Child health

In accordance with the World Health Organisation, clinical trials in children are essential to develop age-specific, evidence-based therapies and interventions to determine and improve the best medical treatment available. Children are not just small adults – their bodies work in very different ways and they often undergo many changes as they grow from infancy towards adolescence and adulthood. Paediatric trials are more challenging to conduct than trials in adults because of the paucity of funding, uniqueness of children and particular ethical concerns.

The ICTU-Child Health therapeutic area is currently being developed with a focus on driving increased activity and efficiencies including innovative trial design and delivery, to enable key questions to be answered quickly and robustly.

The ICTU team are experienced in delivering multi-centre complex clinical trials in a range of therapeutic areas including Child Health. We have already developed and are running innovative trials in the child health area:  

• TREAT – Bayesian design (using clinician elicited prior), randomised non-inferiority trial in children with severe asthma
• CARE – multi-arm RCT
• ACORN2 – Group sequential, multi-centre, parallel arm, individually randomised controlled trial in pregnant women experiencing anxiety
• COSI - A multi-site RCT to explore the clinical and cost effectiveness of the Circle of Security Intervention for mothers in perinatal mental health services

We are excited to expand our work in this important clinical area in collaboration with the (now part of the NIHR/Imperial Children's Clinical Research Facility - CRF)  which will offer opportunities to work closely with key investigators in Child health and to have direct input from experienced children’s research practitioners and public involvement experts.

Therapeutic area peer review group

To be developed.