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The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the appointment of Vivien Yap, M.D. as Medical Director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the Division of Neonatology at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital, effective July 1st, 2022.

 Dr. Yap completed her fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine here at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and accepted a position at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences thereafter. She then returned to Weill Cornell Medicine in 2014 to become a faculty member and Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship Director in the Division of Neonatology.

 Dr. Yap has been the first author or co-authored 12 peer reviewed manuscripts and has also co-authored three book chapters.  She is currently a council member and Chair of the planning committee for the Eastern Society for Pediatric Research.

As the NICU Medical Director, Dr. Yap will oversee the development and implementation of state-of-the-art clinical guidelines, ensure care of the service and manage care team models. She will oversee clinical practice, implement regulatory processes, and represent NICU clinical operations in NewYork-Presbyterian leadership meetings.  

The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the appointment of Cori M. Green, M.D., M.Sc. as Vice Chair of Behavioral Health Integration and Innovation, effective August 1, 2022.

Dr. Green is an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, board certified in Pediatrics, and holds a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation. A nationally recognized leader in behavioral and mental health education, Dr. Green's clinical and research focus is the integration of pediatric mental health care into pediatric care. Dr. Green is a consultant for the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) where she nationally assessed pediatrician’s attitudes and perceived competence with mental health training and care of patients. She is also a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Mental Health Leadership Workgroup and was an author on the AAP’s mental health competency policy statement and an editor for the mental health toolkit.

The Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine has been selected as one of 12 sites to participate in the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) sponsored study, “Transfusion and Organ Dysfunction in Pediatric Septic Shock (TROPICS).”  Led by Dr. Jennifer Muszynski at Nationwide Children's Hospital, TROPICS seeks to build decision support tools that can be used in future clinical trials to identify when children with septic shock should or should not be transfused with RBCs. Dr. Marianne Nellis, associate professor of pediatrics and director of fellows’ research in pediatrics, will lead the study at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Worldwide, nearly 3 million children die each year from sepsis. Red blood cells (RBC) are transfused in ~50% of children with septic shock, with the intent to enhance oxygen delivery, help resolve shock, and prevent organ dysfunction. However, RBC transfusion has repeatedly been associated with adverse outcomes in critical illness, suggesting harm. For most children with septic shock, we lack data to identify who should or should not be transfused.

The study, conducted in the NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, will inform the design and evaluation of precision-medicine based transfusion strategies to improve outcomes in these extremely ill infants and children with septic shock.

This article was originally posted in the WCM Newsroom. 

A new preclinical study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators found that certain bacteria in the gut may reduce susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection, improve the immune response and prevent blood clots that can occur in severe COVID-19 illness. The study, published Aug. 1 in Gut Microbes, suggests that dietary choices may also have the potential to enhance efforts to combat COVID-19 and its complications in humans.

The composition of the gut microbiome has previously been linked to varying outcomes for health conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, COPD and influenza. The investigators, led by senior author Dr. Melody Zeng, assistant professor of immunology in pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics and a member of the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Research at Weill Cornell Medicine, believed that the same might be true for COVID-19.

NEW YORK (Aug. 10, 2022) — UnitedHealthcare, a UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) company, is awarding $1 million in Empowering Health grants to six community-based organizations in New York state to expand access to care and address the social determinants of health for uninsured individuals and underserved communities.

In total, UnitedHealthcare is donating $11 million in grants through its Empowering Health program across 11 states. The grants will assist individuals and families experiencing challenges from food insecurity, social isolation and behavioral health issues, and support local health promotion and health literacy efforts.

Grant recipients in New York state include:

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Marianne Nellis, M.D. M.S., as Director of Fellows’ Research in Pediatrics. In this role, together with the Vice-Chair of Education in Pediatrics, Dr. Nellis will oversee the quality of fellow research training and academic scholarly work within the department. She will collaborate with the Director of Clinical Research Mentoring and the Department’s Vice Chairs of Research to facilitate and oversee the development of fellows’ scholarly activity, the scholarship oversight committee and research-in-progress processes and mentor-mentee relationships. She will also lead the Fellows’ Research Curriculum, developing and maintaining a core content of educational activities to facilitate the fellows’ scholarly activity success.

The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the appointment of Duncan Hau, M.D., Director of the Pediatric Hospitalist Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital (NYP/LMH), as Associate Medical Director of the Well Newborn Nursery.  In this role, Dr, Hau will continue to lead the pediatric hospitalist program and will work closely with Abieyuwa Iyare, M.DMedical Director of the Well Newborn Nurseries, in ensuring quality equitable care for the babies and families at NYP/LMH. 

Dr. Hau is an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics and is board certified in general pediatrics and board eligible in pediatric hospital medicine.  After completing medical school at Tufts University, he completed a pediatric residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center before spending two years in Tanzania with the Baylor Pediatric AIDS Corp.  Dr. Hau returned to Weill Cornell Medicine in 2014 where his focus has been on pediatric hospitalist medicine and global health.  He has published on pediatric post hospital outcomes in Tanzania as well as on global health education.  Dr. Hau received a department of pediatrics pilot award in 2016 to support his scholarly work in Tanzania and is the rotation director of the global health elective for pediatric residents.

The Weill Cornell Medicine Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the appointment of Abieyuwa Iyare, M.D. as Medical Director of the Well Newborn Nurseries as of July 5, 2022. In this new role, Dr. Iyare will work closely with nursing leadership to ensure high quality equitable care for newborns in the well nurseries at Alexandra Cohen (ACH) and Lower Manhattan (LMH) campuses. We would like to thank Jennifer DiPace, M.D. for her outstanding service and dedication as Medical Director for the newborn nurseries, where among many other accomplishments she oversaw a very successful move to ACH and the integration of the LMH nursery.

 Dr. Iyare was recruited from Montefiore Medical Center where she had been the director of the newborn nursery of the Weiler Campus to Weill Cornell in 2020 as Associate Director of the newborn nurseries at NYP/ACH and NYP/WC.  She has been very involved in quality initiatives, including updating the newborn toxicology protocols, use of dextrose gel in newborns with hypoglycemia and others, and teaching as the leader for the medical students’ experience in the nursery.

The Department of Pediatrics is pleased to announce the appointment of Erika Abramson, M.D., M.Sc. as Associate Vice Chair of Health Equity and Medical Education Research in Pediatrics.

This article was originally posted in the WCM Newsroom. 

Antibodies that summon virus-engulfing white blood cells may play an important role in protecting infants from potentially serious congenital infection with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), according to a study led by an investigator at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.

The study, which appeared June 28 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, was the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date in HCMV research. The researchers examined antibodies in the blood of 81 mothers infected with HCMV, comparing the properties of the antibodies in mothers who had transmitted versus hadn’t transmitted HCMV to their infants. A key finding was that women in the non-transmission group tended to show higher levels of the white blood cell-summoning mechanism, known as antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis, against HCMV.

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