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The Chu Family has generously donated funds to Children's of Alabama and the Department of Pediatrics to support educational initiatives. A portion of this donation has been set aside for the pediatric fellows to fund scholarships for fellows who apply. The selection committee for the Chu Family Educational Scholarship recently met on Friday, May 17th, and selected two fellows to receive this scholarship. Candidates were selected on a competitive basis. These awards will provide funds for tuition, books and fees related to their educational endeavors.

Please join us in congratulating the Chu Family Educational Scholarship recipients for the 2019-2020 academic year:

Jennifer Hoefert, M.D. – Upcoming Second Year Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellow.
Dr. Hoefert will use the scholarship towards completing a UAB Quality Academy Certificate Course.

Hannah Hulsey, M.D. – Upcoming Second Year Adolescent Medicine Fellow.
Dr. Hulsey will use the scholarship towards completing an Individualized Curriculum to enhance health disparities education which includes Community Engagement Training and conferences directed at health disparities and health equity.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have been awarded a $6.38 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to determine the long-term burden of morbidity borne by blood cancer patients treated with or without blood or marrow transplantation, or BMT.  

In 2018, an estimated 175,000 individuals were diagnosed with a hematologic malignancy — or blood cancer, such as leukemia, myeloma or lymphoma — in the United States. Such cancers are typically managed through high-intensity chemotherapy with or without radiation. Patients with progressive disease or high risk of relapse are treated with even higher-intensity chemotherapy/radiation and BMT.

“Survival rates after BMT are improving at the rate of 10 percent per decade — steady improvements in outcome have resulted in a growing number of BMT survivors, a population uniquely vulnerable to long-term life-threatening chronic morbidity,” said Smita Bhatia, M.D., Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, principal investigator of the study, director of the Institute for Cancer Outcomes and Survivorship, and senior scientist in the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center. “A better understanding of post-BMT health care needs could result in the deployment of targeted strategies that yield better quality of survival and reduced utilization of health care resources.”

The study will construct a cohort of more than 10,000 patients treated with BMT between 1974 and 2014 at three transplant sites — UAB, University of Minnesota and City of Hope — as well as a cohort of 3,000 patients treated with conventional therapy without BMT, which will amount to the largest cohort ever studied.

Read full story at UAB News

James Statler, M.D., First Year Fellow-Pediatric Emergency Medicine, was awarded a Society for Pediatric Sedation Scholarly Grant for the Intranasal Versus Intravenous Ketamine for Procedural Sedation in Children with Non-Operative Fractures: A Prospective Randomized Study. Co-authors include Christopher Pruitt, M.D., Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Judson Barber, M.D., Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Nipam Shah, Scientist, Pediatric Emergency Medicine. The grant provides $10,000 to support their study.

Congratulations!

The Dixon Foundation supports the Dixon Pediatric Fellowship training program for fellows who intend to pursue an academic career with a research emphasis in approved pediatric subspecialties. As part of this prestigious award, recipients benefit from salary support and an additional $5,000 per year discretionary fund to support research and continuing education activities. The selection committee for the Dixon Fellowship recently met and selected three fellows. Candidates were selected on a competitive basis. 

Please join us in congratulating the recipients for the 2019-2020 academic year:

Aditi Dhir, M.D., Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Title: Combination of epigenetic modifiers with tyrosine kinase inhibitors in flt3-itd acute myeloid leukemia. She will be investigating the potential synergy of epigenetic molecules with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) in FLT3- ITD mutated AML) with the eventual goal of translating the findings from the lab to clinical trials that could benefit patients in the near future. Her mentor is Dr. Ravi Bhatia, Director, UAB Division of Hematology/Oncology. 

Veronica Godsey, M.D., Pediatric Critical Care, Title: Deliberate Practice to improve interdisciplinary communication- a pilot study. She will be working closely with resident physicians and teaching Verbal Juda, a unique conflict management technique by using deliberate practice in a simulated environment. Her mentors are Dr. Chrystal Rutledge, Program Director of the COACHES program and Dr. Nancy Tofil, Division Director of Pediatric Critical Care.
 
Charles Schlappi, M.D., Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Title: Oncolytic HSV against pediatric brain tumor. His research involves evaluating the role of immunotherapy for highly fatal brain tumors, high grade gliomas and diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). His mentor is Dr. Gregory Friedman, Director of Developmental Therapeutics, Neuro-Oncology Program

Those continuing their Dixon Fellowship are:
 
Nazia Kabani, M.D., Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Neonatology, and Abdulsalam Alsulami, M.D., Pediatric Infectious Diseases.

Graduating Dixon Fellows are:
 
Neha Gupta, M.D., Pediatric Critical Care, is joining to Oklahoma University Children’s as an assistant professor
Samantha Hill, M.D., MPH, Adolescent Medicine, will be joining our Division of Adolescent Medicine in July as an assistant professor
Cali Reynolds, M.D., Pediatric Allergy & Immunology, who will be joining a practice in New York City. 

Ed Colvin, M.D., Pediatric Cardiology, was selected for the 2019 Dean's Excellence Award in Service, Senior Faculty. Dr. Colvin is one of eighteen outstanding faculty members named as recipients of the 2019 Dean’s Excellence Awards, an honor recognizing exceptional contributions made by School of Medicine faculty in service, teaching, research, diversity enhancement and mentorship. All recipients will be honored at a reception on Tuesday, June 11 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Barbara and Edward Partridge Atrium. 

Click here to see the complete list of winners.

Congratulations Dr. Colvin! 

Julie Wolfson, M.D., Pediatric Hematology Oncology, serves as the pediatric hematology/oncology editor (section expert) for the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Resident 360 Platform for rotation prep. Her team recently launched the rotation prep content for both pediatric hematology and oncology. Several UAB trainees provided significant contributions to this content. Aman Wadhwa, M.D., Third Year Fellow-Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, served as a writer and Charlie Schlappi, M.D., Second Year Fellow-Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Aditi Dhir, M.D., Second Year Fellow-Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Anna Hoppmann, M.D., First Year Fellow-Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, and Spencer Poore, M.D., 2017-2018 Chief Resident, served as peer reviewers. 

Click here for the general content for Resident 360
Click here for the oncology content 
Click here for the hematology content

Congratulations to Drs. Wolfson, Wadhwa, Schlappi, Dhir, Hoppmann and Poore!

We are pleased to announce that Elizabeth “Liz” Worthey, Ph.D., will be joining the Department of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology as the director for the Center for Genomic Data Sciences in the Departments of Pediatrics and Pathology in the School of Medicine. She will join UAB at the beginning of June 2019. As part of her secondary appointment in the Department of Pathology, Dr. Worthey will serve as the director of the Bioinformatics Section in the Division of Genomics Diagnostics and Bioinformatics. She will also serve as the associate director for the Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute.

She is currently a faculty investigator and director of Software Development and Informatics at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama. Prior to her position at HudsonAlpha, Dr. Worthey served as an assistant professor in pediatrics and the director of Genomic Informatics for the Human and Molecular Genetics Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Dr. Worthey received her Ph.D. at the Imperial College London in London, England and completed her postdoctoral training at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute and the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Her research interests include the development and application of omic, informatic, and data science based methods and technologies in order to identify and understand causal molecular variation in rare, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed disease. Her lab also focuses on the identification and study of variation that alters an individual's response to therapeutics or modifies clinical presentation, progression, and/or outcome.

We are excited for Dr. Worthey to bring her expertise in diagnostics, genome informatics and data science to UAB and the Departments of Pediatrics and Pathology and look forward to her leadership in expanding our informatics and precision medicine goals to improve the clinical care of the children of Alabama.  

Congratulations to our UAB Pediatric Fellowship Class of 2019. Thank you to all who helped us celebrate the graduates at a reception in their honor on May 30th. Please see below where they will be going after completing fellowship training.

Shaundra Blakemore, M.D. - Pediatric Emergency Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Heather Choat, M.D. - Pediatric Endocrinology, Private Practice, Dothan, AL
Matt Clark, M.D. - Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Leslie Collins, M.D. - Pediatric Cardiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Jacinta Cooper, M.D., Ph.D. - Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Emory/Children’s Hospital, Atlanta, GA
Courtney Crayne, M.D. - Pediatric Rheumatology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Kalsang Dolma, M.D. - Neonatology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL
Karisa Grizzle, M.D. - Pediatric Hospital Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
Neha Gupta, M.D. - Pediatric Critical Care, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK
Samantha Hill, M.D., MPH - Adolescent Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Jason Payne, M.D., MSPH - Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA
Cali Reynolds, M.D. - Allergy and Immunology, Private Practice, Manhattan, NY
Brandon Seay, M.D., MPH - Pediatric Pulmonology/Sleep Medicine, Private Practice, Atlanta, GA
Jennifer Smedley, DO - Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Colorado, Denver, CO        
Thanh Summerlin, M.D. - Neonatology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Sai Surapa Raju, M.D. - Pediatric Critical Care, Cardiac Critical Care Fellowship, UAB, Birmingham, AL
Saurabh Talathi, M.D., MPH - Pediatric Gastroenterology, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK
Aman Wadhwa, M.D., MSPH - Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Lauren Wagner, DO - Pediatric Hospital Medicine, Beverly Knight Olson Children’s Hospital, Macon, GA
Hansa Wongprasert, M.D. - Neonatology, Private Practice, Mercy Medical Center, Merced, CA

2019 CHIEF RESIDENTS
John Mark Bouchillon, M.D. - General Pediatrics, Colorado Springs, CO
Robert Sellers, M.D. - General Pediatrics, Birmingham AL
Karlene Walker, M.D. - Fellowship, Behavioral & Development Pediatrics, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC

We are excited to welcome Andrea Martin as the Senior Director of Development for Pediatrics. For the last two years, Andrea, in her previous role with the Children’s Foundation, has been partnering with UAB to raise support for the Department of Pediatrics. In her new position, Andrea is now dedicated 100% to our department and pediatric initiatives. Her 15-plus years of development experience with the Children’s Foundation and 11 years at UAB previously, uniquely positions her to take on the task of building philanthropy for our department. This change is a value-add to the great work the Children’s Foundation is already doing for the DOP. You may reach Andrea at amartin@uab.eduor 4-9303 with any development needs.

The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the 2019 Russell Cunningham Memorial Research Program recipients Kristin Deneen and Avery Newcomb. 

Kristin Deneen will work on the “Evaluating Care and Outcomes in Childhood-Onset Systemic Lupus Erythematosus” project in Rheumatology with Emily Smitherman, M.D., Pediatric Rheumatology. 

Avery Newcomb will work on the “Cardboard Cot in Neonatal Thermoregulatrion (CCot): A Randomized Crossover Trial” project in Neonatology with Wally Carlo, M.D., Neonatology.

For more information about the Russell Cunningham Memorial Research Program, click here.