PROJECT SUMMARY
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Health outcome gaps are disproportionally increasing in the pediatric population. Many social and clinical
factors contribute to this growing disparity. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report from 2015 identified
poverty, education, geographic location as the main social determinants for these health gaps. The clinical
factors associated with these differences are numerous and includes access to care, variability in provider
training and organizational readiness.
There is a vested interest by providers who work in emergency care settings to be leaders in developing a
patient-centered research agenda focusing on outcome analysis, in order to decrease variability in patient
outcomes. We propose a one-day consensus conference to define and develop a high-priority, timely research
agenda. The 2018 Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM) consensus conference, “Aligning the Pediatric
Emergency Medicine Research Agenda to Reduce Health Outcome Gaps”, is expected to help fill this
void. AEM has successfully sponsored 18 previous consensus conferences focused on the intersection of
practice and research around key topics in emergency medicine. Aligned with the mission of the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality to improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of healthcare, this
research development conference will convene major thought leaders and stakeholders to develop a research
agenda for pediatric emergency care. Specifically, the conference will include patients, patient and family
advocates from national advocacy organizations, emergency physicians, pediatric emergency physicians,
pediatricians, nurses, and researchers with expertise research dissemination and translation, as well as
comparative effectiveness. The specific aims of this conference are to: 1) align pediatric emergency medicine
(PEM) leaders across organizations and foster new leadership; 2) set a research agenda for PEM across all
access points to the emergency care system and facilitate pediatric emergency expertise across all care
providers to children; and 3) integrate PEM research networks.
