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| Resident and fellow Research Day |
Children's Hospital Boston is home to the world's largest and most active pediatric search enterprise and one of the largest research programs of any independent hospital. The hospital has more than $140 million in research funding per year and more than 680,000 square feet of state-of-the-art laboratory space. The research mission of Children's Hospital encompasses basic research, clinical research, community service programs and the training of new scientists. More than 500 investigators, including 10 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 14 members of the Academy's Institute of Medicine, 15 Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 13 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute are part of Children's truly extraordinary research community. Three Children's investigators have won the Nobel Prize and six have won the nearly equally prestigious Lasker Award.
Boston Medical Center is nationally recognized for clinical, health services, and policy research as it relates to low income and minority children. Areas of research include child development and early literacy, perinatal epidemiology, gene-environment interactions and low birth weight, the impact of policy, such as welfare reform, housing and nutrition on health, prenatal drug exposure on child health and development, HIV/AIDS in children, the use of information technology to improve quality, and the emerging field of environmental health. More recently, research efforts have begun in areas related to international and immigrant health.
Quality of Research. The quality of the research done by Children's Hospital and Boston Medical Center faculty is especially impressive. During the eight years from 2001 to 2009, researchers from the two hospitals published 7 times more papers in the top five basic science journals than any other pediatric program, and 2.5 times more than the top 10 ranked pediatric programs combined! The proportion of papers published in the top 10, top 20 or top 35 basic science journals exceeded all other Boston hospitals, and all medical schools (including their basic science departments), with the exception of Harvard Medical School. It compared to major research institutes. Similarly, in clinical research, BCRP researchers published 3 times more papers in the top three clinical journals (New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and Lancet) than any other pediatric program. Indeed, at Boston Medical Center 6.8% of pediatric papers during 2001 to 2009 appeared in these three journals, compared to an average of just 1.1% for other top ranked pediatric institutions.
Research is an active aspect of the residency program as well. This is reflected in the high proportion of residents with previous research experience, the enthusiasm of the residents for their journal clubs and their own research, and just by conversations in the hallways or at rounds. Many outstanding physician-scientists and general academic researchers serve as attendings and they also help focus on the interplay between science and medicine.
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