Work

Development of a pediatric urgent care research infrastructure to facilitate human immunology studies

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: The pediatric urgent care setting offers a unique opportunity to enroll pediatric patients and their families to facilitate the study of human immunology. However, it is an underutilized environment for recruiting participants into research studies, most likely driven by a fundamental “conflict of urgency” – the tension between the time-limited nature of acute ambulatory care and the time-intensive requirements of human subjects research. To address this challenge, we implemented a study of infant and maternal immune responses to respiratory tract infection (the MATMilk study) across four Seattle Children’s Hospital Urgent Care (SCHUC) clinics using a novel, two-phase study design, which uncoupled initial clinical contact from enrollment and specimen collection. This approach allowed complete remote participation and minimized disruption to clinical workflows. To date, we have enrolled n = 36 infants and n = 39 mothers and have complete biospecimen sets from n = 30 infants and n = 28 mothers. The cohort is from a broad geographical catchment in the Puget Sound region and is racially and ethnically diverse, reflecting the demographics of the SCHUC patient population. Our scalable, resource-efficient approach provides a model for integrating basic science research into hospital-affiliated pediatric urgent care networks.

Source: Journal of Clinical and Translational Science

DOI: 10.1017/cts.2026.10773