Patient Information Flyer

If you have recently requested medical care for your child’s stomach pain symptoms, you and your child may be eligible to take part in our recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) research study. We hope to show through our research that short-term talking treatments are effective in helping youth with RAP and their families.

By participating in this research study, you will have the opportunity to meet with a clinician (a professional psychologist or social worker) three times during the first month of the study to talk about coping with stomach problems. Each visit will take approximately an hour and fifteen minutes.

During these visits, your child and you will work with the clinician while you learn new things about recurrent abdominal pain. You will be in the study for six hours the first month, and another three hours over the next twelve months, or a total of nine hours. Participating in the entire study will take twelve months.

You and your child will also be asked to complete questionnaires by mail (parents) and telephone (children) twice the first month (at weeks 1 & 3), and then again at 3, 6 and 12 months. Each set of questionnaires will take from 45 minutes to 1 hour to complete. Parents will mail their responses back in postage paid envelopes, and children will complete their questionnaires during a scheduled telephone appointment when a research nurse will call them to read the questions aloud and write down their answers.

Responses to questionnaires and conversations you and your child give will be confidential. They will not become part of your child’s medical record. Your child’s medical care will not be affected. Taking part in research is always voluntary. You will be free to skip any questions or to withdraw from the study at any time with no effect on your child’s medical care.

As a thank you, you will be paid $150 for completing the study; payments are $20 for parents and $10 for children after completion of each set of questionnaires.

If you think that you may be interested, you may call Melissa Young, the Research Coordinator at Children’s Hospital, at (206) 987-1037 at any time.

You can reach the Project Director at (206) 616-2358 if you have any questions or if you want to enroll in the Children’s Hospital Research Study right away. Dr. Rona Levy, MSW, PhD, MPH is the Principal Investigator for this study.

Thank you for your time and interest.