The Newsletter of CIRCL, the Center for Injury Research & Control at the University of Pittsburgh
- In This Issue:
- Director's Message
- Managing Return-to-Play Decisions Following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
- The Impact of Pregnancy-Associated Crashes on Birth Outcomes and Infant Survival
- Improving the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Inflicted Head Trauma in Infants
- Evaluating the Impact of Neuroendocrine Hormones on Pathophysiology and Outcomes after Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
- Infant Head Injury Risk in Falls Using Experimental and Computational Models
- Staff Notes
- Masthead
Volume 10, Issue 1: Spring 2007
Director's Message
This issue of CIRCL’s FrontLines is the first that will go out
to readers only in electronic form. We all saw this coming. The efficiencies,
cost savings, and “green” benefits of doing so made this
decision not whether, but when…and that time has arrived. While
the joys of curling up with the latest CIRCL newsletter by a warm fire,
a Golden Retriever loyally at your feet and a sniffer of brandy on
the coffee table next to you may be harder to partake with this step,
I guess there is just no stopping progress.
Seriously though, with electronic distribution we can cut costs, better track readership, better target readers, use more creative and interactive communication tools, and more easily solicit input and promote distribution. So we hope you will move with us as we slide into 21st Century newsletter publishing.
With the newsletter electronic distribution milestone, it is fitting that we focus in this issue on what is our biggest and most important mission; injury research. To that end, we are more than half the way through our major projects under our current CDC/NCIPC Center Grant and wanted to share with you some updates on what has been accomplished and where those projects are headed. Not all readers are part of the academic world and so may not appreciate some of what researchers do. Brian Green (Fabric of the Cosmos, 2004) put it this way:
"Researchers spend a large part of their lives in a state of confusion. It’s an occupational hazard, really. To excel in research is to embrace doubt while walking the winding and bumpy road to clarity. The tantalizing discomfort of perplexityis what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity. But en route to explanation —during our search for new frameworks to address exceptional questions of life and death—we must tread with caution through a jungle of bewildering data, guided mostly by hunches, inklings, clues, and calculations. Discoveries often bear little evidence of the arduous terrain that's been covered. But we must not lose sight of the fact that nothing comes easily: The human condition does not give up its secrets lightly. But when research does lead to discovery, it often provides the tools and the means to make extremely important things happen in people's lives."
I am proud of the team of researchers that are part of CIRCL and who work with us or vice versa on other projects. In their own creative ways, targeting different populations and different causes of mostly neurological injury, they each endeavor to broaden our understanding of the toll the injuries take and ways that they may be prevented or their impact reduced on people's lives.
The challenge of getting a CDC Extramural Research Grant is shown by the 12% success rate in 2006.
NCIPC Extramural research has decreased significantly over the last 5 years, down 20% in real dollars.
NIH funding for leading diseases, conditions and injuries.
Lifetime costs for new cases versus NIH research expenditures for HIV and injury.
