Pediatric nursing research at the Minnesota State Fair

Beginning in 2013, fairgoers have had an opportunity to participate in research studies in the Driven to Discover (D2D) facility at the Minnesota State Fair. This year, Assistant Professor Barbara Beacham, Associate Professor Casey Hooke and Professor Wendy Looman led three of the 57 research studies at the D2D facility. Beacham’s CLIMB Child Registry will enable research on how families of children with chronic conditions incorporate condition management into daily family life. This is Hooke’s third year conducting a D2D study. Her How Does Your Child Moove study is focused on refining the measurement of physical activity through child and parent reports. For children with special health care needs, a self-report measurement will allow a comparison of their physical activity to healthy peers and evaluate outcomes of interventions. With co-principal investigator Peter Scal from the Department of Pediatrics, Wendy Looman’s Tip Top Kids study is focused on understanding wellbeing and quality of life for children with chronic conditions and how this changes over time.

Collectively, in these three studies, 15 prelicensure and nine doctoral students volunteered as study staff or co-investigators in 2019. These students were actively engaged in recruiting participants and completing measurements. More than 1,000 children and parents participated in the studies conducted by Beacham, Hooke and Looman at the fair this year. According to Hooke, “the atmosphere is busy, a bit chaotic and a lot of fun.”