University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital receives $3 million to establish Pediatric Disaster Care Center of Excellence

CLEVELAND – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR) awarded $3 million to University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital (UH Rainbow) to establish a Pediatric Disaster Care Center of Excellence. 

The grant will create the Eastern Great Lakes Pediatric Consortium for Disaster Response (EGLPCDR), one of only two Pediatric Disaster Care Centers of Excellence in the country. The EGLPCDR, led by UH Rainbow and accompanied by five other children’s hospitals in Michigan and Ohio, will provide a multi-pronged approach to address gaps across the disaster cycle spectrum of mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery for nearly seven million children.

“We face threats from disasters every day, which is why it is so important for hospitals, health care infrastructures, government and private entities to work together to create a coordinated emergency response model,” says Charles G. Macias, MD, MPH, Chief, Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Chief Quality Officer at UH Rainbow. “We are proud to be leading one of only two Pediatric Disaster Care Centers of Excellence in the country right here in Cleveland.”

Dr. Macias and Deanna Dahl-Grove, MD, pediatric emergency medicine at UH Rainbow, are co-primary investigators of the grant award. Dr. Dahl-Grove will lead the day-to-day activities of the EGLPCDR. “The grant award is the catalyst we need to harness and develop best-practices that are necessary to deliver the highest quality care before, during and after a disaster, especially for babies and children,” says Dr. Dahl Grove.

Each entity in EGLPCDR provides unique local and state level expertise (telemedicine, evidence-based clinical guidelines, simulation education, drill scenario expertise and special care units) and has integrated leadership roles within their respective Regional Healthcare Coalition.  

The EGLPCDR includes:

• UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital
• Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
• CS Mott Children’s Hospital/University of Michigan
• Children’s Hospital of Michigan
• Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital/Spectrum Health
• Nationwide Children’s Hospital

UH Rainbow is the only designated Level 1 pediatric trauma center in northern Ohio. Located on UH Cleveland Medical Center’s main campus, UH Rainbow’s Pediatric Trauma Center complements UH’s coordinated regional adult trauma network which includes UH Cleveland Medical Center’s adult Level I trauma center, and four Level III trauma centers at UH Geauga Medical Center, UH St. John Medical Center, UH Portage Medical Center and Southwest General Health Center in Middleburg Heights.  

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About University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital Internationally renowned, UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital is a full-service children’s hospital and pediatric academic medical center with experts in 16 medical divisions and 11 surgical specialties who offer nationally ranked care not available at other institutions in the region, including a center dedicated to adolescent and young adult cancer treatment and Northeast Ohio’s only single-site provider of advanced maternal fetal medicine and neonatology services. As an affiliate of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the only Level I Pediatric Trauma Center in the region, UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital offers access to novel therapies, advanced technologies and clinical discoveries long before they are available nationwide. Rainbow pediatric specialists – all of whom also serve on the faculty at the School of Medicine – are engaged in today’s most advanced clinical research and are widely regarded as the best in the nation – and in some specialties, the best in the world. Learn more at UHRainbow.org.

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