News

Cynthia Perez, MD (PGY-3) and Sasha Licona- Freudenstein, MD (PGY-2) will serve as the new 2020-21 Pediatric Minority Housestaff Committee Chair and Vice Chair. (6/2020)

While most states have closed schools and made social distancing a priority to address the COVID-19  pandemic, parents may be wondering how they can help their children cope with being housebound and physically cut off from friends and family.

Sticking to a schedule, explaining the importance of social distancing in an age-appropriate manner, staying connected through technology, and seeking out mental health support by using telemedicine all can help.

In this time of uncertainty, the structure of a daily routine provides predictability, said Dr. Justin Mohatt, vice chair for child and adolescent psychiatry, vice chair for faculty practice of the Department of Psychiatry, and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Healthy & Happy: Khadijah Sabir gets a post-transplant check-up from her doctor, Dr. Eduardo Perelstein. Credit: Julia Xanthos Liddy

On Khadijah Sabir’s 11th birthday—surrounded by friends and family during a party in her honor at her Brooklyn elementary school, PS 177—she received what she calls “the best gift ever.” After months of incapacitating exhaustion due to chronic kidney disease, which necessitated at least 10 hours of dialysis every night for months, she got the news: a kidney donor had been found.

When Khadijah was just 9 her parents had started noticing that she seemed more fatigued than her three siblings, often falling asleep as soon as she got home from school. Eventually, high levels of creatinine in her bloodwork prompted a visit to a nephrologist, who discovered that her kidneys were failing, likely due to her extremely elevated blood pressure. “We couldn’t believe it,” says Khadijah’s father, Sajid Sabir. “Her blood pressure was worse than an old man’s.” By the time the problem was identified, Khadijah’s kidneys were in such bad shape that she was almost immediately transferred to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, put on dialysis, and added to the transplant list.

Joy D. Howell, MD has been named Assistant Dean for Diversity and Student Life at Weill Cornell Mediicine. She succeeds Dr. Elizabeth Wilson-Anstey, who was a champion of diversity at Weill Cornell Medicine for more than forty-three years before retiring at the end of 2019. In her new role, Dr. Howell will oversee medical education pipeline programming, student service learning, health equity community efforts, and other initiatives focused on enhancing our diverse medical student community. (3/2020)