Book excerpt: The topics in this issue represent the most current research areas of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network (CPCCRN). The CPCCRN is a national pediatric critical care research network that is charged with investigating the efficacy of treatment and management strategies to care for critically ill and injured children, as well as to better understand the pathophysiological basis of critical illness and injury in childhood. The proposed authors are past and present principal and co-investigators affiliated with the CPCCRN; the proposed topics represent the individual author’s area of clinical and research expertise. Each review article is an up-to-date review of the topic relevant to practicing clinicians and trainees in critical care medicine, with incorporation of the most recently published research findings pertinent to the topic, some of which may be the author’s own. The specific articles are devoted to the following topics: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation in pediatric and cardiac ICU; Approach to the critically ill pediatric trauma patient; Transfusion Decision Making in Pediatric Critical Illness; Pathophysiology and management of ARDS in children; Ventilator associate pneumonias in critically ill children; Mechanical ventilation and decision support in pediatric intensive care; Inflammation, pathobiology, phenotypes and sepsis: From meningococcemia to H1N1-MRSA, to Ebola; Immune paralysis in pediatric critical care; Molecular biology of critical illness; Sedation in pediatric critical illness; Delirium in pediatric critical illness; Challenges of drug development in pediatric intensive care; Potential of All Steroid Hormone Subclasses as Adjunctive Treatment for Sepsis; Morbidity: Changing the outcome paradigm; and End-of-Life and Bereavement Care in Pediatric Intensive Care Units.