LOS ANGELES, April 3, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- Jill G. Joseph, M.D., Ph.D. - one of America's leading researchers in pediatric health services and community health - was featured in The Saban Distinguished Lecturer Series at The Saban Research Institute at Children Hospital Los Angeles on Friday, March 31, 2006. She discussed "Building a Robust Community and Health Services Research Program in a Children's Hospital: A Tale of Two Cultures."
"Dr. Joseph is an amazing scientist who is taking clinical research, health services and health outcomes research to new levels, while also engaging the community in truly meaningful ways," said Michele Kipke, Ph.D., director of the Community Health Outcomes and Intervention Research (CHOIR) Program, associate director of The Saban Research Institute, and head of the Division of Research on Children, Youth, and Families in the Department of Pediatrics at Childrens Hospital.
"Dr. Joseph helped us think about new ways to use science as a tool for improving the health of the children in Los Angeles," said Dr. Kipke, who also is professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
Dr. Joseph is professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis. She also is co-director of the Center to Reduce Health Disparities at Davis and associate program director for the General Clinical Research Center, where she is helping create an "academic home" for multidisciplinary clinical and translational research, and is director of research strategies in the Office of the Dean.
After receiving her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980, Dr. Joseph began her career as an epidemiologist in New Zealand, studying how urbanization and migration were affecting risk factors for chronic diseases such as coronary artery disease. While at the University of Michigan during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, "Dr. Joseph played a phenomenal role as a behavioral scientist in identifying behavioral risk factors in those getting the disease," Dr. Kipke said in her introduction.
While in her 40s, Dr. Joseph obtained her medical degree from the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University, and she eventually joined the faculty of Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., with an appointment in the Department of Epidemiology/Biostatistics at the School of Medicine of George Washington University. There she investigated the impact of racial and ethnic disparities over a broad range of medical conditions and services for pediatric patients. She also directed the Center for Health Services and Community Research at the Children's National Medical Center.
"Dr. Joseph morphed and merged all the work she had done as an epidemiologist in public health, and now as a physician and a physician-scientist, into looking at how we think about promoting children's health and well-being," Dr. Kipke said.
During her lecture in The Saban Distinguished Lecturer Series, Dr. Joseph suggested what should be common goals for clinicians, scientists and members of society: "predicting, treating, and eventually curing and preventing disease, while promoting optimal development and well-being of children and their families." Various factors obstruct those goals, she explained, ranging from fierce competition for diminishing funding sources to a "silo" mentality among the medical and research community.
She noted the disconnection between medical discoveries and the delivery of health care in the U.S. "It somehow seems more exciting to come up with a new drug than to ensure that a disadvantaged African-American kid gets access to that drug," Dr. Joseph said.
Despite remarkable advances in basic sciences such as the Human Genome Project, and the fact that this country spends $1.2 trillion every year on health, "America ranks somewhere between Portugal and Slovenia in terms of quality years of life expected," she said.
"The issue is how can we reap the advantages of this tremendous biomedical research enterprise to improve health?" Dr. Joseph said. "The answer is that we have to build interdisciplinary teams.
"We have to break down the silos that separate us," she said, "whether we're working in the laboratory, with patients or the community, and together, help translate these basic discoveries into actual improvements in health. Then we need to make sure that those improvements are implemented in medical practices in the community.
"This is the way that institutions like Childrens Hospital Los Angeles will be moving to make sure that science is brought to bear to improve the health of children and their families," Dr. Joseph said.
To survive as funded researchers and improve the health and outcomes of patients, it's crucial to build relationships, she said. "We need to become scientific and personal friends. We've got to get out of our comfort zones and start talking to one another, learning one another's language and methods, understanding what we do, and integrating that into team science.
"If I could wish anything for this fabulous hospital research institute (The Saban Research Institute)," she said, "it would be that a year from now, each of you would have a scientific friendship across a discipline. Together, we know more than any one of us alone."
Dr. Joseph said organizations like the National Institutes for Health are promoting such cooperation. "You are sitting on the edge of a precipice," she told the audience. By awarding grants to teams, "The NIH is fundamentally trying to change the way research is done in this country.
"Most health-care problems are going to require multidisciplinary and collaborative approaches," Dr. Jospeh said. "The push of the NIH is to create multidisciplinary, and indeed, interdisciplinary teams." She warned that institutions must begin investing in human, physical and developmental resources to create infrastructures that will support multidisciplinary teams.
"We also need to get out and tell the community what we're doing," Dr. Joseph said, adding that, "People want to know not just that you can close the hole in the heart using minimally invasive methods, but that the well-being of the community in which we live and practice is of profound concern to the hospital," she said. "We need to find people of conscience who are interested in the commitment to child health and improving it, and we need to attract their funding dollars.
"People here have a story to tell," Dr. Joseph said. "You provide great care to kids, but the care you provide is greater yet, because you're on the cutting edge of research."
Founded in 1901, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles has been treating the most seriously ill and injured children in Los Angeles for more than a century, and it is acknowledged throughout the United States and around the world for its leadership in pediatric and adolescent health. Childrens Hospital is one of America's premier teaching hospitals, affiliated with the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California for more than 73 years. It is a national leader in pediatric research.
Today, physician-scientists at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles address the most vexing pediatric medical problems and discovery important new therapies for children everywhere, including advances in cancer care, gene transfer, stem cell and organ transplantation and diabetes. The Saban Research Institute is among the largest and most productive pediatric research facilities in the United States, with 100 investigators at work on 251 laboratory studies, clinical trials and community-based research and health services. It is one of the few free-standing research centers in the nation to combine scientific laboratory inquiry with patient clinical care - dedicated exclusively to children - and its base of knowledge is widely considered to be among the best in pediatric medicine.
Programs and Initiatives at The Saban Research Institute include the Body and Bone Composition Initiative, the Cancer Program, the Cardiovascular Research Program, the Community, Health Outcomes and Intervention Research Program, the Developmental Biology Program, the Gene, Immune and Stem Cell Therapy Program, the Imaging Research Initiative, the Microbial Pathogens Initiative and the Neuroscience Program. Clinical research is conducted under the auspices of the Center for Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, the Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases, the General Clinical Research Center, The Heart Institute and the Childrens Orthopaedic Center.
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