Clinical Research Participation
For over a decade, we have been involved in studying many of the new medicines and vaccines that have become available for children, your children. Children are not little adults and it is critical to study the effects of new medical breakthroughs on the children for whom they are being designed. The parents and children of our practice volunteer to help us accomplish this goal by coming in for visits and receiving medicines and vaccines.
We are very choosy about the clinical research studies in which we ask you to participate. First and foremost, we insist that the study provide potential benefit to your child, the child engaged in the study. Secondly, we believe that clinical research must have a higher societal goal. As such, we believe that there must be a potential benefit to other children as well, from the specific medication or vaccine being studied in your child. Finally, the safety track record must be outstanding. We choose medications or vaccines that have demonstrated an outstanding safety profile and we will review any of the potential risks with you prior to you even looking at a consent form. We follow a rigorous FDA approved process in our research studies and we report to an ethics board or IRB for overview on all aspects of our research program.
We invite you to join us in this very important mission. We wish we could count the number of children who have benefitted from our research, but that is not possible. We do know however, that by working on vaccines to prevent meningitis, ear infections and cervical cancer, we have, in our own little way made this world a better place for children.