Varni research developing tools
to measure children’s well-being

James Varni, a professor of urban planning at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, is conducting research funded by a National Institutes of Health grant to develop tools for measuring the health and well-being of children with chronic illnesses.

Varni, also a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, is working with a team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to collect data from more than 2,000 children with the aim of producing research instruments for measuring symptoms related to children’s physiological and emotional health, pain, fatigue and disease.

“The goal of the project,” said Varni, “is for the instruments produced to serve as tools for the NIH to further develop measures of environmental, pharmaceutical, and behavioral interventions for improved quality of healthcare provided for children.”

The NIH grant, “Longitudinal Validation and Linking Pediatrics and Adult Item Bank,” is part of the Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System, a collaborative initiative linking the NIH with researchers.

Varni and his team also recently applied for a four-year extension of an NIH PROMIS grant entitled “Dynamic Assessment of Patient-Reported Chronic Disease Outcomes.”

Further information regarding the NIH PROMIS program is available at http://www.nihpromis.org/