Our “Employee Spotlight” shines on Laurie Dooley Butler, Data Manager for the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS). Laurie has worked at Frontier Science for fourteen years. She has an undergraduate degree in Medical Technology from Daemen College, and an MBA from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Prior to joining Frontier Science, Laurie worked as a Medical Technologist in the Hematology Oncology Laboratory at Children’s Hospital, Buffalo, New York. As part of her responsibilities at the Children’s Hospital, she was an adjunct professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Medical School and was instrumental in teaching hematology to first year medical residents.
Laurie began her career at Frontier Science in 2004 as a Data Manager for the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG). After two years, she moved to the position of Laboratory Data Manager in the Laboratory Division. When the opportunity was presented to work on the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS), Laurie was eager about returning to pediatric work.
Over a ten-year span, Laurie and the PHACS Group at Frontier Science have been instrumental in the growth of the PHACS project. Laurie was involved with the study development and the subsequent data collection instruments for many of the PHACS protocols. The Data Collection Guidelines document was created as a new tool to assist sites with the chart abstracting of data throughout various data collection time points. Laurie Dooley is cited as co-author on many of the PHACS Study Publications. Laurie adds “It is truly inspirational and rewarding to be working with a team that is determined to improve the lives of the PHACS participants and who continually strive to guide the project in new directions.”
Outside of work, Laurie spends her time as a personal trainer working exclusively with breast cancer survivors and enjoys time with her family and grandchildren.
About The PHACS Study
PHACS is a domestic, observational study network sponsored by the NIH Institute, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Established in 2005, PHACS opened with two main studies, the Surveillance Monitoring for ART Toxicities (SMARTT) and Adolescent Master Protocol (AMP) to address the long-term safety of fetal and infant exposure to prophylactic antiretroviral (ART) chemotherapy; and the effects of perinatally acquired HIV infection in adolescents and young adults. Over the years, PHACS has expanded to include five main protocol studies and eleven sub-studies. Recently PHACS has pioneered online surveys to capture data from mobile populations 18 years and older, to ensure that definitive information and follow-up of this population continues.
PHACS research areas include neurodevelopment, metabolic, nutrition and physical activity, cardiac and pulmonary health, oral health, neuroimaging, mitochondrial dysfunction, HPV, hearing and language, as well as new expanded data collection on perinatally infected mothers.
Frontier Science partners with Harvard School of Public Health and provides the data management, computing, and communications support for the PHACS project. The PHACS study has a robust track record of published articles and abstracts presented at conferences since 2008, covering a wide variety of topics related to perinatal HIV.