PROS (Pediatric Research in Office Settings) had a wonderfully productive meeting this Fall in beautiful San Francisco.

The Boys’ Puberty Study (Secondary Sexual Characteristics in Boys) has finished data collection and analysis is almost complete, and the manuscript is being written for publication which should follow soon.

PROS is starting an exciting dissemination study in selected states (NY, FL, CA, PA, IN, HI, and NC) to address Teen Driving.  The study is funded by the CDC to help pediatricians help parents to discuss driving with their teens, and to promote safety rules and driving contracts to decrease accidents, injuries, and deaths.  The first six months of driving without adult supervision is the highest risk period for all teen drivers and setting limits above and beyond the graduated driving license laws have been shown to decrease morbidity and mortality. 

PROS has begun work on an effort to build and test an EHR-based version of the network, and to conduct a comparative effectiveness research project through this subnetwork.

PROS will also be starting a Teen Smoking Cessation Study (Smokebusters) very soon, and if you have a high adolescent population in your practice, this would be a great study for you!  Most smokers get hooked in their early teens and helping them to quit early would make a huge impact on the life of that teen and the teen’s future family.

The National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) also presented a potential study to look at the use of atypical antipsychotics in children and the medical consequences of their use.  This is a topic of great interest to many pediatricians throughout the nation, whether there is or is not any viable access to mental health professionals.  And the NICHD also proposed future studies looking at the more common but unstudied “off-label” use of medications in the pediatric population.

Ongoing studies under development include studies to look at dental health of children,  ways to more accurately identify child victims of abuse, and the use of “Common Factors” to help address mental health topics during pediatric visits.

Current ongoing studies in the middle of data collection include CEASE (Clinical Effort to Address Second-hand Smoke Exposure to promote parental smoking cessation), a pilot study to look at the acceptability/tenability of a test for the tobacco marker cotinine in practice, and BMI2 (Brief Motivational Interviewing to reduce BMI to study obesity prevention).

This is a very exciting time for PROS and we welcome interested practitioners as several important studies are about to start.  

To join the PROS network, or to learn more, go to http://www.aap.org/pros/howjoin.htm  or contact Dr. Sue Daniels who is the PROS coordinator for the state of Montana at 406-522-5437 or sdaniels@acornpediatrics.com.