data sources, data elements with value labels and data dictionaries;2) outline data process flow diagrams with middleware specifications;3) describe the methodology for commercial software submission of injury data to the national registry;4) recommend statistical methods to derive a nationwide sample of pediatric injury cases for generalization to the entire population of pediatric injury;5) recommend methods to assess the validity of submitted data.

Principal Investigator: Laura Cassidy, Ph.D., lcs3@pitt.edu