Many children living with chronic and life-threatening conditions experience pain and other distressing symptoms. Control of pain and symptoms is the foundation upon which competent palliative care is built. Yet children and families suffer when they encounter pediatricians and other professionals who are ill-prepared to offer them competent and compassionate palliative and end-of-life care. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on Improving Palliative and End-of-Life Care for Children and Their Families (2002) calls upon pediatric health professionals to address the needs of children and families for comprehensive palliative care services. In addition, routine assessment and management of pain is now a required component of patient care according to the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO). This session will outline basic tenets of pain and symptom management for children and adolescents, their implementation across care settings and consideration of the continued barriers to full implementation of these care standards.

Assessment and Management of Pain in Children and Adolescents
Neil L. Schechter, St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Hartford, CT

Reducing Barriers to Effective Pain and Symptom Management at the End of Life
Nancy Hutton, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD

Palliative Pain and Symptom Management in Pediatric Tertiary Care Settings
Joanne Wolfe, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital, Boston, MA

Pediatric Pain and Symptom Management in Home Care and Hospice
Speaker To Be Determined
 

This mini course will set the stage for several discussions of particular issues of major importance and interest. What is "preparedness" and what are the real risks of continuing terrorism in the United States? What is the current status of preparedness in the U.S. hospital and public health systems? How do children differ from adults in terms of response to weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological and radiological)? How do these differences matter in disaster planning? Are the needs of children being incorporated in local, state and federal disaster plans? Smallpox, anthrax and other biological threats: Where do we stand? What do we do? Nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons, dirty bombs and potassium iodide: What do we know? The mental health consequences of terrorism: What have we learned since 9/11, how do we prepare children for an increasingly vulnerable world, building resiliency and sustaining a positive vision. The new pediatric agenda: What do we have to teach students, residents and pediatricians about the pediatric aspects of terrorism planning. Children and exposure to weapons of mass destruction: science and the essential research agenda.

Introduction
Paul H. Saenger, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY

Welcome and Context
Irwin Redlener, National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY

Pediatric Preparedness for Terrorism and Disasters
David S. Markenson, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY

Biological Weapons of Terror: What Pediatricians Need to Know
Theodore J. Cieslak, U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Ft. Detrick, MD

Helping Children and Families Cope with Terrorism
David J. Schonfeld, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT

Radiologic Terrorism, Children and the Question of Potassium Iodide
Thomas P. Foley, University of Pittsburgh, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

TLRs (Toll-like receptors) are a family of transmembrane germ line coded pattern recognition receptors that bind structural motifs common to pathogenic organisms. These structural motifs include endotoxin, products of gram+ organisms, fungi and mycobacteria, as well as DNA and RNA structures common to bacteria and virus but not mammalian cells. The TLRs are expressed by diverse cell types. TLR signaling initiates the innate immune/inflammatory host response to pathogens and also initiates antigen processing for acquired immunity.

Moshe Arditi will review the recent progress in understanding how children respond to pathogens. Maria Abreau will explore how immune signaling is central to both the maintenance of normal gut function and how chronic GI disease may develop. Christopher Karp will then explore how immune signaling relates to the hygiene hypothesis regarding the striking increase in the prevalence of both allergic and autoimmune diseases in children in Westernized countries over recent decades. The goal is to provide an update about newly described mechanisms signaling inflammation/immunity that are central to multiple homeostatic and disease processes in children.

Toll Like Receptors—Bridging Innate and Adaptive Immunity
Moshe Arditi, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA

TLR Signaling in the Gut in Health and Disease
Maria Abreu, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center / UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA

Signaling the Hygiene Hypothesis
Christopher Karp, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH

Children who are victims of violent behavior or merely observers of violence may learn destructive or self-destructive patterns of behavior. Violence is a major public health problem. This symposium will focus on breaking the cycle of violence and will showcase speakers who are working on violence prevention in the pediatric emergency department, school and community. The speakers will demonstrate what can be done by physicians who see the importance of this issue and the ways in which we can make a difference.

Violence Prevention in Primary Care: Moving from Public Health to Private Practice
Robert D. Sege, Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, MA

Beyond Treat and Street: Violence Prevention in the Emergency Department
Joel Fein, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA

Efforts in the Community
Sheryl A. Ryan, University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, NY

The National Children’s Study is a national prospective, longitudinal study of environmental effects, including physical, chemical, biological and psychosocial effects, on child health and development. The goal of the study is to improve the health and well-being of children. The study will examine these environmental effects on the health and development of more than 100,000 children across the United States, following them from before birth until age 21. The study is led by a consortium of federal agency partners: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD); the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For additional information, visit the website at http://www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov/.

The National Children’s Study—An Overview
Duane Alexander, NICHD, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD

The National Children’s Study—Methods
Peter C. Scheidt, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD

Children’s Health and Environmental Exposures: The Most Important Unanswered but Answerable Questions
Michael Weitzman, The AAP Center for Child Health Research at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

The application of imaging technologies to solving questions in biology and medicine is revolutionizing medicine by accelerating analyses in situ and in vivo and providing new perspectives on biological processes as diverse as development, neoplasia and injury repair. In this plenary session, three internationally recognized speakers will focus on developmental processes and discuss how these new imaging technologies are providing dynamic insights into the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that underpin hematopoiesis and vascular development.

Introduction
Lisa M. Guay-Woodford, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL

Dynamic Imaging of Fluid Forces in Developing Mouse Vasculature
Mary Dickinson, Beckman Institute–Caltech, Pasadena, CA

Microscopic Imaging of Angiogenesis
Donald M. McDonald, University of California, San Francisco, CA

Watching Hematopoietic Stem Cell Engraftment and Hematopoiesis in Living Animals
Christopher H. Contag, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA

Questions from the audience
 

Worldwide, more than 1,500 children per day become infected with HIV through mother-to-child transmission. Currently there are 2.7 million children living with HIV infection across the globe, >90% of whom reside in developing countries. While there have been enormous successes in the prevention and treatment of pediatric AIDS in the United States and Europe, it remains an open question as to how effectively these public health gains can be replicated in the poor countries of the world, which bear the greatest burden of disease. Efforts to develop an HIV vaccine appropriate for preventing infection among the world's children and adolescents are finally under way on a global scale. We will discuss these issues and accompanying controversies as they apply to the children of the developing world.

AIDS in Children—A Global Public Health Crisis
David L. Pugatch, Hasbro Children's Hospital and Brown Medical School, Providence, RI

Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Developing Countries—Successes, Failures and Challenges
Catherine M. Wilfert, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Santa Monica, CA and Washington, DC

HIV Treatment for Children—Can the Successes of Rich Countries Be Duplicated in Resource-Poor Settings?
Mark W. Kline, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX

Finding an AIDS Vaccine That Works for the World's Children
Richard A. Koup, Vaccine Research Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD

Despite continuing advances in neonatal care, bronchopulmonary dysplasia remains a vexing problem for neonatologists, other pediatric subspecialists, and general pediatricians. As our understanding of BPD improves, our expectation is that new targets for combating this condition will emerge. Today’s session is designed to explore new findings of biological importance relevant to the pathogenesis of BPD and to stimulate discussion about possible hypotheses for its treatment.

Cellular and Molecular Targets in Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia
Steven R. Seidner, University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio, TX

Sublethal Oxygen Exposure and Mechanisms of Lung injury
A. Keith Tanswell, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada

Neuropeptides, Immunity and BPD
Mary Sunday, Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, MA

TGF-ß and the Regulation of Lung Remodeling
David Warburton, Children's Hospital, Los Angeles Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
 

Currently, there is debate regarding the optimal strategy for initial and ongoing respiratory support in preterm infants (e.g., nasal CPAP, nasal non-invasive ventilation, endotracheal mechanical ventilation) with a particular focus on reducing later bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). This session will explore the pathophysiology behind the strategies involved, how to "fine-tune" those strategies and will provide in-depth analysis of current data examining various modes of respiratory support for the premature infant.

Introduction
Rita M. Ryan, State University of New York at Buffalo, Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY

Delivery Room and Early Respiratory Support of the Premature Infant: To Intubate or Not To Intubate?
Neil N. Finer, University of California, San Diego, CA

How Can We Optimize Conventional Ventilation in Preterm Neonates?
Steven M. Donn, University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor, MI

Has High-Frequency Ventilation Fulfilled the Promise To Reduce BPD?
David Henderson-Smart, Centre for Perinatal Health Services Research, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Noninvasive Ventilation in the Neonate: Will This Decrease BPD?
Keith J. Barrington, Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, Canada

Discussion/Questions