URMC / Clinical & Translational Science Institute / Stories / June 2017 / Announcing the 2017 KL2 Career Development Awardees

Announcing the 2017 KL2 Career Development Awardees

Meet this year’s additions to the KL2 Mentored Career Development program, a CTSI-sponsored educational program that provides 2 years of support for new investigators interested in a career in clinical or translational research.

Lauren Solan, M.D., M.Ed.

Lauren Solan, M.D., M.Ed., is an assistant professor of Pediatrics and a pediatric hospitalist at Golisano Children’s Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) and co-chair of the Academic Pediatric Association Pediatric Hospital Medicine Special Interest Group.

With support from the KL2 Career Development Program, Solan will investigate the development of a novel pediatric risk assessment tool to predict which pediatric patients are at highest risk for healthcare reutilization (unplanned readmission or Emergency Department revisit) and may need additional support or resources after hospital discharge. URMC recently created a readmission risk assessment tool for adults that is built into eRecord and applied to pediatric patients, though it has not been evaluated for use in the pediatric population.

For her KL2 project, Solan will evaluate the utility of the existing adult-based risk assessment tool for use in children and will modify it to address additional factors that may contribute to a pediatric patient’s risk of unplanned healthcare reutilization.

Fahad Saeed, M.B.B.S.

Fahad Saeed, M.B., B.S., assistant professor of Nephrology, will conduct a pilot study evaluating early palliative care for elderly patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) with support from the KL2 program.

CKD affects more than 20 million Americans and elderly CKD patients are the largest growing patient population initiating dialysis in the US, but dialysis may be of little value to these patients. CKD patients over 75 years of age have significant symptom burden and co-morbidities, and a median survival of just 2.5 years. Many elderly CKD patients start dialysis with little knowledge of their prognosis or the impact of dialysis on quality of life, survival, and function. Currently, no proven interventions exist that help vulnerable elderly CKD patients with dialysis-related decision making, quality of life and advance care planning.

The KL2 award will allow Saeed to investigate the impact of palliative care consultation on decision-making, disease management outcomes, and quality of life for CKD patients and their caregivers when facing decisions regarding renal replacement therapy.

The projects described in this article will be supported by the University of Rochester CTSA award number KL2 TR001999 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.

Read more about the KL2 program, and check out a list of our current and past scholars.

Michael Hazard | 6/21/2017