Suchitra Rao, MBBS, MSCS is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in the Sections of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Medicine. She is also Associate Medical Director of Infection Control at Children's Hospital Colorado. Her research interests include the epidemiology of respiratory viruses. She has been the PI of several prospective observational studies exploring the burden of disease of influenza in children. Her work includes influenza vaccine uptake, leveraging burden of disease data from large national databases, and exploring the impact of diagnostics and treatment on the management of influenza and other respiratory infections.
Dr. Rao's PEDSnet Scholars project aims to develop a clinical scoring system for children with influenza infection that predicts the risk of hospitalization and to implement and evaluate the impact of the score locally in emergency department, hospital and urgent care settings. The project study aims are to:
- Develop and validate an influenza risk stratification tool using early clinical parameters that predicts the risk of hospitalization in children that can be used to determine which patients should undergo testing and treatment;
- Engage with stakeholders to determine the most effective implementation of the risk stratification tool to yield the highest clinical impact; and
- Implement and evaluate the risk tool in the hospital setting for clinical use.
