Katherine Auger, MD, MS, received the 2016 Nemours Child Health Services Research Award from the AcademyHealth’s Child Health Services Research Interest Group and Nemours. The award recognizes the scientific work of emerging scholars in the field of child health services research with expertise in the quality improvement of pediatric health services.

The Nemours Child Health Services Research Award commends the work of early-career child health services researchers, with a maximum of seven years of experience. As a part of this award, Auger received $1,000 in recognition of her contributions and was presented with the award at the 2016 Child Health Services Research Interest Group Meeting on June 25 in Boston, held in conjunction with AcademyHealth’s Annual Research Meeting.

Auger is a pediatric hospitalist at Cincinnati Children’s. She has examined pediatric readmission both broadly across diagnoses, as well as specifically for asthma. She has published a validated method of identifying pediatric unplanned readmission in administrative data and a systematic review of discharge interventions to prevent readmission. She has also participated in and led work groups through the Children’s Hospital Association to examine national patterns of readmission using Potentially Preventable Readmissions Software, which is frequently used by state Medicaid offices to examine readmission. She is the only pediatrician serving on the National Quality Forum’s All Cause Admissions and Readmissions expert committee.

Auger’s research seeks to understand reasons for pediatric hospitalizations and ways to potentially avoid unnecessary inpatient stays. Her training included both a pediatric hospital medicine fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s, as well as the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Michigan.

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