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Dr. Sallie Permar, top pediatrician and a parent, shares why she vaccinated her children and reminds parents to keep their kids protected - especially since COVID-19 is already circulating around.

Pediatricians highly recommended vaccination for children from 6 months to 18 years old.

Here's What We Know: Parents want to keep their kids healthy and missing school is hard on the entire family. Vaccination helps prevent or lessen symptoms and reduces the risk of passing it on to others.

If your child isn't feeling well or you're unsure about what to do, talk to your pediatrician for more guidance.

Watch Dr. Permar's video to learn more.

Remember the novel coronavirus? A virus never before seen in humans? Remember the lockdowns, social distancing and masks that were our only means of protecting ourselves from that deadly new virus?  

In the midst of  the greatest public health emergency since the flu pandemic of 1918, scientists took a new  vaccine  technology, based on mRNA, and ran with it.  

Among preterm newborns, greater exposure to the mother’s voice after birth appeared to speed up the maturation of a key language-related brain circuit, in a small clinical trial conducted by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, Burke Neurological Institute and Stanford Medicine. The finding provides direct experimental support for the idea that a mother’s voice promotes her child’s early language-related brain development. It also hints that boosting exposure to maternal speech might ameliorate the language development delays often seen among children born prematurely.

The study, published Oct. 14 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, included 46 preterm infants who were born at just 24 to 31 weeks gestational age. Half received routine exposure to the mother’s voice, while the other half had routine exposure augmented with multiple daily audio recordings of the mother’s voice. Later MRI scans of the infants’ brains suggested significantly greater maturation in the left arcuate fasciculus, a brain circuit known to be involved in speech and language processing.

“Kangaroo care,” or skin-to-skin contact, may be neuroprotective and is associated with neonatal development in areas of the brain involved in emotional regulation in preterm infants, according to a new preliminary study from Weill Cornell Medicine, Burke Neurological Institute and Stanford Medicine investigators. Even short sessions correlated with noticeable effects on brain imaging scans, which is important because more than half of preterm infants have risk for neurodevelopmental impairment.  

The findings of the retrospective study, published Sept. 24 in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, could ultimately lead to better neurological outcomes for preterm infants and a wider adoption of kangaroo care in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).

A multi-institutional team led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators has been awarded a five-year, $20.8 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, for advanced preclinical development of a promising experimental HIV vaccine.

A successful vaccine to prevent new HIV infections would be a major public health breakthrough. About 1.3 million people acquired HIV in 2024, according to the World Health Organization, and at the end of that year an estimated 41 million people were living with the virus. Medication can keep individuals healthy but must be taken for a lifetime.

woman in a white coat

Dr. Sallie Permar. Credit: Brad Trent

The new academic year is around the corner. You know who your child’s new teacher is, and you have the supply list. It’s also time to consider what vaccines are required for school. Why do kids need vaccines? 

“Vaccines are a tool that pediatricians use to help teach someone’s immune system,” says Dr. Sean Cullen, instructor in Pediatrics and Pediatric Scientist Development Program research fellow at Weill Cornell Medicine. “There are upwards of 20 vaccine-preventable diseases today—20 diseases children aren’t getting at the rates they did before the development of vaccines.” 

In a large hotel conference room at the end of February, hundreds of pediatrician scientists from all points urban and rural alike across the U.S. gathered to showcase their research, meet with mentors, and celebrate each other. The room was buzzing with energy, stemming from sparks of curiosity and pride. It would not be hyperbole to note that the some of the brightest minds and most noble physicians in pediatric research sat in the room that day, all members of a 40-year strong cohort of the Pediatric Scientist Development Program (PSDP).

For over four decades, PSDP has served as a vital pipeline for early-career pediatricians pursuing research careers aimed at improving child health around chronic disease and illness. Under the leadership of Dr. Sallie Permar, a distinguished physician-scientist and national leader in pediatric infectious disease research, the PSDP has continued to thrive as one of the most well- regarded training programs for pediatrician scientists in the United States.

The PSDP was designed to fill a critical gap, removing barriers to research access and training, including limited time, funding, and mentorship. The program provides a structured, intensive yet supportive environment in which early-career physicians receive dedicated mentorship, protected research time, and funding that allows them to pursue rigorous scientific training in basic, translational, or population health sciences.

When Ashley Merchant was four months pregnant, she and her husband, Mark, put on hold the celebrations they had planned for their baby’s arrival — the baby shower, the hospital visits from family, and the welcome home party. “I wasn’t really sure what the outcome would be, so we kept quiet for a while,” says Ashley. “Things were just not normal or happy for a long time.”

Ashley learned early in her pregnancy that she could face serious challenges. Eight weeks in, an ultrasound test indicated the baby was at risk of a chromosomal, structural or genetic condition. She and Mark were living in Maine at the time and raising their first child, Emmett, but given the complexity of her case, they started searching online for experts in other cities. Many people recommended Dr. Julianne Lauring, an OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Ashley grew up in the New York area, so when they visited home for Thanksgiving in 2023, she scheduled an appointment.

“Ashley came to my clinic where I have bedside ultrasounds, and as soon as I put the ultrasound on her belly, I knew there were some serious complications that we needed to consider,” says Dr. Lauring. “She told me to do anything we could to give her baby a chance.”

COVID-19 prevention methods such as masking and social distancing also suppressed the circulation of common respiratory diseases, leaving young children lacking immunity to pathogens they otherwise would have been exposed to, a new multi-center clinical research study reveals. The investigators say their findings help explain the large post-pandemic rebound in these diseases and enable more accurate predictions for the future.

Jennifer Weiss’s path to medicine began as a young child, when an ambulance responded to her New Jersey home to care for her dad, who has heart disease. During the scary episode, one of Weiss’s earliest memories, the emergency medical technicians and paramedics offered empathy and compassion and put everyone at ease.

Inspired to help others, Weiss trained as an EMT at age 16 and joined her local first aid squad. But she quickly realized that she wanted more.

“I wanted to have a greater impact on my patients than just the short ride to the hospital,” she said, “where my knowledge and skills stopped and the receiving physician’s skills took over.”

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