Improving ambulance and paramedic care for young children during emergencies
Emergency Medical Services for Children Evaluation of Readiness and Outcomes (EMSC-HERO)
This project looks at how prepared ambulance and paramedic teams are to treat children during serious emergencies like breathing failure and cardiac arrest.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Oregon Health & Science University NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Portland, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11343795 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
If your child needs care before reaching the hospital, this project looks at how ready EMS teams are to handle critical pediatric emergencies. Researchers will collect information from real EMS calls involving children, track serious safety problems and outcomes, and create a measurable "readiness" score for EMS agencies. They will compare readiness scores with outcomes such as complications and survival and study differences between urban and rural areas. The goal is to give health leaders a clear tool to target training, equipment, and resources to make prehospital care safer for children.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: Ideal candidates are children (infants through about 11 years old) who are treated and transported by participating EMS teams for serious emergencies such as respiratory failure or cardiac arrest.
Not a fit: Children with minor injuries who do not require EMS intervention, adults, or patients treated outside participating regions are unlikely to see direct benefits from this project.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this could reduce preventable harm and deaths by helping EMS agencies improve training, equipment, and pediatric emergency procedures.
How similar studies have performed: Hospital-based pediatric readiness scores have been linked to lower child mortality, but creating and validating a comparable EMS pediatric readiness metric is a new effort.
Where this research is happening
Portland, United States
- Oregon Health & Science University — Portland, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Hansen, Matthew Lee — Oregon Health & Science University
- Study coordinator: Hansen, Matthew Lee
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.