Dr. Juhi Kumar
The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the appointment of Juhi Kumar, M.D., M.P.H. as Medical Director of the Pediatric Kidney Transplant Service in the Division of Pediatric Nephrology.
Dr. Kumar is an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics and Assistant Professor in Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine. She is an expert in conditions affecting the kidneys in children, from congenital structural kidney abnormalities, kidney diseases causing proteinuria and hematuria, high blood pressure and fluid and electrolyte disorders. She cares for patients across the spectrum of kidney disease from acute kidney injury to chronic kidney disease that ultimakidney ately require renal replacement therapy, including dialysis and transplant. Dr. Kumar is also an Assistant Attending Pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and NYP Phyllis and David Komansky Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Kumar will lead the Department’s pediatric kidney transplant team in all clinical and administrative aspects of running the pediatric kidney transplant program. Dr. Kumar looks forward to growing and expanding the program in collaboration with Dr. Sandip Kapur (Chief, Division of Transplant Surgery) and his team. The pediatric and surgical transplant team is working together on several approaches to ease the burden of the transplant process for patients and their families. These initiatives include a multidisciplinary clinic for pre-transplant evaluations, an enhanced transplant education program for families, and participation in multicenter research studies aimed at improving outcomes for our transplant patients.
Dr. Kumar received her medical degree (M.B.B.S.) from LLRM Medical College in India. She completed a residency in Pediatrics at SUNY-Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, and a fellowship in Pediatric Nephrology at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She also completed a Master’s in Public Health (M.P.H.) at the School of Public Health, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Along with her strong clinical expertise, Dr. Kumar participates in various research initiatives aimed at improving outcomes for children with kidney disease. Dr. Kumar is the Co-Principal investigator and along with her colleagues at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia leads VIRTUUS (Validating Injury in the Renal Transplant Using Urinary Signatures), one of the largest multicenter cohort studies in pediatric kidney transplant recipients in North America, funded by a R01 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The VIRTUUS study aims to validate in children the urinary biomarkers found to predict allograft injury in adult kidney transplant recipients. This study’s results will advance the ability to identify and characterize early allograft injury in pediatric kidney allograft recipients through non-invasive immune surveillance. By doing so, the study team hopes to create opportunities to better inform clinical decision-making and change practice paradigms to improve long-term kidney allograft outcomes.
Dr. Kumar serves as the site Principal Investigator for the North American Pediatric Renal Trials and Collaborative Studies (NAPRTCS) study, contributing valuable data from Weill Cornell Medicine’s kidney transplant patients to this registry, with the goal of improving the care of pediatric renal allograft recipients in North America. In addition, Dr. Kumar has received a career development award (K-23) from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to study vitamin D deficiency in chronic kidney disease and she continues to investigate the associations between vitamin D and growth and vitamin D and blood pressure in children with chronic kidney disease. She has received a number of pilot grant awards from Weill Cornell Medicine’s Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) including a collaborative award with Dr. Anuradha Gajjar at WCM and Dr. Danielle Novetsky Friedman at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to identify urinary biomarkers of kidney injury in pediatric neuroblastoma survivors.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Kumar to this new role.
Pediatric Kidney Transplant Program
https://weillcornell.org/services/kidney-and-pancreas-transplantation/pediatric-kidney-transplantation
212-746-1742