Collaboration between Seattle Children’s and community partners led by a farmworkers clinic in the Yakima Valley is improving cancer outcomes for children in non–English-speaking families who are more likely to miss out on lifesaving care. Growing evidence points to a strong connection between socioeconomic status and cancer survival rates in the United States, according to a recent article in U.S. News & World Report. Read full post »
In a study published in JAMA Network Open, Seattle Children’s researchers found that one-on-one sessions teaching skills through a tool called Promoting Resilience in Stress Management for Parents (PRISM-P) improved resilience and benefit finding, or personal growth, among parents of children with cancer. “This tells me we are doing what is perhaps most important for parents: helping them to know they can come back again tomorrow and that they can find some good in the bad. These two things will help both them and their families,” said Dr. Abby Rosenberg, a researcher at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and lead author of the study.
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Tonya Palermo
Tonya Palermo, director of the Pediatric Pain and Sleep Innovations Lab at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, has released a free mobile application (app) for Android and iPhone to help youth ages 10 to 18 who are experiencing chronic pain. The app is based on content from the Web-based Management of Adolescent Pain (WebMAP) Internet program that has been tested in multiple clinical trials. It helps teens learn about chronic pain, set goals for increasing their physical activities, learn relaxation and imagery strategies, and receive interventions for problems with sleep and low mood. Read full post »
In the largest genetic study of the most common birth defects of the brain diagnosed during pregnancy, researchers from Seattle Children’s Research Institute say their findings evolve our understanding of brain development. The findings will also change the information given to expecting parents when cerebellar malformations are detected prenatally. “If you have a child at risk for developmental challenges, it helps to know the cause and what’s going to happen. This study significantly advances our ability to answer those questions,” said Dr. William Dobyns, the senior author on the paper published in the American Journal of Human Genetics and an investigator in the Center for Integrative Brain Research. Dobyns and lead author, Dr. Kimberly Aldinger, identified 27 different genes as key contributors. Read full post »
Providing safe, quality care is our most important responsibility at Seattle Children’s, and we are all committed to doing what is right to keep our patients safe. Thanks to community partners like you, we continue to uphold our commitment and deliver care to patients across our region. We are very sorry for the impact this has had on our patients, families and community partners.
Ongoing Improvements
In the coming months, we will make additional improvements to our air filtration system and install a new air handler. We have learned a great deal throughout this experience and will share our learnings with other hospitals and regulatory organizations. Learn more about the improvements we have implemented.
As we continue to implement additional, long-term and enhanced maintenance to our air handling and purification system, we expect intermittent, planned closures of our operating rooms. We will take great care to support patients and families during these maintenance activities.
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Scientists at Seattle Children’s Research Institute are paving the way to use gene-edited B cells — a type of white blood cell in the immune system — to treat a wide range of potential diseases that affect children, including hemophilia and other protein deficiency disorders, autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases. If successful, their research would open the door to offering this experimental cell therapy as the first of its kind in clinical trials at Seattle Children’s in as soon as five years.
B cells play a central role in the immune system. When the body is confronted with an infection, B cells turn into plasma cells that release protective antibodies that both fight ongoing infections and prevent future ones. Unlike other cells of the immune system that have relatively short lifespans, plasma B cells can survive and continuously produce antibodies for decades. Read full post »
Out of every 60,000 births, a baby arrives to face the world without a fully functioning immune system, leaving them unequipped to fight even the most common infections. Children with this rare life-threatening genetic condition, known as severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), have the best chance at a healthy future if they undergo a stem cell transplant before they are three and a half months old.
Seattle Children’s recently opened a clinical trial that is seeking a potentially safer, less aggressive and equally effective path to a cure by using a novel gene therapy to fix the faulty gene that causes the most common type of SCID.
On the Pulse met with the trial’s principal investigator, Dr. Aleksandra Petrovic, a pediatric transplant specialist and researcher at Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Immunity and Immunotherapies, to learn more about the experimental therapy available through this trial.
Aleksandra Petrovic
What hope does this trial offer to a baby born with SCID?
Dr. Petrovic: SCID refers to a group of inherited disorders where many genetic abnormalities hinder the development of critical components of the immune system in one way or another. Without treatment, children with SCID will not live past two years old. Those fortunate enough to have a sibling match — about 25% of patients — can undergo a bone marrow transplant, with a high rate of success. Otherwise, transplant from an unrelated donor or a parent is the next best treatment option, but provides in some cases only partial correction of the deficiency.
This trial offers a new way to treat one type of SCID called X-linked SCID in newborns with no sibling match. X-linked SCID, or XSCID, affects boys and is the one we see most often. Our hope is that the gene therapy will produce a more robust immune system without the complications associated with transplant in these babies. Read full post »
Airlift Northwest and Seattle Children’s are collaborating to further enhance the care available to our region’s most fragile neonatal patients. Starting July 15, 2019, Seattle Children’s Pediatric Neonatal Critical Care Transport Service team members (RN and RT) will accompany Airlift Northwest staff and help provide clinical care on flights transporting neonatal patients between hospitals.
“By combining the expertise of the long-standing critical care flight program at Airlift Northwest with Seattle Children’s Neonatal Critical Care Team, we will be bringing the best of both programs to the patient bedside,” says Dr. Jessica Wall, assistant pediatric medical director of Airlift Northwest and clinical assistant professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “That means better outcomes for our pediatric patients in Western Washington and beyond.” Read full post »
The Washington Mental Health Referral Service for Children and Teens has doubled its staff from two to four and is planning to add another referral specialist during the school year. The move comes in response to high and growing demand for the free, telephone-based referral service that officially launched in April. Referrals have jumped from 67 in April to 108 in June.
The service is designed for children and teens 17 and younger from across Washington, connecting families with evidence-supported outpatient mental health services in the community. Families receive a custom referral to meet their individual location, insurance and the mental health needs of their child. Referral specialists call local mental health providers to verify their availability before making a referral to the family and then coach the family to contact the provider as soon as possible to secure the appointment. More than half of all families (58%) who responded to a post-referral survey reported success in getting their child in to see a mental health specialist.
The Washington Healthcare Authority funds the referral service, and Seattle Children’s operates it. It works closely with the existing Partnership Access Line (PAL) mental health consult line at Seattle Children’s. Read full post »
Seattle Children’s Is Growing
Seattle Children’s is moving forward with three major construction projects to expand its clinical capacity and research facilities around Seattle and improve access to care for all patients.
- Building Care: new clinical space at the hospital campus
- Building Cure: a downtown Seattle research facility
- OBCC Othello: a second Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in southeast Seattle
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