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The project focuses on creating an outreach event/day to a local middle school to help teach children more about nutrition, healthy eating habits, and to teach them about the medical field/pediatric GI. The goal is not only teach them about nutrition but also to hopefully spark interest in the medical field and also have kids see multiple diverse members/doctors who are part of this field who they may identify with. 

The DEI committee of NASPGHAN helped to make this event possible. The outreach day took place during the week of the NASPGHAN annual conference in Hollywood Florida. They plan to continue having this outreach event/day during future annual NASPGHAN conferences. This provides the ability to have multiple different volunteers/doctors/trainees/RD's and medical reps from different institutions/locations come together and participate in this event. 

This year they had multiple stations where the kids could rotate through and learn about high fiber foods, healthy food options, a smoothie making station, a station where they learned about constipation and how nutrition can be a way to treat this. They also had a station where we had members from EvoEndo come and teach children about a new scoping device/procedure (transnasal endoscopy) and where the kids had the opportunity to be hands on and use the transnasal endoscopy simulator. 

The Department of Pediatrics and the Departments of Ophthalmology and Neurology are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Dhristie Bhagat as Assistant Professor in the Division of Pediatric Neurology concurrently with an appointment as Assistant Professor in the Division of Neuro-ophthalmology, effective October 1, 2024. She will be seeing patients in both divisions.

Dr. Oliver Barry is a leader in pediatric cardiac catheterization and interventions and has been a faculty member at Columbia University since 2019. Dr. Barry received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his medical degree from Yale School of Medicine. He did a pediatric residency at Columbia University/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, followed by fellowships at Boston Children’s Hospital in pediatric cardiology and in sub-specialization in congenital interventional cardiology. He is active in several areas of clinical research, including the development of new devices and technology as well as quality improvement and outcomes research to measure and improve quality of care in the pediatric catheterization lab. Join us in welcoming Dr. Barry to his new leadership role.

Dr. Chani Traube, the Gerald M. Loughlin, MD Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded a $3.4 million grant, with the possibility of extending to a total of $17 million over five years, from the National Institutes of Health, for a large-scale clinical trial called Optimizing Pain Treatment in Children on Mechanical ventilation (OPTICOM).

OPTICOM, funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, is part of the NIH’s HEAL KIDS PAIN initiative. The OPTICOM study will enroll 644 children in 14 pediatric intensive care units across the United States that are part of the institute’s Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network. This randomized clinical trial is designed to determine if adding acetaminophen or ketorolac, together or separately, to opioid-based pain control reduces pain in children with acute respiratory failure.