Every year, Children's Mercy Hospital offers the Kreamer Award for Research
Excellence. I plan to apply this year. I wanted to outline the requirements
for the award and offer an overview of why I would be a good candidate for
this award.
I should explain why I put something like this on my web page. The most
obvious reason is rather selfish. I want to use my web pages to brag about all
the great work that I do. If I don't toot my own horn, who will? That's
probably not the most important reason, though. A more pragmatic reason is
that if I place something like this on as a web page, then I am more likely to
be able to find it when a similar award opportunity opens up down the road.
Also of importance is that when I place descriptions of my work on my web
pages, it becomes something I can easily point to when I want to collaborate
with someone. When they write a grant, for example, they need to describe the
strengths of the research team, and material like this provides them with this
type of information.
The eligibility requirements are
- Nominees must have been full-time active members of the medical/dental
or research staff of Children's Mercy Hospital for a minimum of 5 years;
- Nominees must hold the academic rank of Associate Professor or above at
the UMKC School of Medicine at the time of nomination;
- The nominee's research should have an impact on improving health care of
children;
- There should be evidence of research performed while at CMH and
published in peer-reviewed journals;
- The nominee must show evidence of continuing excellence in research.
Such evidence may include a combination of intramural or extramural grant
support while at CMH; presentation of research to regional, national, or
international academic professional societies; and/or publication of
original articles in peer-reviewed journals. Additional supporting
information may include documentation of research mentorship of trainees and
young faculty and election to academic research societies such as SPR/APS.
- Previous awardees are not eligible.
I got some additional informal guidance from my supervisor who mentioned
that
- "Selection is made by an ad hoc committee (will be the department of
pediatrics chair and associate chairs) which considers each candidates
academic research record and in particular, their being able to demonstrate
evidence of a thematic body of work associated with extramural funding and
sustained record of academic output (ie. publications)."
Here are some of the reasons why I would be a good candidate for this
award.
I have a strong track record of publications with more than 46
peer-reviewed publications appearing since I joined Children's Mercy Hospital
in 1996. I am also co-author on numerous research presentations. Several of
these papers and presentations have won major awards.
The research presentation Nopper A, Wright T, Tee R, Horii K,
Simon S, Popovic J, Alon U. Bone Density in Children With Hemangiomas Treated
With Systemic Glucocorticoids), received the ISSVA "R Schobinger
Award" for best clinical paper presented during the 16th
International Workshop on Vascular Anomalies, June 2006, Milano, Italy.
The research publication Miller at al Am J Audiology
2003;24(1);16-18) received the Editor's Award for the American
Journal of Audiology for the most outstanding publication in the calendar
year 2003.
The research presentation Simon SD "Medical Statistics Case Studies on the Web" was voted as
the best presentation in the area of Teaching Statistics in the
Health Sciences at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Anaheim CA,
August 1997.
I am a widely sought speaker at regional, national, and international
conferences. I am especially proud of my invitations to talk about medical,
ethical, and statistical issues involving research on children at conferences
in London in 2006 and Amsterdam in 2007.
In addition to helping numerous researchers at Children's Mercy Hospital, I
have developed on my own a strong and active research effort in three
important areas: evidence based medicine, monitoring safety events, and
predicting accrual in clinical trials. All of these areas have broad
applications to all pediatric research issues.
My interest in evidence based medicine was piqued by a request to join a
journal club at Children's Mercy Hospital and led to a series of first author
publications:
Simon SD. Is the randomized clinical trial the gold standard of research?
J Androl 2001: 22(6); 938-43.
Simon SD. Understanding the odds ratio and the relative risk. J Androl 2001: 22(4); 533-6.
Simon SD. Interpreting positive studies. J Androl 2001:
22(3); 358-9.
Simon SD. Interpreting negative studies. J Androl 2001:
22(1); 13-6.
and later a book
Simon SD. Statistical Evidence in Medical Trials. What Do the Data Really Tell Us? Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
(2006).
that has received strong positive reviews in both statistical and medical
journals.
My work on monitoring safety events began with a series of applications of
control charts to areas such as medication errors, patient advocate reports,
and employee accidents. This effort has led to a research presentation,
research publication,
Carroll CA, Cox KS, Santos SR, Simon SD. Using standard desk-top tools to monitor medical error rates. Seminars for Nurse
Managers 2002: 10(2); 95-99.
and an intellectual property agreement with Cerner Corporation to
incorporate these control charts into their product line. My efforts in the
safety area have also led to my being selected to develop risk adjustment
models for the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators. Both the
intellectual property agreement and the work on NDNQI have brought substantial
income to Children's Mercy Hospital, but more importantly have enhanced our
prestige, reputation, and visibility in the research community.
My work on predicting accrual rates began with a recognition that
researchers frequently overpromise and underdeliver on their targets to
provide a number of research subjects in a specific time frame. This leads to
research that is behind schedule and/or underpowered. With a colleague at
Kansas University Medical Center, I have developed some Bayesian models that
can help researchers plan their accrual rates and monitor them regularly
during the course of the trial. This model allows researchers to react quickly
to early problems with accrual to help get the study back on schedule. This
work has led to a research presentation and a peer-reviewed publication
Gajewski BJ, Simon SD. Predicting Accrual in Clinical Trials with Bayesian Posterior Predictive
Distributions. Accepted for publication in Statistics in Medicine.
and an invited talk at an upcoming symposium, Innovations in Design,
Analysis, and Dissemination: Frontiers in Biostatistical Methods, jointly
sponsored by Kansas University Medical Center, Cerner Corporaton, and the
American Statistical Association. This work has been helped by a Katherine B.
Richardson Foundation grant and has tremendous potential for funding from NIH
and also could receive support from pharmaceutical companies.
