MEDICAL CAMPUS RESEARCH ENHANCES OUR HEALTH
CHICAGO — Medical research enhances our health and the quality of our lives — from unlocking the mysterious trigger of Alzheimer’s disease to discovering a new treatment for stroke injury to developing new strategies for prevention of childhood and adult obesity.
The medical campus institutions — Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University, The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Children’s Memorial Hospital — all have vital, thriving research programs and often collaborate with each other in their work. Here is an overview of the research and how you may be able to participate.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital is committed to advancing medicine through collaborative research with Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. This collaboration enables Northwestern Memorial to offer patients innovative and leading-edge treatments. The hospital currently is partnering with the Feinberg School on a range of clinical research trials, including cancer studies and cardiac and vascular research. An average of 2,000 clinical trials were in progress last year with another 500 new studies approved during this past year. Learn about the current oncology clinical trials. Learn about the current clinical trials at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute.
The faculty members of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine study a vast range of health problems and diseases to understand the causes and develop strategies to prevent and treat them. One new effort is the Women’s Health Research Institute to spur research in women’s health. The Illinois Women’s Health Registry has been created to provide a large pool of potential study subjects for researchers. Learn about the registry. Another new project is the Northwestern Comprehensive Center on Obesity, which researches the causes of obesity to identify new strategies to treat and prevent it. Clinical research will focus on obesity and weight gain in pregnant women. Learn about clinical trials at Northwestern University.
The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago is the largest rehabilitation research center in the world. RIC has been recognized nationally as a center for research and care in stroke, spinal cord injury and brain injury. Possibly the best-known research development to come out of RIC is the bionic arm, the first major development in upper extremity prosthetics since World War II, which was developed in a lab in RIC’s Streeterville location. With nearly 300 studies under way, RIC’s research labs often seek participants. See our Web site, www.ric.org/research/clinicaltrials.
Children’s Memorial Research Center, the research arm of Children’s Memorial Hospital, is focused on the science of pediatric disease and development. The research center’s work is organized around seven interdisciplinary research programs led by multidisciplinary teams of physicians, scientists, technicians, nurses and others. These programs and teams further the research center’s mission to make discoveries that advance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases affecting the development of children, as well as adult disorders that derive from these diseases, to improve the lives of kids and their families. Learn more about research at Children’s Memorial Hospital. http://www.childrensmemorial.org/medresearch/overview.aspx