Dr. Aloka Patel is an associate professor of pediatrics and an attending neonatologist at Rush University Medical Center. She serves as a co-investigator on the Rush Mothers’ Milk Club NIH grant, and as the principal investigator on a collaborative study, “The Impact of Early Enteral Feed Type on Initial Gut Microflora and Sepsis in Very Low Birth Weight Premature Infants” which seeks to determine the relationship between dose and exposure period of human milk feedings and initial gut colonization and health outcomes in VLBW infants.
Dr. Patel has served as the principal investigator on 4 internally and externally funded studies related to human milk feedings, growth velocity and morbidities in VLBW infants. She has disseminated her research through numerous publications and presentations.
Personal Statement
Over the past 15 years, I have been principal investigator, site-principal investigator, co-investigator or mentor for 20 funded studies which have focused on human milk feedings, nutrition, and infections in infants hospitalized the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and removal of barriers to lactation for their mothers. I have been site PI for two randomized clinical trials for which our site was recognized for its successful rapid enrollment of subjects. I was the lead neonatologist co-investigator for a 5 year NIH-funded prospective cohort study that investigated the relationship between human milk and clinical and economic outcomes (NR010009, Meier, PI) in a diverse group of 430 very low birth weight infants. After recognizing the racial disparity in this cohort with fewer black infants receiving human milk at time of discharge, I secured R03 funding (NICHD 1R03HD081412, Patel, PI) to identify factors that mediated this racial disparity. The results of the R03 study have informed the development of the intervention that will be tested in the proposed randomized clinical trial. In my capacity as the lead neonatologist for the original cohort study, I assumed responsibility for overseeing subject enrollment and medical data collection, conducting analyses, and serving as the lead author on primary manuscripts. For the past 10 years, I have collaborated closely with the other investigators on this project as part of the NICU Human Milk Research Team on NIH-funded, industry-funded and foundation-funded studies. Together, we have established a state-of-the-art clinical NICU research team that has demonstrated remarkable expertise in the enrollment and retention of VLBW infants and their mothers and in minimizing missing data in complicated clinical trials. Additionally, we have collaborated successfully with basic scientists in studying mechanistic aspects of human milk components and outcomes of human milk feedings in VLBW infants, demonstrating our expertise in handling and shipping. Thus my robust translational and clinical research experience has uniquely prepared me to serve as multi-PI for this project. My experiences in NIH-funded studies and as site-PI for randomized.
Publications: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/aloka.patel.1/bibliography/48063866/public/?sort=date&direction=ascending