Newswise — ASRA Member Shalini Shah, MD, of the University of California, Irvine, is the principal investigator of the latest study to be awarded ASRA's Chronic Pain Research Grant. "Effectiveness of Onabotulinumtoxin A (Botox®) in Pediatric Patients Experiencing Migraines: A Randomized Double Blinded Placebo Crossover Study in the Pediatric Pain Population” will receive just under $100,000 in project funding with the goal of evaluating the efficacy, safety, and resource utilization of the substance for prophylactic use in children ages 8-17. The funding will support the project over a two-year period, and a progress report will be required one year into the work.

The ASRA Chronic Pain Research Grant is awarded biennially to original research projects that will evaluate the efficacy and safety of pain interventions and treatments and guide clinical practice. Up to $200,000 in funding is available as of November 2016.

Dr. Shah is an assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care at the University of California, Irvine. She is also the director of Pediatric Pain Services and associate director of Pain Medicine Fellowship at UC Irvine Health. She completed her anesthesiology residency at the Weill-Cornell University Medical Center in New York, and completed a fellowship in Adult and Pediatric Pain Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. She is currently the chair of the Committee on Pain Medicine at the California Society of Anesthesiologists (CSA), a member of the Board of Directors of CSA, and principal investigator on industry-funded as well as investigator-initiated clinical trials on pediatric pain medicine. She is a frequent speaker and writer on topics in the field of pain medicine.

The research team will also include Project Coordinator Cecilia Canales, MPH, and Research Assistant Michael Calderon, BS, and will be conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Joseph B. Rinehart, vice-chair for Research at UC Irvine.