News | Page 15 | Pediatrics

Weill Cornell Medicine Faculty Named AAAS Fellows

February 1, 2023

Two Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members, Dr. David Lyden, the Stavros S. Niarchos Professor in Pediatric Cardiology, and Dr. Harel Weinstein, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Physiology and Biophysics and past chair of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Drs. Lyden and Weinstein were among 506 scientists—including 10 from Cornell’s Ithaca Campus—elected this year as fellows of the AAAS, the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society. The fellowship is a prestigious, lifetime honor that recognizes members for their outstanding scientific or social efforts to advance science or its applications.

Department of Pediatric Providers Make 2023 Castle Connolly Top Doctors List

January 26, 2023

The Top Doctors list is created each year by Castle Connolly to help people find the best-in-class healthcare providers in their city. Castle Connolly's Top Doctor directory allows patients to search not only by doctors and hospitals in their area, but by other factors such as specialty, conditions, insurance and location.

Our doctors are listed among the top 1 percent of the nation’s physicians and among the top 10 percent of the region’s specialists by Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., a New York City research and information company that publishes the annual guidebooks America’s Top Doctors and Top Doctors: New York Metro Area, which informs New York Magazine’s annual “Top Doctors” issue.

The most important criterion for physician selection was excellence in patient care. Other criteria included education, residency, board-certification, fellowships, professional reputation, hospital affiliation, medical school faculty appointment, experience and disciplinary history.

We are thrilled to see so many physicians from the Department of Pediatrics on this pretigious list. Congratulations to you all!

Dr. Anjali Rajadhyaksha Awarded R01 to Identify New Mechanisms for Treating Opioid Dependence

January 23, 2023

Dr. Anjali Rajadhyaksha, professor of neuroscience in pediatrics and Associate Dean of Program Development and Dr. Francis Lee, interim Dean at Weill Cornell Medicine have been awarded an R01 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse their study entitled, “Circuit and Synaptic Mechanisms of Endocannabinoid-Opioid Crosstalk.”

The current opioid crisis has contributed to drug overdoses becoming the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50 years, with a constant increase in overdose deaths among adolescents. Opioids (morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl) remain the main line of medications for pain management, underscoring the urgent need for new non-opioid treatment options or adjuvant therapies that eliminate the addictive properties, but not the analgesic aspects of these medications.

Adolescence is an important developmental period between childhood and adulthood during which the brain is highly plastic and influenced by a variety of environmental factors. Exposure to substances of abuse during adolescence can impact the developing brain and lead to abnormalities in brain function including neurocognitive performance.

Two Weill Cornell Medicine Faculty Recognized with AAI Awards

January 18, 2023

This article was originaly published in the WCM Newsroom

Two Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members, Dr. Gregory Sonnenberg and Dr. Melody Zeng, are recipients of prestigious awards from the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) for their accomplishments in the field of immunology.

Dr. Sonnenberg is the 2023 recipient of the AAI-BD Biosciences Investigator Award, recognizing his outstanding contributions to the field of immunology as a mid-career scientist, and Dr. Zeng is a recipient of an AAI ASPIRE Award, recognizing her work as an early-career immunologist and potential for advancing the field of immunology. The AAI has been dedicated to advancing immunology to improve health and fostering development opportunities for immunologists since it was founded in 1913.

Dr. Kimberley Chien Promoted to Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics

January 10, 2023

The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the promotion of Kimberley Chien, M.D. to Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, effective December 1, 2022.

Dr. Chien is an Associate Attending Pediatrician at New York-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital and New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She is board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric gastroenterology. She received a B.S. in Neuroscience at Tufts University and earned her medical degree at SUNY-Downstate Medical College of Brooklyn. She completed her pediatric internship and residency training at NYU School of Medicine and attended New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center to complete fellowship training in Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition.

10 Ways to Keep your Child’s Digestive Tract Healthy this Holiday Season

December 16, 2022

This article was originally posted in the WCM Patient News

Stuffing and candy and pie, oh my! ‘Tis the season for overeating, and for eating too many of the “wrong” foods without enough of the right ones to counterbalance them. Seasonal excess is tough enough for our adult digestive tracts to handle, but our children may have an even harder time digesting all those tempting, less-than-healthy holiday offerings.

The good news is that there are plenty of steps parents can take to foster healthy eating while indulging in just a few holiday treats and a limitless amount of family fun.

Dr. Kimberley Chien, assistant attending pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s Phyllis and David Komansky Center for Children's Health and assistant professor of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, offers the following tips that will help keep your kids’ GI tracts in tip-top shape while building healthy eating habits for life.

Experimental Vaccines Offer Long-term Protection Against Severe COVID

December 2, 2022

This article was originally posted on the WCM Newsroom

In 2021, a group of scientists led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian reported that the Moderna mRNA vaccine and a protein-based vaccine candidate containing an adjuvant, a substance that enhances immune responses, elicited durable neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 during infancy in pre-clinical research.

Now a follow-up study by the same group, published Dec. 1 in Science Translational Medicine, has found that the 2-dose vaccines still provide protection against lung disease in rhesus macaques one year after they had been vaccinated as infants.

Drs. Sheila Carroll and Patrick Flynn Appointed Interim Co-Chiefs of Pediatric Cardiology

October 17, 2022

We are pleased to announce Sheila J. Carroll, M.D. and Patrick A. Flynn, M.D. have been named Interim Co-Chiefs of Pediatric Cardiology, effective October 1, 2022. Dr. Carroll, who serves as the Director Fetal Cardiology, and Dr. Flynn, who serves as the Director of the Echocardiography Lab, will provide proven leadership and oversight for the Division’s activities, including liaising with Department administration and supporting the Department’s vision and missions in patient care, research, and education as well as quality, diversity, and inclusion.

We are grateful for the excellence and innovation of current chief Dr. Ralf Holzer. Under Dr. Holzer’s leadership from 2017 to 2022, the Division dramatically grew its pediatric cardiac catheterization program, expanded its clinical Pediatric Cardiology practice to Lower Manhattan, strengthened relationships with partner departments and institutions, and achieved the first premature infant transcatheter PDA closure in Manhattan. We wish Dr. Holzer well in his future endeavors.

Karam, Nellis, Receive R34 Award for Platelet Transfusion Strategies Pilot Study

September 28, 2022

This article was originally posted in the Yale Medicine Newsroom.

In a first of its kind pilot study, Oliver Karam, MD, PhD, chief of pediatric critical care at Yale School of Medicine, and Marianne Nellis, MD, MS, associate professor in pediatric critical care at Weill Cornell Medicine, have been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study different platelet transfusion thresholds for children supported by ECMO machines (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation). The ECmo hemoSTAtic Transfusions In Children (ECSTATIC) pilot trial will test two different platelet transfusion strategies, based on two different platelet count thresholds in critically ill infants and children.

Patients have received blood transfusions since as far back as 1820 but they became more widely used on the battlefield during World War I. Ever since, people have been giving and receiving blood, but there are relatively few studies to help doctors determine when and how blood products may be used most effectively.

Understanding Polio's Emergence in New York

September 27, 2022

This article was originally posted in the WCM Newsroom.

Unlike COVID-19 or the flu, polio is entirely and permanently preventable. In fact, until this year, there had not been one case of polio that originated in this country since 1979. A case in 1993 was brought to these shores by someone who had traveled to a country where the disease was endemic.

As long as you and your children are vaccinated, you have nothing to worry about. But if you are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated, doctors and public health officials urge you to waste no time in getting the polio vaccine, which confers lifelong protection against a potentially disabling disease.

The public health picture

A handful of polio-caused paralysis cases in New York, London and Jerusalem may seem minor compared to the massive global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in public health terms, the recent polio outbreak is anything but minor. That’s because the poliovirus causes paralysis in fewer than 1 in 200 of the people it infects, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Think of the one case of paralysis in New York’s Rockland County as the tip of a very large iceberg.