Tag Archive for: American Pediatric Society

Drs. Dewesh Agrawal, Andrew Dauber, Robert Freishtat, Vittorio Gallo

Four Children’s National Hospital leaders named to APS

Drs. Dewesh Agrawal, Andrew Dauber, Robert Freishtat, Vittorio Gallo

Drs. Dewesh Agrawal, Andrew Dauber, Robert Freishtat and Vittorio Gallo were named as 2021 American Pediatric Society members.

The American Pediatric Society (APS) has announced 55 new members, four of which are experts from Children’s National Hospital. Founded in 1888, the APS is the first and most prestigious academic pediatric organization in North America.

APS members are recognized child health leaders of extraordinary achievement who work together to shape the future of academic pediatrics. New members are nominated by current members through a process that recognizes individuals who have distinguished themselves as child health leaders, teachers, scholars, policymakers and/or clinicians.

“Our members represent the most distinguished and accomplished academic leaders in pediatrics whose outstanding work has advanced child health,” said APS President Steven Abman, M.D. “I am honored to welcome this exceptional group of individuals to the APS. The APS is especially looking forward to the active engagement of our membership with many exciting programs within the organization that are directed towards improvements in academic pediatric medicine, including more vigorous approaches to express our values of anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion.”

APS 2021 active new members from Children’s National are:

  • Dewesh Agrawal, M.D., vice-chair for Medical Education at Children’s National. Agrawal’s career has been marked by academic honors and teaching awards at every stage of his training and faculty employment. He has relentlessly devoted his energy to improving the educational experience for students, residents and fellows at Children’s National.
  • Andrew Dauber, M.D., M.M.Sc., chief of Endocrinology at Children’s National. Dr. Dauber’s leadership is reflected, nationally and internationally, in his ability to create research consortia, bringing together investigators to tackle complex questions. For example, he leads an NIH-funded consortium on the genetics of short statures, with multiple top children’s hospitals as partners. He also leads a large clinical trial testing a novel therapeutic agent for genetic short stature.
  • Robert Freishtat, M.D., M.P.H., senior investigator in the Center for Genetic Medicine of the Children’s National Research Institute (CNRI). Dr. Freishtat has authored or co-authored more than 100 articles and book chapters in the fields of pediatric lung injury, asthma, obesity, exosomes and emergency medicine. His research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2003.
  • Vittorio Gallo, Ph.D., chief research officer at Children’s National and scientific director of CNRI. Dr. Gallo’s scientific success is attested to by over 130 peer-reviewed publications, many in very high-profile journals, as well as over 30 review articles and book chapters. He has received many national and international awards, including the NINDS Javits award in Neuroscience in 2018. Dr. Gallo has served on the editorial boards of many neuroscience journals, including Glia and the Annual Review in Neuroscience, and has been reviewing editor for the Journal of Neuroscience, all of which is a testament to the tremendous impact that his studies have had on the advancement of neurosciences.

“These new members represent multiple areas of Children’s National and have all leveraged the intersection of science, medicine and clinical education to make advances in their field of study,” said Stephen J. Teach, M.D., M.P.H., chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s National. “Their work has, and will continue to, advance pediatric health care, and I congratulate them on their APS membership.”

Drs. Tarini, Steinhorn, and Beers

Children’s National Hospital: Starting the new year with strong leadership

Drs. Tarini, Steinhorn, and Beers

Drs. Tarini, Steinhorn and Beers are also in leadership roles within professional societies, elected by their peers, further highlighting the strength of the leadership at Children’s National and professional respect within the health care community.

Three Children’s National Hospital executives are also in leadership roles within professional societies, elected by their peers, further highlighting the strength of the leadership at Children’s National and professional respect within the health care community.

Lee Savio Beers, M.D., FAAP, medical director of Community Health and Advocacy at the Child Health Advocacy Institute (CHAI) at Children’s National, was elected by her peers to become president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) beginning Jan. 1, 2020. Dr. Beers will then serve as AAP president in 2021 for a one-year term.

“I am humbled and honored to have the support of my peers in taking on this newest leadership role,” says Dr. Beers. “AAP has been a part of my life since I first became a pediatrician, and my many leadership roles in the DC chapter and national AAP have given me a glimpse of the collective good we pediatricians can accomplish by working together toward common strategic goals.”

Dr. Beers is looking forward to continuing her work bringing together the diverse voices of pediatricians, children and families as well as other organizations to support improving the health of all children.

Robin Steinhorn, M.D., senior vice president of the Center for Hospital-Based Specialties at Children’s National was elected by her peers to become Vice President and President-elect of the American Pediatric Society (APS) in May 2018 and she is currently serving her role as the Society’s president, which began in May 2019.

“This is a tremendous honor. I look forward to leveraging the collective leadership and research accomplishments by our members to improve the health of infants and children throughout the U.S.,” said Dr. Steinhorn.

Dr. Steinhorn is particularly passionate about mentoring faculty and supporting the growth and career development of young neonatologists and scientists, with several having developed their own research laboratories and assumed division and department leadership positions. She was selected as a ‘Top Doctor’ by Northern Virginia Magazine in 2019.

Beth A. Tarini, M.D., MS, associate director, Center for Translational Research at The Children’s Research Institute, became vice president of the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR) in May 2019. Dr. Tarini will transition to President-Elect in May 2020 and become President in May 2021.

Dr. Tarini’s personal mission during this tenure will be to ensure that more pediatric researchers get to know SPR and are so excited about the organization that they become active members.

Dr. Tarini says she looks forward to working with other SPR leaders to find ways to build more productive, collaborative professional networks among faculty, especially emerging junior faculty. “Facilitating ways to network for research and professional reasons across pediatric research is vital – albeit easier said than done. I have been told I’m a connector, so I hope to leverage that skill in this new role,” says Dr. Tarini.

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Beth Tarini

Getting to know SPR’s future President, Beth Tarini, M.D., MS

Beth Tarini

Quick. Name four pillar pediatric organizations on the vanguard of advancing pediatric research.

Most researchers and clinicians can rattle off the names of the Academic Pediatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Pediatric Society. But that fourth one, the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR), is a little trickier. While many know SPR, a lot of research-clinicians simply do not.

Over the next few years, Beth A. Tarini, M.D., MS, will make it her personal mission to ensure that more pediatric researchers get to know SPR and are so excited about the organization that they become active members. In May 2019 Dr. Tarini becomes Vice President of the society that aims to stitch together an international network of interdisciplinary researchers to improve kids’ health. Four-year SPR leadership terms begin with Vice President before transitioning to President-Elect, President and Past-President, each for one year.

Dr. Tarini says she looks forward to working with other SPR leaders to find ways to build more productive, collaborative professional networks among faculty, especially emerging junior faculty. “Facilitating ways to network for research and professional reasons across pediatric research is vital – albeit easier said than done. I have been told I’m a connector, so I hope to leverage that skill in this new role,” says Dr. Tarini, associate director for Children’s Center for Translational Research.

“I’m delighted that Dr. Tarini was elected to this leadership position, and I am impressed by her vision of improving SPR’s outreach efforts,” says Mark Batshaw, M.D., Executive Vice President, Chief Academic Officer and Physician-in-Chief at Children’s National. “Her goal of engaging potential members in networking through a variety of ways – face-to-face as well as leveraging digital platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – and her focus on engaging junior faculty will help strengthen SPR membership in the near term and long term.”

Dr. Tarini adds: “Success to me would be leaving after four years with more faculty – especially junior faculty – approaching membership in SPR with the knowledge and enthusiasm that they bring to membership in other pediatric societies.”

SPR requires that its members not simply conduct research, but move the needle in their chosen discipline. In her research, Dr. Tarini has focused on ensuring that population-based newborn screening programs function efficiently and effectively with fewer hiccups at any place along the process.

Thanks to a heel stick to draw blood, an oxygen measurement, and a hearing test, U.S. babies are screened for select inherited health conditions, expediting treatment for infants and reducing the chances they’ll experience long-term health consequences.

“The complexity of this program that is able to test nearly all 4 million babies in the U.S. each year is nothing short of astounding. You have to know the child is born – anywhere in the state – and then between 24 and 48 hours of birth you have to do testing onsite, obtain a specific type of blood sample, send the blood sample to an off-site lab quickly, test the sample, find the child if the test is out of range, get the child evaluated and tested for the condition, then send them for treatment. Given the time pressures as well as the coordination of numerous people and organizations, the fact that this happens routinely is amazing. And like any complex process, there is always room for improvement,” she says.

Dr. Tarini’s research efforts have focused on those process improvements.

As just one example, the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children, a federal advisory committee on which she serves, was discussing how to eliminate delays in specimen processing to provide speedier results to families. One possible solution floated was to open labs all seven days, rather than just five days a week. Dr. Tarini advocated for partnering with health care engineers who could help model ways to make the specimen transport process more efficient, just like airlines and mail delivery services. A more efficient and effective solution was to match the specimen pick-up and delivery times more closely with the lab’s operational times – which maximizes lab resources and shortens wait times for parents.

Conceptual modeling comes so easily for her that she often leaps out of her seat mid-sentence, underscoring a point by jotting thoughts on a white board, doing it so often that her pens have run dry.

“It’s like a bus schedule: You want to find a bus that not only takes you to your destination but gets you there on time,” she says.

Dr. Tarini’s current observational study looks for opportunities to improve how parents in Minnesota and Iowa are given out-of-range newborn screening test results – especially false positives – and how that experience might shake their confidence in their child’s health as well as heighten their own stress level.

“After a false positive test result, are there parents who walk away from newborn screening with lingering stress about their child’s health? Can we predict who those parents might be and help them?” she asks.

Among the challenges is the newborn screening occurs so quickly after delivery that some emotionally and physically exhausted parents may not remember it was done. Then they get a call from the state with ominous results. Another challenge is standardizing communication approaches across dozens of birthing centers and hospitals.

“We know parents are concerned after receiving a false positive result, and some worry their infant remains vulnerable,” she says. “Can we change how we communicate – not just what we say, but how we say it – to alleviate those concerns?”

Robin Steinhorn

Children’s National senior vice president elected to American Pediatric Society leadership

Robin Steinhorn

Robin Steinhorn, M.D., Senior Vice President of Center for Hospital-Based Specialties at Children’s National Health System, was elected by her peers to become vice president and president-elect of the American Pediatric Society (APS) beginning May 2018 at the annual Pediatric Societies Meeting in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Steinhorn will serve in this role for one year and will then become the Society’s president in May 2019 for a one-year term.

Dr. Steinhorn is a globally recognized physician-leader, researcher and clinician in the fields of neonatal perinatal medicine and fetal pulmonary development. She was elected to the APS Council in 2015 and currently holds a seat on the American Board of Pediatrics’ Board of Directors.

“Dr. Steinhorn has devoted her professional career to advancing the field of pediatrics through exemplary leadership in related societies, as well as editorial oversight of cutting-edge research,” says David Wessel, M.D., executive vice president and chief medical officer of Hospital and Specialty Services at Children’s National. “This elevated role with the APS will enable her to further share her expertise to benefit children on a national and international level.”

Dr. Steinhorn serves as associate editor of the Journal of Pediatrics and is also a contributing editor for NEJM Journal Watch’s Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.  Additionally, she sits on the editorial boards of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and Pulmonary Circulation. Dr. Steinhorn is an elected fellow of the American Heart Association and a member of both the Perinatal Research Society and the American Thoracic Society.

Founded in 1888, the American Pediatric Society is the oldest and most prestigious academic pediatric organization in North America. Members are elected to APS based on their accomplishments as academic leaders in pediatrics and goal to shape the future of academic pediatrics. Mark L. Batshaw, M.D., physician-in-chief and chief academic officer of Children’s National preceded Dr. Steinhorn as APS President from 2016-2017.

“This is a tremendous honor, and it is a special privilege to follow Dr. Batshaw’s sound leadership. I look forward to leveraging the collective leadership and research accomplishments by our members to improve the health of infants and children throughout the U.S.,” said Dr. Steinhorn.

Dr. Steinhorn joined Children’s National in 2015 after a successful tenure as professor and chair of the department of pediatrics at the University of California, Davis (UCD) School of Medicine and as physician-in-chief, UCD Children’s Hospital. Previously, she was vice chair of the department of pediatrics and chief of the division of neonatology at Northwestern University and the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Dr. Steinhorn’s clinical and academic interests have focused primarily on fetal and neonatal pulmonary vascular development. Her translational work has spanned from in vitro studies, to experimental models and clinical trials. In addition to her own translational research program, she has participated in numerous multicenter trials that have helped define the clinical treatment of pulmonary hypertension during the neonatal period. Her clinical research work also has addressed other topics, such as harmonization of electronic health records for clinical research and telemedicine support of neonatal care in small rural hospitals.

Additionally, Dr. Steinhorn is particularly passionate about mentoring faculty and supporting the growth and career development of young neonatologists and scientists, with several having developed their own research laboratories and assumed division leadership positions. She was selected as a “Top Doctor” by Northern Virginia  Magazine in 2018.