Research
Our mission is to improve the lifelong health and care of newborns and their families. Partnering with families and across disciplines, we use rigorous methods to identify better approaches to care, translate them into practice, and train the next generation within a learning healthcare system. From bedside to bench and back, we apply cutting-edge technology to define the mechanisms of disease and translate them into new potential approaches to care to be tested. At the center is medicine tailored for each newborn and family.
The Neonatal-Perinatal Division faculty have contributed to a variety of major advances in basic and clinical research related to newborn infants. Past and current projects have included
investigations into the etiology and prevention of disease and morbidity as well as the evaluation and care of newborn infants and their families. Our Division and the NICU at Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital have been continuously funded as a participating site in the NICHD Neonatal Research Network since 1998. The faculty are actively involved in basic and clinical research endeavors spanning a wide range of interests, including:
Basic Research
- surfactant biochemistry
- genetic and environmental causes of myelomeningocele
- genetic and environmental causes of cleft lip and palate
Clinical Research
- mechanisms of lung injury in meconium aspiration
- prevention of bronchopulmonary dysplasia
- prevention and treatment of retinopathy of prematurity
- hypothermia for hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy
- diagnosis of infection in neonates
- follow-up of high-risk infants
- surgical management of necrotizing enterocolitis
- quality improvement in neonatal intensive care
- education methods in the neonatal intensive care unit
- management of infants with short bowel
- rescue methods for severe respiratory failure
- improving electronic ordering in the NICU
- use of phototherapy in extremely-low-birthweight infants
- management of inguinal hernias in preterm infants
- promoting smoking cessation among parents of preterm infants
- feeding strategies for preterm infants