Supporting Patient-Centered Research
AcademyHealth recently submitted comments supporting PCORI reauthorization, in this post, guest author, Dr. Terri Finkel highlights the value of PCORI-supported network PEDSnet.
Terri H. Finkel, M.D., Ph.D., is a pediatric rheumatologist and immunologist. She serves as the Chair of Pediatrics and Chief Scientific Officer at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Lake Nona Medical City, Orlando, Florida and a tenured Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine. Dr. Finkel received her medical degree in 1982 from Stanford University School of Medicine and her PhD in biochemistry/biophysics in 1984 from Stanford University in Stanford, CA, and completed her pediatric and pediatric rheumatology training at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA and at Children’s Hospital Colorado, National Jewish Health, and the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, CO.
Dr. Finkel has been an NIH-funded investigator since 1990, studying the mechanisms of immune dysfunction in autoimmune and infectious diseases. Her work has been recognized by more than 100 publications, 16 issued or pending patents, licenses, and trademarks, and research grants totaling more than $12 million. Among her awards and honors are those from the American College of Rheumatology, American Foundation for AIDS Research, Arthritis Foundation, Henry Kunkel Society, Lupus Foundation, Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.
In 1999, Dr. Finkel was recruited to lead the Division of Rheumatology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as the Joseph Lee Hollander Endowed Chair of Pediatric Rheumatology and Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She was recruited to Nemours in 2012 to build the Department of Pediatrics and lead Nemours Biomedical Research in Orlando. Since then, clinical trial revenue and active studies have quadrupled, bringing scientific advances to children with cancer, neuromuscular disorders and heart failure, facilitated in part by PEDSnet, in which Nemours is a founding member with Dr. Finkel as Executive Lead. PEDSnet is a partnership of the leading and largest children’s health systems in the nation, designed to transform pediatric health care. Representing nearly 6.2 million children (8% of the U.S. pediatric population), PEDSnet allows users to tap into a huge patient database of existing knowledge for clinical research, and offers a platform for new insights to be turned quickly to application on behalf of the health of America’s children. In 2014, Dr. Finkel’s biography was read in the U.S. House of Representatives and officially entered in the Congressional Record, in honor of her leadership and contributions to healthcare. U.S. News & World Report has named Dr. Finkel among the top one percent of pediatric rheumatologists in the United States.