BORN

The Better Outcomes for Newborns through Research (BORN) Network was founded in 2010 to increase the evidence base for the care of term and late-preterm newborns through collaborative research projects.

Routine hospital care for newborns is essential for a safe and healthy transition home and plays a key role in preventing common newborn problems that may lead to hospital readmission, such as weight loss, dehydration, and hyperbilirubinemia. Most routine care in the well baby nursery is not based on strong evidence, but rather on expert opinion as well as historical and anecdotal experience.

The BORN Network was created to change that: Until now, there was no concerted effort to study newborn nursery care on a national basis. The BORN Network is recognized as a core activity of the APA.

Mission

The BORN Network mission is to improve the health of newborns and their families by establishing an evidence base for optimal outcomes. The BORN Network is a national collaborative of pediatric clinicians and researchers who evaluate care in the birth setting and in the transition to home.

Goals

The overarching goal of the BORN Network is to conduct research to establish a firm evidence-base for the routine care of the term and late preterm infant. Our vision is that the BORN Network become internationally recognized and utilized by practitioners and educators as the primary source for evidence-based practice and health care delivery for newborns and their families.

More about BORN

Join?

The potential of the BORN Network lies in you! The evidence for newborn care can only be developed with enrollment of a large, diverse, nationally representative sample of newborns. Your ideas, energy, and willingness to collect a small amount of data will set the national agenda, shape the practice of physicians, and ensure high quality care in newborn nurseries everywhere.

Incentives to Participate

Once you have joined the network, you will have the following opportunities to participate and contribute to furthering the evidence-base for newborn care:

Complete surveys on your current newborn practices that will allow us to understand the current state of newborn care in the US and link specific practices to outcomes.
Collect data on network research studies
Be elected to either the Research or Executive Committees of BORN and formulate the future of the network
Be elected as a managing director of BORN
Develop a research study for the BORN network to conduct
Be a principal investigator or co-investigator on BORN network studies
Provide comments on proposed, planned or ongoing research projects

Studies

Ongoing Studies

Management of Newborns with Lumbosacral Findings
This cross-sectional study of management choices made by practitioners who see newborns in a regular newborn nursury setting aims to see how much inter-observer agreement exists for management of various neonatal lumbosacral findings.

Vitamin K Refusal
As a follow-up to PI Jaspreet Loyal's, Yale University, earlier project surveying BORN nursery directors perceptions of Vitamin K refusals at their institutions, the aims of the current study are to 1) report the number of infants discharged from newborn nurseries in the BORN network who did not receive IM vitamin K and 2) describe the epidemiology of infants not receiving IM vitamin K and their mothers.

Completed Studies

The Utility of Transcutaneous Bilirubin Measurement
Jim Taylor, University of Washington, served as PI for the first study conducted by the BORN network. The specific aims of the study were to: 1) Describe the distribution of TcB values in term and late preterm newborns measured in diverse settings by developing a TcB nomogram based on the data collected (BORN TcB nomogram) 2) Identify test thresholds for TcB percentiles that maximize the specificity of the screening tool while maintaining sensitivity near 100% for identification of infants with significantly elevated TSB and 3) Identify systematic sources of error in TcB measurements.

BORN Delphi Study
The objective of this study led by PI Elizabeth Simpson, University of Missouri, was to develop a consensus-based, prioritized agenda for well newborn care. A two-round modified Delphi survey of BORN members was conducted. The highest rated research questions of importance to BORN clinicians were: 1) At what weight-loss percentage is it medically necessary to formula supplement a breastfeeding infant? 2) What is the optimal management of infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome? 3) How and when should we initiate a workup for sepsis, and how should these newborns be managed?

Variation in Care of Opioid-Exposed Newborns: a BORN survey
BORN member hospitals were surveyed to identify practice variations for newborns with in-utero chronic opioid exposure. Identification of variation is the first step toward establishing best practice standards to improve care for this rapidly growing population. Deb Bogen from University of Pittsburgh, was PI for this survey.

Practice Variation in Evaluation of Term Infants at Risk for Early-Onset Sepsis
PIs Sagori Mukhopadhyay and Karen Puopolo from UPenn surveyed BORN nursery directors to determine variation in the management of newborns at risk for EOS.

Publications

2017
Loyal J, Taylor JA, Phillipi CA, Goyal NK, Dhepyasuwan N, Shapiro ED, Colson E. Refusal of vitamin K by parents of newborns: A survey of the Better Outcomes through Research for Newborns (BORN) Network. Academic Pediatrics. 2017. 17(4): 368-373.

Bogen DL, Whalen B, Kair LR, Vining M, King BA. Wide variation found in care of opioid-exposed newborns. Academic Pediatrics. 2017. 17(4): 374-380.

2016
Taylor JA, Burgos AE, Flaherman V, Chung EK, Simpson EA, Goyal NK, Von Kohorn I, Dhepyasuwan N. Utility of decision rules for transcutaneous bilirubin measurements. Pediatrics. 2016. 137(5).

2015
Taylor JA, Burgos AE, Flaherman V, Chung EK, Simpson EA, Goyal N, Von Kohorn I, Dhepyasuwan N. Discrepancies between transcutaneous and serum bilirubin measurements. Pediatrics. 2015. 135(2):224-231.

Mukhopadhyay S, Taylor J, Von Kohorn I, Flaherman V, Burgos AE, Phillipi CA, Dhepyasuwan N, King E, Dhudasia M, Puopolo KM. Variation in sepsis evaluation across a national network of nurseries. Pediatrics. 2017. 139(3).

2014
Simpson E, Goyal N, Dhepyasuwan N, Flaherman V, Chung E, Von Kohorn I, Burgos T. E, Taylor J. Prioritizing a research agenda: a delphi study of the Better Outcomes Through Research for Newborns (BORN) network. Hospital Pediatrics. 2014. 4(4): 195-202.

Leadership

Managing Directors

Carrie Phillipi, MD, PhD
Oregon Health & Science University
phillica@ohsu.edu

Valerie Flaherman, MD, MPH
University of California San Francisco
Flahermanv@peds.ucsf.edu

Steering Committee

Debra Bogen, MD
Children's Hospital Pittsburgh
bogendl@upmc.edu

Jayme Congdon, MD, MS
UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital
jayme.congdon@ucsf.edu

Esther Chung, MD, MPH
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
esther.chung@nemours.org

Neera Goyal, MD

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
neera.goyal@cchmc.org

Laura Kair, MD
UC Davis
lrkair@ucdavis.edu

Jaspreet Loyal, MD, MS
jaspreet.loyal@yale.edu

Virginia A. Moyer, MD, MPH
UNC School of Medicine
vmoyer@med.unc.edu

Carl Seashore, MD
UNC School of Medicine
cseashor@med.unc.edu

Marcia Van Vleet, MD, MPH
Baystate Franklin Medical Center
marcia.vanvleetmd@baystatehealth.org

Kelly Wood, MD
University of Iowa
kelly-wood@uiowa.edu

Get in Touch

If you have questions about BORN, would like to join, or have a study proposal, please contact BORN@acadecmipeds.org. Please use the BORN Proposal Form to submit a study idea for consideration.

Proposal Form