History of Pediatric Emergency Medicine

With the affiliation between the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and The Children’s Hospital came an opportunity to optimize the organizations’ respective strengths in Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM). In 1997, the Department of Pediatrics established the Section of Emergency Medicine, naming Joan Bothner, MD, Section Head. Bothner, previously Director of Emergency Medicine at The Children’s Hospital, had been working closely with Steven Poole, MD, Section Head of General Academic Pediatrics and Pediatric Emergency Medicine, and M. Douglas Jones, Jr., MD, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics, to envision the new specialty service and the region’s first Level I pediatric trauma center.

Two decades later, the strategic success of that initial planning is well evidenced. The Section of Emergency Medicine directs the nation’s largest pediatric emergency services program caring for more than 170,000 patients annually. The region of care encompasses seven states, Section faculty exceeds 200, and Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHCO) operates five emergency facilities along Colorado’s Front Range. CHCO on the Anschutz Medical Campus continues to be the region’s only Level I pediatric trauma center.

Networking Nationally

Children’s Hospital Colorado is a Research Node Center for the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN). Created in 2009, PECARN is the first federally funded network in the United States to conduct robust, multi-institutional research into preventing and managing acute injuries and illnesses among children and youth.