The UCI Center on Stress and Health (UCI CSH) is dedicated to forming multidisciplinary collaborations with the primary objective of assisting children and families in managing pain, anxiety and stress surrounding the medical environment and disease burden.
To this end, we have targeted the following fundamental aims in response to our overall objective.
Incorporate a unique, multidisciplinary, biopsychosocial approach
Integrating several disciplines such as anesthesiology, psychology, pain medicine, psychoneuroimmunology and information technology.
The problem of pediatric stress, pain and anxiety relating to medical procedures and disease burden is a large-scale, complex issue impacting millions of patients per year. A multidisciplinary approach can accelerate research progress, hasten the application of research findings, increase rigor, and improve external validity.
Focus on family-centered care as a cornerstone
Central to UCI CSH is the importance of family and family-centered medical care. Our research seeks to examine ways to support, strengthen, and involve the family unit throughout the healthcare process.
Explore the use of complementary and alternative medicine
We believe that there is value in exploring non-traditional approaches to medical problems. Our strengths in rigorous methodology coupled with our unique multidisciplinary approach provide an ideal framework within which to pursue this passion.
Understand and move to reduce health disparities and pain in children
The impact of ethnicity and culture on the experience of pain in children represents a vital topic of multidisciplinary and community-based research. Cultural influences on pain expression and pain management have been neglected in the pediatric literature and are a focus of UCI CSH.