Research Spotlight

Good morning.

Before I get to today’s topic, I wanted to once more encourage everyone who hasn’t yet completed their employee engagement survey to fill it out. It’s so important! We are listening and we want to hear from you.

As I said in my Feb. 7 VC Notes, “Your responses to the survey can and do impact organizational outcomes in areas like quality and safety, patient experience, finances and culture. Knowing how engaged you are as an employee helps us make key decisions affecting those areas and more. Your voice matters.”

Now to today’s topic.

I want to shine a light on a couple of important NIH-funded studies, both connected to our Level IV neonatal intensive care unit, which is the highest level a NICU can be. More than 1,000 newborns are admitted to our NICU annually, many transferred here from across the state. This makes our NICU an ideal location for newborn-related studies, especially those looking at critically ill newborns.

Project Baby Magnolia, a Hearin Foundation-supported partnership between the NIH- funded Molecular Center for Health and Disease, the and the Department of Pediatrics’ Division of Medical Genetics, uses whole genomic sequencing to find the genetic contributions in infants and children with complex health conditions. The earlier a genetic diagnosis can be made, the better the potential that treatments can lead to positive outcomes, reducing the suffering of the patient and stress on families. The study is led by Dr. Michael Garrett, chair of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, with support from Dr. Douglas McLaurin, a fellow in CMB. An added benefit of this study is the ability to recruit and train genetics professionals, which are in dire shortage across the South. Similar studies to Baby Magnolia in other states have shown great benefit:

• Project Baby Bear in California resulted in a reduction of $2.5M in medical costs over an 18-month span thanks to shorter hospital stays and fewer procedures
• Project Baby Manatee saved Florida families $3.8M during a year-long pilot

So far, for our study that started in 2023, 12 infants have been enrolled, with a definitive or likely definitive diagnosis found for five of them. We expect to enroll another 12 patients in this last year of the grant. We’ll be requesting additional funding to further develop and expand the genomic research program.

The Children’s of Mississippi Neonatal Research Group, led by Dr. Abhay Bhatt and Dr. Mobalaji Famuyide, also started in 2023 and is one of 17 sites nationally. This is a collaborative clinical trial and observational study on newborns that looks at infant mortality and weights at preterm and post-birth – metrics in which Mississippi ranks last nationally – to help develop more effective newborn care, especially for critically ill newborns like those that need to be admitted to a NICU. The connection to other academic medicine and health care leaders is a boon to UMMC physician-scientists and researchers who can engage with and learn from colleagues in other parts of the country whose patient population can be significantly different than what we see here. Not only can we use our own findings to help improve care for Mississippi’s sickest newborns, but we are also able to incorporate our data and experiences to ensure treatment and management strategies address the complex health care needs of high-risk infants nationally.

Our NICU, located in the Children’s of Mississippi Sanderson Tower, serves a vital role in caring for our state’s most vulnerable newborns. And it affords opportunities for clinical trial research that can result in data and findings that can have a monumental impact on families across the state and beyond. These types of studies, which are mostly only possible at academic medical centers, attract top clinicians, educators and scientists – raising the bar across the organization.

We must do anything and everything we can to close the gaps in maternal, fetal and infant care so that more babies are able to lead fuller, healthier lives. In doing so, we are starting from the earliest opportunity to move us closer to A Healthier Mississippi.