Mark A. Clements, MD, PhD

Rick & Cathy Baier Family Endowed Chair in Endocrinology; Director of Clinical Research, Endocrinology; Medical Director, Pediatric Clinical Research Unit; Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Kansas School of Medicine

Full Biography

Five Children’s Mercy investigators have received supplemental funding to add a COVID-19 component to their current studies.  

Mark Clements, MD, PhD, Pediatric Endocrinology, received $30,000 as a foundation grant for COVID-19 emergency funds from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. 

Emily Hurley, PhD, MPH, Health Services and Outcomes Research, and Melissa Miller, MD, Emergency Department, received $27,600 for an investigator sponsored clinical trial research from Merck Research Laboratories.  

Rangaraj Selvarangan, PhD, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Christopher Harrison, MD, Infectious Diseases, received $300,000 for a COVID-19 supplement to New Vaccine Surveillance Network supported by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  

Dr. Clements’ “Emergency Funding to Support Underserved T1D Populations Impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic for the Children’s Mercy Hospital” project received funding for a one-year period.  The general purpose of the grant is to help individual sin need who have Type 1 Diabetes. Clements plans to use the funding for his clinic in a number of ways that includes expansion of psychology services to meet the anticipated increase in need by our most vulnerable families and development and dissemination of electronic education materials in print and video form. He also plans to use the funding on increased staffing to outreach to families and assist families in uploading self-management devices to support direct-to-home telehealth care as well as training them to navigate telehealth software.  

Drs. Hurley and Miller “SexHealth Mobile” project receives funding for a two-year period. The primary objective of this exploratory study is to describe effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women with substance abuse disorders, particularly regarding access to care. They hypothesize that COVID-19 will result in unique disruptions to women’s access to substance abuse treatment and sexual and reproductive healthcare before, during and after the apex of the pandemic. Kathy Goggin, PhD, is a co-investigator on the project.  

Drs. Selvarangan and Harrison’s funding is a supplement to the current CDC funded Kansas City-New Vaccine Surveillance Network (KC-NVSN) program. New funding will allow expansion of the program’s scope for COVID-19 related activities during the current COVID pandemic period to increase the number of days the study enrolls in the emergency department and in-patient setting to seven days a week. The study will also begin enrolling a wider age range of participants, from newborn to 18 years old. The team will also use the funding to expand the surveillance network outside of Children’s Mercy.