Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced last week that it has received a gift of $1.92 million from the Carl F. Braun Trust to support a three-year research study looking at pain treatment techniques for children.
The grant will support research in measuring the effectiveness of techniques such as acupuncture, yoga, biofeedback, mindfulness, and massage in mitigating pain and discomfort in children with a range of diseases.
“There is an unmet need in pediatrics for complements to medications to control pain and discomfort in children, particularly for patients with chronic and palliative care needs,” Jeffrey Gold, director emeritus and founder of the Pediatric Pain Medicine Clinic at Children’s Hospital and the project’s principal investigator, said in a statement.
The Carl F. Braun Trust grant will be used to build an evidence base of research to support non-medication treatment for pain. More specifically, the study will look at integrative medicine practices targeting pain management and palliative care, mood and sleep regulation, health-related quality of life, and health utilization/cost, including medication reduction in outpatient and hospitalized pediatric patients.
“Medications work well for our acute care needs, but over time, these medications can cause side effects, including increased pain, as well as decreased effectiveness for children with long-term or chronic illnesses,” Gold said.
The grant will also fund summer internships for undergraduates and two research postdoctoral psychology fellows in the biobehavioral pain lab. Currently, the grant is supporting four summer interns.
This initiative builds on prior work in the divisions of pain medicine and comfort palliative care, where Gold has collaborated with clinicians to treat Children’s Hospital patients with acupuncture and biofeedback.
The Carl F. Braun Trust was established with funds from the business empire launched by early 20th century engineer and entrepreneur Carl Braun. That empire started as a small engineering firm that grew into a machine parts manufacturing business based in Alhambra that supplied the petrochemical industry. Braun died in 1954 and his children assumed control of the business. They expanded the business to include the design and construction of petrochemical plants, employing more than 6,000 people. In 1980, the family sold the business to Santa Fe International, an Alhambra-based drilling contractor that itself was acquired the following year by Kuwait Petroleum Corp.
Along the way, the Carl F. Braun Trust was created as a foundation to fund various charitable causes the family supported. These included donations to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena and to Pepperdine University in Malibu. The late Henry and Virginia Braun, the son and daughter-in-law of Carl Braun, contributed heavily to Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy and were honored with their names on the building that houses the school.
The trust has also supported a handful of medical institutions, including Huntington Hospital in Pasadena (now affiliated with Beverly Grove-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center) and the Doheny Eye Institute, also in Pasadena.
