UAB 2019 ACADEMIC ANNUAL REPORT Table of Contents Welcome Letter from Chair .................................................3 High-Impact Research Stories ............................................4 $6.38 million grant to study blood cancers, blood marrow transplantation impact on survivors’ health Researchers awarded $10 million to study acute flaccid myelitis $37.5 million grant will address research of high- priority infections Study aims to discover if hookworm, related intestinal parasites are present in Alabama Black Belt Open source: How data scientist Liz Worthey is bringing precision medicine to the people Department Leadership ......................................................10 Endowed Chairs and Professorships ................................ 11 Pediatric Divisions ................................................................12 Pediatric Residency Program ...................................... 86 Pediatric Fellowship Programs.................................... 89 Kaul Pediatric Research Institute Awards ....................... 93 Dixon Pediatric Fellowship ................................................ 95 Chu Family Educational Scholarship ............................... 96 Russell Cunningham Memorial Research Program ..... 96 Founder’s Fund Grants ........................................................97 Pediatric Research Office .................................................. 98 Office of Faculty Development ...................................... 100 PEDIATRIC SURGICAL SUBSPECIALTIES Pediatric General Surgery ................................................ 104 Pediatric Neurosurgery .....................................................107 Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery ......................................... 111 Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery ....................................112 Urology .................................................................................114 2 2019 Academic Annual Report Welcome from the Chair Dear Friends and Colleagues, In the midst of busy clinics, complex inpatient care, teaching the next generation of providers, discovering new knowledge and everything else that fills our days here at Children’s of Alabama and UAB Pediatrics, we know it is important to take a moment to reflect on the past year and our vision for the future. This Academic Annual Report is an opportunity to do just that. This has been a year of growth and innovation for Children’s of Alabama and UAB Pediatrics. Our research report details our accomplishments by division. In the Department of Pediatrics, we seek to discover new knowledge in order to improve the health of the children of Alabama, the region, and the world. The clinical advances and research breakthroughs we describe here have a direct impact on children’s lives. That impact will be our legacy. We present in this report evidence of this impact as measured by major research accomplishments, grants, publications and awards. In fiscal year 2019, the Department of Pediatrics faculty had 341 publications, research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) totaling $18.8 million and total research funding of $30.5 million. In addition to our research accomplishments, our focus on safety and quality is always paramount. For the tenth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report ranked Children’s of Alabama’s pediatric specialty services among the top 50 in the nation. Six specialties were ranked: Cancer, Cardiology & Heart Surgery, Neonatology, Nephrology, Neurology & Neurosurgery and Pulmonology. The department aims to build on these successes, expand the size and, importantly, the impact of our research in the coming years. We anticipate growth not only in our core areas of significant accomplishment—virology, therapeutic drug development, cancer, neonatology and outcomes—but also in newer areas where the recruitment of talented young researchers will ensure continued and expanded success. With the recruitment of Dr. Girish Dhall as division director in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, we have further advanced our clinical and translational research in neuro-oncology. Dr. Liz Worthey was recruited by the Departments of Pediatrics and Pathology and the Precision Medicine Institute to lead the Center for Computational Genomics and Data Sciences, to expand our diagnostic power to identify undiagnosed diseases, and to predict the role of multiple genes on disease outcomes and response to treatment. The Kaul Pediatric Research Institute (KPRI) continues to support investigators at Children’s and remains an important edge in helping our faculty achieve extramural funding through initial pilot and feasibility funding. We also initiated a new series of KPRI Quality and Safety Grants. And with support from the KPRI, we have begun a new Clinical Trials Office in collaboration with the Pediatric Research Office. Our clinical mission is to deliver exceptional, safe and accessible care to improve the outcomes for children in Alabama and elsewhere. From the simple to the most complex conditions, we work as a team to deliver the best care. Our achievements simply would not be possible without the physicians, nurses and staff who bring their talents and passion to the care of children every day, from everywhere in the state, the region and the nation. This coming year, we are finding ways to further increase access to our clinics, improve provider-to-provider communication and identify even more subspecialty services that we can offer to our patients and those who help care for them. No matter what the next year holds, please know that one thing always remains in focus: our commitment to serving the patients and families who look to us for healing and hope. Thank you for being part of that most worthy endeavor. Mitchell B. Cohen, M.D. Katharine Reynolds Ireland Chair of Pediatrics University of Alabama at Birmingham Physician in Chief, Children’s of Alabama 2019 Academic Annual Report 3 High-Impact Research $6.38 million grant to study blood cancers, blood marrow transplantation impact on survivors’ health by Savannah Koplon esearchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have been awarded a $6.38 million grant from the R National Cancer Institute to determine the long-term burden of morbidity borne by blood cancer patients treated with or without blood or marrow transplantation, or BMT. In 2018, an estimated 175,000 individuals were diagnosed with a hematologic malignancy—or blood cancer, such as leukemia, myeloma or lymphoma—in the United States. Such cancers are typically managed through high-intensity chemotherapy with or without radiation. Patients with progressive disease or high risk of relapse are treated with even higher-intensity chemotherapy/ radiation and BMT. “Survival rates after BMT are improving at the rate of 10% per decade—steady improvements in outcome have resulted in a growing number of BMT survivors, a population uniquely vulnerable to long-term life-threatening chronic morbidity,” said Smita Bhatia, M.D., principal investigator on the study, director of the Institute for Cancer Outcomes and Survivorship, and senior scientist in the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center. “A better understanding of post-BMT health care needs could result in the deployment of targeted strategies that yield better quality of survival and reduced utilization of health care resources.” The study will construct a cohort of more than 10,000 patients treated with BMT between 1974 and 2014 at three transplant sites— how high-intensity treatment exposures used for BMT, such as UAB, University of Minnesota and City of Hope—as well as a cohort chemotherapy and radiation therapy, cause late effects can help of 3,000 patients treated with conventional therapy without BMT, in the development targeted treatments for survivors. which will amount to the largest cohort ever studied. “Accelerated aging is a constellation of criteria, one of which is In addition to ascertaining the burden of morbidity borne by the premature occurrence of the chronic health conditions that blood cancer patients treated with or without BMT, study results are typically seen in older populations,” Bhatia said. “It is not clear will be used to understand the mechanisms and development of what contributes to accelerated aging—we speculate that both treatment-related health conditions in the context of accelerated the cancer and its treatment do so, and we will be studying this aging, an outcome seen in cancer patients. Understanding in greater detail.” 4 2019 Academic Annual Report High-Impact Research Researchers awarded $10 million to study acute flaccid myelitis by Savannah Koplon he National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, States and the world, but the fact that AFM produces devastating part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded and long-standing neurological problems for affected children,” T the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department said Carlos A. Pardo-Villamizar, M.D., director of the Johns of Pediatrics a $10 million contract to conduct a Hopkins Hospital Myelitis Center and co-principal investigator of multicenter, multinational natural history study of acute flaccid the study on behalf of the AFM Task Force, a multidisciplinary myelitis (AFM) in pediatric patients. and multicenter collaborative group of clinicians and scientists. “Thus, there is an urgent need for a concerted collaborative UAB will be co-leading the study with Johns Hopkins University effort around the country to tackle the problem with the best School of