Pitt Pediatrics is proud to announce that the Heart Institute at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh has been accepted into the Pediatric Heart Network (PHN), an international consortium of nine congenital heart programs across North America. Funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the PHN enables the selected congenital heart centers to collaborate and carry out seven years of meaningful, multi-site research in pediatric and congenital heart disease projects. As a result, patients in Pittsburgh (and other participating sites), will have access to (even more) cutting-edge treatments, trials, and studies.
The initial project proposal was spearheaded by Laura Olivieri, MD, FAHA, FSCMR, Ashok Panigrahy, MD, and Bryan Goldstein, MD, but involved collaboration from multiple institutes and centers across the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC, including the Heart Institute, Pitt’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), the Department of Pediatrics, UPMC’s Heart and Vascular Institute (HVI), and leadership in our Division of Cardiology and the School of Medicine.
This acceptance into the PHN was the first application to come from Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. The proposal process was extraordinarily competitive and CHP’s application was selected over other congenital heart centers that have been funded in the past, demonstrating how compelling and world-class our institute and research/clinical faculty are.
“This was an enormous lift,” Olivieri said, of putting the application together. “Altogether, we put in hundreds of hours of work since the initial call in January this year. We are extremely proud of everything we do here in Pittsburgh to support congenital heart disease care and research.”
“Participating in the prestigious PHN will provide our patients, families, faculty and staff with access to field-leading cutting edge clinical trials and research studies.” Goldstein states. “We anticipate that PHN membership, along with so many other recent clinical and research accomplishments, will continue to elevate the national and international reputation of the Heart Institute at UPMC Children’s and at Pitt’s School of Medicine.”
We look forward to the revolutionary accomplishments to come for care of congenital heart diseases over the next several years. Follow Pitt Pediatrics on Twitter to hear more about the progress of this project as it continues to develop.