Research Resources Focus Area News Post

December 9, 2025, Durham, NC – If you are planning to apply for grant or contract funding to support your pediatric research projects, it is important to develop a clear strategy to include in your proposals for how you will recruit participants. When reading your proposal, reviewers will look to see if it is realistic and feasible to recruit the number and types of people you want to participate in your study. In other words, your research proposal should not only include who you plan to recruit, but also how you plan to recruit and retain participants. Carefully strategizing and writing [...]

January 15, 2025, Durham, NC – iRT Research Scientists Drs. Alison Parker and Tracy Scull will present findings from an evaluation of DigiKnowIt News at a poster session at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) 2025 Biennial Meeting. The SRCD 2025 Biennial Meeting will be held May 1-3, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The meeting provides opportunities for attendees to share and discuss findings from basic and applied research aimed at providing a better understanding of child development. About the Presentation Drs. Parker’s and Scull’s poster presentation, entitled A multimedia resource to educate and empower children to make decisions about [...]

April 11, 2024, Durham, NC – iRT is pleased to announce the release of a new version of DigiKnowIt News. Pediatric researchers across the nation are struggling to recruit an adequate number of children and adolescents into pediatric clinical trials and other types of research projects. Until recently, DigiKnowIt News included information designed to educate children about clinical trials but did not have activities and content that were appealing to teens. DigiKnowIt News is one of the first interactive, educational web-based software applications designed with the specific goal of helping researchers recruit more children and adolescents to participate in pediatric clinical [...]

August 22, 2023, Durham, NC –Recruiting youth to participate in pediatric clinical trials can pose challenges for researchers. Many teens have limited knowledge about research and are hesitant to agree to participate. Researchers must locate or develop recruitment materials that explain the clinical trial requirements in a developmentally appropriate and compelling way to inform and educate teens who might be considering participating in a clinical trial. Otherwise, researchers risk being unable to recruit the targeted sample size. When a sufficient number of participants are not recruited and retained in a study, this limits the ability to answer important health questions and [...]

June 15, 2023, Durham, NC – iRT is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health – Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) to develop an interactive, web-based toolkit which will provide parents with information about clinical trials. Parents are an important part of the decision-making process when it comes to deciding whether their child should participate in a pediatric clinical trial. iRT aims to develop a resource that will provide parents with information and skills that can help them successfully navigate pediatric clinical trials with their [...]

Dr. Alison Parker and Dr. Tracy Scull (Co-Principal Investigators) at Innovation Research & Training (IRT) were recently awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to develop an interactive, web application for youth, called DigiKnowit News, with the goal of increasing the rates of youth participation in...