Dear Colleagues,
The month of May has presented many challenges! However, we have remained positive, focusing on providing the best care for the children and families. Sometimes we've come together in new ways, like Friday Yoga or through the Buddy System established through our Children's Wellness initiative. We've also continued to come together in familiar ways, like weekly Grand Rounds and the recent Day of Scholarship.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has been a flashlight, shining on healthcare disparities as noted by the disproportionate number of African American and Latino patients hospitalized. The world our kids see right now is confusing and very disturbing. The
American Academy of Pediatrics
has issued a policy statement,
"The Impact of Racism on Child and Adolescent Health."
The consequences of racism and how it impacts our well-being are profound. The children are relying on each of us to protect, educate, and strengthen them to better cope with the world around them.
Adaptation and growth are the outcomes of these challenging times. We may feel powerless to much of the chaos around us, but it's important to remember that we are in this together and we will persevere.
As pediatricians, we must stand up for equity. Our children are depending on us.
Sincerely,
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UNC Children's Missions Update
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Please Welcome our New Children's Providers!
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Sandeep Sainathan, MD
Assistant Professor
Cardiothoracic Surgery - Congenital Cardiac Surgery
Dr. Sainathan received his medical degree from the Bangalore Medical College in 2005 with Highest Honors. He then completed his general surgery residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY. Following this, he pursued cardiothoracic surgical residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Sainathan received additional subspecialty training in cardiopulmonary transplantation and mechanical circulatory support at The University of Pittsburgh and congenital cardiac surgery at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL.
At the conclusion of his congenital cardiac surgery fellowship, he joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh as Assistant Professor of Surgery focusing in heart-lung transplantation and pediatric heart surgery. He was subsequently recruited to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, TN where he was an Assistant Professor in Surgery and the Surgical Director of Pediatric Cardiac ECMO. In addition, Dr. Sainathan is currently the principal investigator for a prospective, open label, single arm, multi-center study to assess the pharmacokinetics/ pharmacodynamics and safety of different Cangrelor doses in neonatal subjects at risk of thrombosis.
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Phillip Clapp, PhD
Assistant Professor
Pediatric Allergy & Immunology
Dr. Clapp joins the Department of Pediatrics on June 1st. He is working primarily as a researcher with the Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma, and Lung Biology (CEMALB). Dr. Clapp earned his undergraduate and post-graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has spent the past two years working as a postdoctoral research fellow in the CEMALB at UNC where he studied the effects of e-cigarette use on mucociliary clearance in healthy adults using gamma scintigraphy.
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Rebecca Matthews, MD
Professor
Pediatric Emergency Medicine
Dr. Rebecca Matthews will join the Pediatric Division of Emergency Medicine as a Professor on June 15th. Dr. Matthews is a pediatric emergency medicine physician recently relocating from Grand Strand Medical Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. As medical director, she established the pediatric emergency program in that growing community. Dr. Matthews has been a physician for twenty years, including being a former associate pediatric program residency director for ten years at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio. She obtained her undergraduate degree in psychology at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois and obtained her medical degree from Rush Medical College of Rush University, Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Matthews received her pediatric training at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and completed her pediatric emergency medicine fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Now in North Carolina, Dr. Matthews is committed to providing quality and compassionate medical care to the children of Chapel Hill and its surrounding communities.
In her spare time, Dr. Matthews enjoys spending time with her family, husband Kelvin and their three children Kyree 16, Kavanah, 8 and Kyle 5 and new puppy “Kyla”
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April Smithwick,
NNP-BC
Advanced Practice Practitioner
Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
April Smithwick joins the Department of Pediatrics on June 29th. She will be working as a Nurse Practitioner in the North Carolina Children’s Hospital’s Newborn Critical Care Center (NCCC)
. Ms. Smithwick earned her undergraduate degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Charlotte. She earned her Masters of Nursing from the Univeirsty of Florida. Ms. Smithwick worked as a Neonatal Nurse Practition for 5 years at UF Health in Jacksonville, Florida before returning to North Carolina to the NICU at Mission Hospital in Asheville.
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Psychiatry e-Consults
UNC Department of Psychiatry is pleased to announce that we are now offering
ambulatory
eConsults. As described by the
UNC Virtual Care Center
, an eConsult is a specific Epic referral type and process initiated by a provider who is requesting specialty guidance in the diagnosis, management or treatment of their patient.
eConsults are like curbside consultations, but can occur without the referring clinician and specialist already knowing each other and being available at the same place and time. They are best utilized for focused clinical questions that specialists can answer using solely the information available in Epic, without seeing the patient.
UNC Department of Psychiatry providers will respond to eConsult requests within 2 business days. Ambulatory eConsults to the Department of Psychiatry for pediatric patients are placed using the order
“AMB E-CONSULT TO PEDIATRIC PSYCHIATRY.”
We are happy to provide this service for our colleagues and your patients, who will benefit from the fast, convenient, and low-cost access to our services that eConsults provide!
For further questions regarding eConsults in the Department of Psychiatry, please contact Dr. Nate Sowa at
nate_sowa@med.unc.edu
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Join us for Resident Graduation!
Congratulations to Each of You!
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Virtual Graduation
Saturday, June 13th at 2:00p
Meeting ID: 917 5238 4861
Password: 710313
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Introduction into the UNC School of Medicine
Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society
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Residents
- Jennifer Gutierrez-Wu
- Zach Pettigrew
- Tiffany St. Clair
- Melissa Wooten
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Chief Resident
Attending
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Bagley Selected For Fellowship in Office of the National Coordinator For Health Information Technology
Kiri Bagley
, MD, MPH, UNC pediatric nephrology fellow has been chosen for a fellowship with
AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships
(STPF) that will enable her to train with the Department of Health and Human Services. Bagley will serve as Clinical Informatics Fellow, taking a lead role in alleviation of clinician burden related to health IT, which will include communication with various stakeholders and analysis of outstanding priority areas for burden reduction.
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Read More...
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The Academy of Educators, housed in the Office of Faculty Affairs and Leadership Development, has recently accepted 15 new members from the Department of Pediatrics.
Congratulations!
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Stuart Gold, MD, Professor,
Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Vice Chair for Diversity and Inclusion
Dr. Gold has been elected
Chair of the
Faculty Diversity Council
. The council was established to ask as an advisory board to the Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The council acts as a body of experts charged with carrying out the mission and directives of the School of Medicine’s strategic plan for diversity and inclusion.
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Colin Orr, MD. MPH, Assistant Professor
General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
Dr. Orr has been selected as a faculty fellow in the
Obesity Health Disparities PRIDE (OHD PRIDE) program at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. This research training and mentoring program is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). This comprehensive two-year program will provide core skills training in research methods, scientific communication, and grantsmanship associated with community-based investigations addressing obesity disparities.
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Julie Byerley, MD, MPH, Professor
Vice Dean for Academic Affairs & UNC SOM Chief Education Officer
Dr. Byerley has been selected as one of only sixteen members across the nation to share her wisdom and energies as part of the
Inaugural Cohort of the National Academy of Distinguished Educators in Pediatrics (NADEP). Dr. Byerley, professor of pediatrics, has been chosen after careful peer review by expert educators outside the field of pediatrics. Reviewers were impressed by the depth and breadth of educational experiences, expertise and contributions to the field demonstrated by Dr. Byerley.
Affiliated with the
Academic Pediatric Association
, the purpose of NADEP is to recognize elite medical educators, foster exchange and dissemination of innovative ideas, and to accelerate the development of junior and mid-career educators. Members of the Academy will harness their collective talent and energy to build a strong academic foundation for future educators by consultation and review, coaching and mentorship, and dissemination of cutting edge ideas as Visiting Professors, as well as engaging in strategic thought leadership to impact the professional development of pediatric educators.
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Kenya McNeal-Trice, MD, Professor
General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Director, Pediatric Residency Program
ELAM® is the only longitudinal program in North America dedicated to preparing women for senior leadership roles in schools of medicine, dentistry, public health and pharmacy. The prestigious program is dedicated to developing the professional and personal skills required to lead and manage in today's complex health care environment, with special attention to the unique challenges facing women in leadership positions. The ELAM program has been specially developed for senior women faculty at the associate or full professor level who demonstrate the greatest potential for assuming executive leadership positions at academic health centers within the next five years.
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Anna Vergun, MD, Assistant Professor
Pediatric Orthopaedics and Orthopaedic Surgery
Dr. Vergun has been elected the incoming
President
of the
Association of Children's Prosthetic and Orthotic Clinics (ACPOC)
.
The ACPOC stemmed from origins over 50 years ago when a subcommittee was formed of the National Academy of Sciences and the Prosthetic Research and Development Committee. The goal was to raise the standard of prosthetic care for children in the US by evaluating experimental components, disseminating information, and establishing criteria for clinic.
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Just Medicine - Racial Inequity Book Club
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Get outside, Buy healthy, Talk it out
Dr. Kori Flower, General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, talks with WRAL about helping children cope with the lifestyle changes that managing COVID has demanded...
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Not more Oreos, Doritos and Goldfish
There's been a lot of comfort eating during these last few months. We're buying more Oreos, Doritos and Goldfish . And we're baking so many loaves of bread, cookies and cakes that it can be hard to find flour, yeast and other baking supplies at...
Read more
www.wral.com
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Check Out These New Awards and Publications
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Kori Flower, MD and Skye McLaurin-Jiang, MD – General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
- received an NC TraCS award to study
“Car Seat Tolerance Screening in United States Newborn Nurseries: Failure Rates and Risk Factors”.
Colin Orr, MD, MPH and Skye McLaurin-Jiang, MD – General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
- in collaboration with
Shaundreal Jamison, MD
, an Assistant Professor at Brody School of Medicine at EDU, have had their manustript
"
Diversity of Mentorship to Increase Diversity in Academic Pediatrics" accepted for publication in the journal
Pediatrics.
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Featured Award
Neal deJong, MD, MPH - General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
- has received f
unding
to host a
"
Regional Complex Care Convening"
.
This project is in collaboration with
David Ming, MD with the Department of Pediatrics at Duke University.
This project focuses on children and youth with special healthcare needs (CYSHCN) and children with medical complexity (CMC) and the lack of integration of health and community services. They plan to build on the momentum generated from the NC Integrated Care for Kids (NC InCK) award received in December 2019.
This
7-year, $16 million award from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service
will implement a child-centered, integrated service delivery and state payment model aimed at reducing expenditures and improving quality for ~100,000 Medicaid-insured children in a pilot five-county area by integrating care across core child service areas, including Title V, schools, food, housing, child welfare, and legal aid. Duke and UNC – co-hosts for this proposed conference – are co-leading NC InCK with NC Medicaid.
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Juanita Ramierz, Lead Clinical Research Associate - Pediatric Hematology/Oncology
Nominated by
Stuart Gold MD, Professor & Division Chief - Pediatric
Hematology/Oncology
Juanita runs our clinical trials operations - and what a task that is.
She oversees five incredible folks who help her in this task. With over 80 clinical trials through the IRB, it is no small feat to
assure that the trials are run appropriately, to ensure that all data is submitted correctly and in a timely fashion, and to oversee all the regulatory efforts. She does all this with a smile and always trying to help the division in a number of ways - web site design, fundraising, making sure new protocols are put into EPIC, keeping morale up - she is essential to our operations and still coming in with COVID-19 around.
She is generous, kind, approachable, always on call to help and a friend to all. She has a tremendous job and does a tremendous job. She has my utmost respect and admiration.
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