November 10, 2008

UAB Experts available to discuss the epidemic of premature birth and caring for premature and chronically ill children

Waldemar Carlo, M.D., professor of pediatrics, Edwin M. Dixon Chair in Neonatology and director of the Division of Neonatology at UAB. Carlo is director of the Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit/Continuing Care Nursery (RNICU/CCN) at UAB, which is the only full service level III facility in the state with neonatologists on staff in the hospital 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Carlo is a renowned international authority on mechanical ventilation of neonates with severe respiratory failure. He has led numerous international research studies focusing on prematurity and the survival of premature babies. Carlo can address any issues regarding the survival and care of premature infants.

Anne Turner-Henson, professor in the UAB School of Nursing and has joint faculty appointments in the Schools of Medicine (Adolescent Medicine) and Public Health (Maternal Child Health). Her research focuses on youth health, from the perspective of special health care needs and environmental health concerns. Turner-Henson has received a substantial federal grant to train nursing doctoral students to become child-health nursing faculty to educate child health nurses to provide culturally competent, family-centered, community-based care. She can discuss the need for more nurses as the epidemic of prematurity has grown.

• More than 150 extremely low birth-weight babies, those weighing less than 1,000 grams, or 2.2 pounds, are born at UAB each year and UAB's survival rates for all premature babies, and survivability with no apparent disability, is significantly better than the national average.
• UAB has Magnet certification for excellence in nursing care, the only Birmingham-area hospital with this designation that has birthing options.
• UAB's RNICU/CCN provides care for preterm and term infants with any medical condition, including respiratory distress syndrome, neonatal infections, persistent pulmonary hypertension, neonatal apnea, and cardiovascular problems.
• International research data shows that the best outcomes are associated with hospitals like UAB that provide 24-hour-a-day, highly specialized newborn care.

The under-construction UAB Women and Infants Center, scheduled to open in 2010, will house a new Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit/Continuing Care Nursery (RNICU/CCN). With this facility, UAB will be one of the largest RNICU/CCN units in the country and one of the first hospitals in the Southeast to offer single room neonatal intensive care. UAB is one of the original eight National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) research sites commissioned in 1986 and is the only facility in the country that is involved in all three of the NIH research initiatives for maternal, child and family health, the Neonatal Research Network, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network and the Global Network for Women and Children Research. UAB's RNICU/CCN is part of these National Institutes of Health-funded networks.