Children’s of Alabama and the UAB Pediatrics Residency Program will host the 11th annual Spring Scramble 5K on Saturday, April 22. The 5K begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Levite Jewish Community Center, followed by a Fun Run at 6:30 p.m.The registration fee is $20 for UAB and Children’s employees; $25 for the general public and free for children under 12 with an adult entry. The registration fee covers a 5K T-shirt and goodie bag. To register, visit www.springscramble.org.
Rachael Tindell, M.D., second year fellow in Neonatology, was recently selected for the PAS Travel Awards Program for Young Investigator's. The award supports travel to the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA, on May 6 - 9. Her work is establishing the importance of adequate selenium content for activation of antioxidant responses by thioredoxin reductase inhibitors in pulmonary epithelia. For information on this award, click here.
The Benevolent Fund, has supported our community and UAB employees in need for 32 years. UAB employees are able to give by continuous payroll deduction, one-time payroll deduction, check donation, or stock/dividend transfer. Your gift can be designated to as many as three programs from over 130 partnering non-profits.See the list of new nonprofits added this year. Undesignated funds support the Employee Emergency Assistance Program and United Way of Central Alabama Agency Grants. This year the overall campaign goal is to raise $2.1 million. The 2017 School of Medicine goal is to raise $500,000. Help us reach our goal by giving where you live, work and play.
The UAB 2017 Benevolent Fund Medicine campaign runs through April 30. Sara Davies is the Department Representative. Please contact her with questions.
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David Galloway, M.D., Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition, and Megan V. Yanik, M.D., Pediatric Nephrology Fellow, recently completed the Clinical Investigator Training Program (CITP). The CITP is designed to be a hands-on didactic and pragmatic training and education program to prepare young investigators in the conduct and implementation of human subject research. The general outline of the program was not only to review the key topics of designing, preparing, conducting and overseeing a clinical trial, but also navigating UAB’s regulatory and research support infrastructure.
March was Brain Injury Awareness Month and the UAB Division of Pediatric Rehabilitation Medicine (PRM) celebrated by setting up an information booth in the lobby of Children’s Harbor. Each year more than 3.5 million children and adults sustain an acquired brain injury, and brain injury continues to be the leading cause of acquired disability in childhood. The UAB Division of PRM provides services for children and adolescents with a wide variety of acquired brain injuries due to sports related concussion, trauma, stroke, brain tumor, and infection, among others, and acquired brain injury is the most common diagnosis for patients receiving intensive inpatient rehabilitation at Children’s of Alabama.Pictured right: Janet Ezekiel, Children's of Alabama Sunshine School, and Angela Hamby, Nurse Clinician, Children's of Alabama and UAB Division of Pediatric Rehab Medicine
Brian Sims, M.D., Ph.D., Neonatology, recently received the Outstanding Alumni Award from the UAB Department of Biology. Dr. Sims will be honored at the UAB Alumni House at a special Spring Awards Presentation Luncheon on April 24.
David E. Dixon, a long-time member of the Children’s of Alabama Board of Trustees, has been honored for his service with the establishment of an endowed chair in his name.Dixon began his volunteer leadership service at Children’s in 1998, serving on the Board’s Research and Education Committee, Executive Committee and as an officer of the Alabama Children’s Hospital Foundation. He has contributed to the community through his commitment to numerous philanthropic boards, especially his family’s foundation, the Dixon Foundation. The Dixon Foundation has a strong partnership with the UAB Department of Pediatrics, including its support of the Dixon Fellowship Training program.
Reed Allen Dimmitt, M.D., is the first holder of the David E. Dixon Endowed Chair in Pediatric Gastroenterology. Dr. Dimmitt is a professor in the UAB Department of Pediatrics, the director of the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, and the medical director of Children’s Intensive Feeding Program. In addition, Dr. Dimmitt will serve as the president of the Children’s of Alabama medical staff and chair of the medical executive committee beginning in January 2018. Dimmitt’s research includes mucosal immunology, the role of intestinal microbiota in the pathogenesis of injury, and the causes of intestinal failure associated liver disease.
Read the story on Childrensal.org.
Join us in welcoming Samuel P. Hopper, M.D., to the UAB Department of Pediatrics!Samuel Hopper, M.D., Assistant Professor in Pediatric Neurology, earned his medical degree from Tulane School of Medicine. He completed his pediatric residency at UAB. He joins us from Jackson, Mississippi, where he worked with Children’s Medical Group, Batson Children’s Hospital and University of Mississippi Medical Center, and Mississippi Baptist Medical Center. His clinical and research interest is headaches in children. He sees headache patients at Children's South.
In January 2017, representatives from the Pediatric Simulation Center at Children’s of Alabama and the Office of Interprofessional Simulation accepted the certificate designating the UAB Simulation Consortium as accredited in Research, Education/Teaching, and Systems Integration by the Society of Simulation in Healthcare. Members of the Children's of Alabama and UAB simulation community traveled to the International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare to accept this designation (pictured right). For more information on UAB Simulation Consortium, visit http://www.uab.edu/simulation/uab-simulation-consortium.
A new study from UAB suggests that women at risk of preterm delivery, from as early as 23 weeks of pregnancy, should receive corticosteroids due to strong associations with a lower rate of death and serious illness for their babies. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, says that very premature babies seem to benefit the most from the steroids, even those born at 23 weeks of gestation.“Indeed, the benefits of antenatal corticosteroids were substantially larger for infants born at the lowest gestations, including less than 28-week infants, for which data from randomized controlled trials are most limited,” said Wally Carlo, M.D., senior investigator of the study and director of the UAB Division of Neonatology.
Compared to babies born at term, premature babies carry a greater risk of death or serious complications after birth, with problems tending to be more severe the earlier a baby is born. Infants exposed to antenatal corticosteroids had lower mortality and lower rates of brain bleeding.
Colm Travers, M.D., third-year fellow in the UAB Division of Neonatology and principal investigator of the study, and a team of researchers analyzed data for 117,941 infants born between 23 and 34 weeks of gestation from 2009 to 2013 at 300 neonatal intensive care units across the United States. Death or major illness was analyzed by gestational age and exposure to antenatal corticosteroids, adjusting for factors such as birth weight, sex, mode of delivery and multiple births.
Read the story at UAB News.