Moving up two places from rankings announced last year, researchers from the Department of Pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt are listed as sixth in the nation for federal funding of pediatric research with grants in 2005 totaling $20,238,000. Vanderbilt’s Department of Pediatrics is ranked just below Yale (4) and Stanford (5) on the newly released National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding list for 2005, and now ranks above peer institutions Duke, the
University of
Alabama at
Birmingham and Emory.
Arnold Strauss, M.D., James C. Overall Professor of Pediatrics and chair of the Department of Pediatrics said the continued growth of funding for Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital (VCH) research is particularly impressive in light of the slowing growth in NIH funding in recent years.
“Unfortunately, the NIH budget is decreasing in relationship to inflation, reducing the numbers of funded grants and making it very difficult for academic medical centers to maintain or improve funding for biomedical research, a cornerstone of improving health care,” Strauss said. “However, our faculty has been both tenacious and creative, allowing Department of Pediatrics research to grow.”
Major grants received by VCH include: the Pediatric Vaccine Trials Evaluation Unit, led by Kathryn Edwards, M.D., vice-chair for Pediatric Research; Neonatal immunity research, led by James Crowe, M.D., professor of Pediatrics and the director of the Vanderbilt Program in Vaccine Sciences; Work on embryo implantation and its relationship to infertility led by S. K. Dey, Ph.D., Dorothy Overall Wells Professor of Pediatrics; Work on fetal heart development led by Scott Baldwin, M.D., Chief of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology; Work on the causes and treatment of inflammatory bowel disease led by Brent Polk, M.D., director of the
Digestive
Disease
Research
Center, among many others.
“We have also continued to recruit outstanding investigators to generate new funding,” said Strauss. “Obviously, it is the staff and faculty in the Department of Pediatrics and the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt that we have to thank for contributing to our laboratory and clinical research efforts, to discoveries that enhance science and the care of children, and for being such collaborative colleagues.”
-VCH-
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Contact: Carole Bartoo 322-4747