Principal Investigators: Valerie Chock, MD, MS, Epi, Stanford Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine

Team members: Krisa Van Meurs, MD, Pediatrics; Elisabeth Yan, MD, Pediatrics; Gabriel Variane, MD, Santa Casa de Sao Paulo Medical School; Rafaela Pietrobom, MD, Santa Casa de Sao Paulo Medical School

Funders: Maternal and Child Health Research Institute, Center for Innovation in Global Health

Premature infants are at higher risk for brain injury due to hemorrhage. Reducing brain injury in premature infants is a worldwide goal, but applying strategies that have been effective in developed countries may not be effective in a middle-income country like Brazil, which has disparate care practices and resource limitations.

Researchers involved with this winning grant seek to identify risk factors unique to Brazilian premature infants and find strategies to reduce their risk.

“It is exciting to collaborate with colleagues in Brazil to identify unique risk factors for brain injury in the Brazilian population and implement strategies to reduce injury,” said Principal Investigator Dr. Valerie Chock, Associate Professor, Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine at Stanford Medicine. “The ability to tackle this global health problem in the specific context of the Brazilian healthcare system will challenge us to eliminate our assumptions or biases and think creatively about how best to effect change.”

Photo by Kyle Karbowski, Pexels.com