Highlights

• David K. Stevenson, MD, has been named the 2019 recipient of the John Howland Award, the highest honor given by the American Pediatric Society. Dr. Stevenson will receive the award April 28 at the 2019 Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in Baltimore, MD. The award recognizes Dr. Stevenson’s distinguished service to neonatology and pediatrics as a longtime leader, clinician, and mentor. Dr. Stevenson has co-authored more than 600 articles, and his research on bilirubin biochemistry, heme oxygenase biology, and neonatal jaundice has led to new technologies and standards of care for treating children with neonatal jaundice.
• Louis Halamek, MD, introduced Michael R. Sterling, Johnson Space Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Houston, Texas, at the annual Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) Seminar in Orlando, Florida, on November 2. During his lecture “Mission Complete:  Thoughts on Space Shuttle Training,” Sterling discussed how a culture of critique facilitates a culture of safety. Mr. Sterling provides management and direction for the Astronaut Office, Flight Director Office, Flight Operations Safety Office and Vehicle Integration and Test Office and has worked at NASA for more than 35 years. Dr. Halamek’s perspective on Mr. Sterling’s presentation can be found here.
• Anoop Rao, MD, MS, helped organize the annual Stanford Health++ Hackathon, which hosted 250+ students from around the world at the Huang Engineering Center, November 3 & 4. The Hackathon emphasizes creativity, interdisciplinary interaction, and rapid creation of software and hardware prototypes. Prior to the event, Dr. Rao conducted a two-day bootcamp and mentored 22 international students with diverse backgrounds. Three teams from the bootcamp ended up winning prizes for their prototypes at the Hackathon.
• Susan Hintz, MD, MS Epi, was an invited speaker at the 2018 AAP National Conference and Exhibition Section on Neonatal Perinatal Medicine Program, "Care on the premature, ELBW infant from delivery room to follow-up” session in Orlando, FL on November 4.
• Dr. Halamek partnered with Dr. Lola Stavroudis from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to deliver a presentation on “Simulating Neonatal and Pediatric Critical Care Transport” to the Section on Transport Medicine at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ National Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, FL on November 5.
• Dr. Hintz was the invited lecturer for the Columbia University Division of Neonatology Annual Memorial Lectureship in New York, NY on November 8.  The lectureship commemorates the lives and accomplishments of Drs. William Silverman, L. Stanley James, and Joan Regan.
• Henry Lee, MD, MS Epi, was elected to membership in the American Pediatric Society. 

Highlights

• The leadership of the American Federation for Medical Research (AFMR) selected neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow Gregory Goldstein, MD, as a 2019 AFMR Henry Christian Awardee for his abstract entitled “Prenatal and Postnatal Inflammation-Related Risk Factors for Retinopathy of Prematurity.” Co-authors on the study include Suzan Carmichael, PhD, Heny Lee, MD, MS Epi, postdoctoral scholar Stephanie Leonard, PhD, Peggy Kan, and Euna Koo, MD. Dr. Goldstein will receive his award when he presents his abstract at the Western Medical Research Conference in Carmel, CA in January 2019.
• Louis Halamek, MD, was one of 12 Stanford faculty members selected for the 2018-2019 Byers Center Biodesign Faculty Fellowship. This program provides Stanford University faculty members from the Schools of Medicine and Engineering with advanced training and mentoring in health technology innovation.
• In the fall, Anoop Rao, MD, MS, Tavpritesh Sethi, MBBS, PhD, and Vinod Bhutani, MBBS, MD, were awarded a seed grant from Stanford Medicine Presence Center's Initiative on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Inclusion & Equity (AiMIE). Their project titled "A Bayesian Decision Network Approach to Address Inequity in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units in California" will utilize a validated graphical approach based on Bayesian networks to quantify the role of heterogenous covariates influencing adverse neonatal morbidity outcomes.

Highlights 

• Two trainees, postdoctoral scholar Kari Weber, PhD, and neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow Vidya Pai, MD, received F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award period began at the end of September.

Dr. Weber’s F32: Utilizing data from the San Joaquin Valley, California – a region characterized by very high agricultural pesticide use and air pollution – Dr. Weber will measure portions of the “exposome” and how it relates to adverse pregnancy outcomes. She will combine the measurement of multiple environmental exposures along with social factors and measures of greenspace during the prenatal period. She will then investigate the association of this complex combination of exposures with preeclampsia and the joint outcome of preeclampsia and birth defects. Her mentor on this project is Gary Shaw, DrPH. 

Dr. Pai’s F32: Dr. Pai will research high-risk infant follow-up (HRIF) in California. Following a targeted quality improvement initiative that was implemented in 2013 to improve HRIF referral at NICU discharge, Dr. Pai aims to identify patterns associated with HRIF referral, HRIF follow-up, and outpatient medical and supportive service needs among very low birthweight (VLBW) infants and infants with moderate or severe hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). She will also identify changes in patient-level, NICU, and regional factors associated with failure to refer, failure to follow-up, and need for service referrals at the HRIF visit. Her mentors on the project include Susan Hintz, MD, MS Epi, Suzan Carmichael, PhD, and Henry Lee, MD, MS Epi.

• Our 11th annual NeuroNICU conference entitled "Innovative Care for the Newborn Brain" was held on the Stanford campus September 26 & 27, 2018. Lectures and break-out sessions desiged for beginners through advanced users covered a range of topics including therapeutic hypothermia, aEEG and NIRS. 
• Bill Benitz, MD, recently released a textbook titled Infectious Disease and Pharmacology. The book is part of Dr. Richard Polin's Neonatology Questions and Controversies series. Dr. Benitz co-authored the text with P. Brian Smith, MD, MPH, MHS.
• At The Fetus & Newborn: Improving Outcomes in Perinatal and Neonatal Care in Las Vegas, NV, September 5-8, Dr. Benitz gave two lectures: “Minimizing Antibiotic Exposure in Infants at Risk for Early Onset Sepsis” and “To Treat or Not to Treat: Management of PDA.” 
• Robert Castro, MD, continued his service to the Rare Disease Clinical Research Consortia (RDCRC) by attending the scheduled Study Section, including Data Management and Coordinating Center (DMCC) for Rare Diseases in Rockville, MD.
• The ProfitLab (PI: Jochen Profit, MD, MPH) is a recipient of a 2018 Intermountain-Stanford Collaboration Grant. The award will fund work between Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Intermountain Health, which aims to reduce harm from overuse of invasive procedures in the NICU. The grant is active December 1, 2018 through November 30, 2019.
• Marisa Wilson, a rising senior majoring in Human Biology and undergraduate advisee of Gary Darmstadt, MD, writes an article on kangaroo mother care for Hindustan Times, Lucknow. This summer, Willson worked with the Community Empowerment Lab in Uttar Pradesh, India, on a kangaroo mother care implementation project. Click here to access a PDF of the article. 
• Lucy Lee, MD, was selected to serve as Associate Editor, Innovation & Tools, for the American Academy of Pediatrics Pediatric Care Online Editorial Board. Her tenure began on September 1.
• On September 28, Dr. Lee also co-presented a workshop at the Stanford Office of Pediatric Education’s 6th Annual Education Forum: Innovations in Medicine & Biosciences Education called "G.R.O.W. Your Coaching Techniques.” Co-presenters included Carrie Johnson, MBA; Carrie Loutit, MD; Carrie Rassbach, MD.
• The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recently discussed the value of simulation in improving healthcare delivery and quality on its blog, and the post specifically cites work being done using simulation to improve the care of mothers and their newborns. The Patient Safety Learning Laboratory link within the post redirects to a page where Stanford’s project entitled “Optimizing Safety of Mother and Neonate in a Mixed Methods Learning Laboratory,” Grant HS023506 (PI: Louis Halamek, MD) is referenced; that grant is being carried out at CAPE. For an overview of Stanford’s Safety Learning Lab and its projects, please click here.

Notable Publications

Anca Pasca, MD, is co-author on a paper in Nature Protocols, which was featured on the cover of the September issue of the journal. The article describes how to generate and assemble brain region–specific organoids from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). More specifically, it details the methodology for generating dorsal forebrain or ventral forebrain organoids and how to merge them in vitro to form forebrain assembloids that recapitulate the interactions of glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons seen in vivo. The ability to generate region-specific three-dimensional (3D) models to study human brain development offers access to functional human brain tissue and shows great promise for understanding the nervous system in both healthy and disease states. 

Highlights

• Stanford-India Biodesign Fellow, Avijit Bansal, MD, and his team created a medical device to help newborns breathe. Vinod Bhutani, MBBS, MD, helped Dr. Bansal in this process of creating the device called NeoBreathe. For more information on this process, click here.
• Valerie Chock, MD, MS Epi, and Bill Rhine, MD, were invited speakers at the Innovations in Neonatal Care Conference in Houston, TX, July 31 – August 2.  The topic of this year's conference was "Advances in Diagnosis, Devices and Drugs.” Dr. Chock and Dr. Rhine’s presentations were titled, respectively, "Advances in Near-infrared Spectroscopy” and "Advantages of Real Time Endotracheal Tube Monitoring.”

Notable Publications

Melissa Scala, MD, is first author of a paper in the Journal of Perinatology that explores the effects of reading to preterm infants on measures of cardiorespiratory stability in the neonatal intensive care unit. Preterm infants experienced significantly fewer desaturation events during parental bedside reading and one hour after reading exposure as compared to periods three hours and one hour prior to reading exposure. Separate analyses showed there were fewer desaturation events in a cohort exposed to live readings versus recorded readings, and in a cohort exposed to maternal reading only versus paternal reading only. Overall, the study provides evidence to support voice exposure as a way for parents to engage in the care of their preterm infants. Study findings were discussed in a recent post on the blog All Things Neonatal.

Highlights

• Neha Joshi, MD, and Arun Gupta, MD, presented in Atlanta, GA, July 19-22, at the Pediatric Hospital Medicine conference, the largest annual meeting for pediatric hospitalists. One of the topics they addressed is related to a quality improvement project led by Stanford hospitalists, which resulted in a significant reduction in unnecessary antibiotic exposure by 55% across all infants ≥ 34 weeks gestation born at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. Dr. Gupta also co-led a session on newborn resuscitation prior to the meeting’s start.
• C. Jason Wang, MD, PhD (PI) along with Jeff Gould, MD, Grace Lee, MD, Henry Lee, MD, MS Epi, and Jochen Profit, MD, MPH, received a Richard King Mellon Foundation grant to develop PretermConnect, a mobile app to reduce preterm birth and infant mortality. PretermConnect will be piloted in Allegheny County, PA and aims to improve risk prediction, care coordination, and adherence to recommended care. This work is being done in conjunction with Magee-Women’s Research Institute, RAND Corporation, and the University of Pittsburgh, and team members have engaged with various stakeholders to understand the unique needs of women in Allegheny County. The grant is active July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2021.
• We welcomed three incoming fellows to campus: Eman Haidari, MD, Kevin McKim, MD, and Caroline Yeon-Kyeong Noh, MD.

Notable Publications

Researchers conducting the Neuroimaging and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes (NEURO) School Age Follow-Up Study have published several significant findings in Pediatrics and the Journal of Pediatrics. Susan Hintz, MD, MS Epi, principal investigator for the study, is the first author of the primary outcomes paper that assesses the relative capabilities of early and late cranial ultrasound and near-term MRI to predict cognitive impairment and disability at early school age in a population of early preterm infants. This was the largest prospective, multi-center study of extremely preterm infants to date to evaluate serial neonatal neuroimaging to predict outcomes at 2 years and 6-7 years. Results showed that severe adverse findings on late cranial ultrasound were most strongly associated with cognitive impairment and disability at school age. Disability was also associated with significant cerebellar lesions on MRI. The positive predictive value of adverse cranial ultrasound (CUS) and MRI findings for cognitive impairment and disability was poor, but the negative predictive value was good to excellent. These findings further highlight the uncertainties in the prediction of complex school age outcomes from perinatal and neonatal findings.

The study was funded by both the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and conducted within the Neonatal Research Network. Dr. Hintz’s work was funded in part by her Arline and Pete Harman Faculty Scholar Award from Stanford Child Health Research Institute. Krisa Van Meurs, MD, is a co-author on the study. The primary outcomes paper was featured in 2 Minute Medicine. 

Two other papers from the Neuroimaging and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes (NEURO) School Age Follow-Up Study identified rates of overweight, obesity and hypertension at early school age in the same cohort of children born extremely preterm. Findings showed that one in five children were overweight or obese and had central obesity at early school age, and one in ten children had systolic hypertension. A number of factors were found to be associated with these outcomes, including postdischarge weight gain velocities. Dr. Hintz is senior author on these papers.

Highlights

• This summer, Anoop Rao, MD, MS, Yassar Arain, MD, and Anca Pasca, MD, graduated from our neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship. Dr. Pasca was appointed as an assistant professor and Dr. Anoop Rao was appointed as an instructor, both within our Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine. Dr. Arain accepted a position at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, CA. 
• Louis Halamek, MD, continued his service to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) by attending its Healthcare Safety and Quality Improvement Research Study Section HSQR 2016/01 in Rockville, MD.
• Lucy Lee, MD, presented as part of the "Innovations in Clinical Teaching" workshop during the Stanford Teaching and Mentoring Academy Education Day 2018 on June 1. She presented her work on the "Enhancement of Medical Student Delivery Room Skills Using Online Modules.” She also presented this work as part of a panel during the "Works in Progress Round Table" as part of the Stanford Innovations in Medical Education Conference III on June 2. Click here for a link to the full program for Education Day & Stanford Innovations in Medical Education Conference III.
• Susan Hintz, MD, MS Epi, was the invited keynote speaker at the 2018 William H. Tooley Memorial Research Symposium at the University of California, San Francisco on June 7, 2018.
• Jochen Profit, MD, MPH, received the Clinical Science Research Award at Stanford’s Annual Pediatrics Awards Day on June 8.
• At the Stanford Pediatrics Residency Graduation dinner and awards ceremony on June 1, our PICN rotation was awarded Rotation of the Year. This award is voted on and chosen by pediatrics residents.

Notable Publications

• In June, the Stanford March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center published a high-profile paper in Science on how noninvasive blood tests for fetal development can be used to predict both gestational age and preterm delivery. The study identified and measured cell-free RNA transcripts, and the preliminary results hold promise for prenatal care throughout the world. Division faculty Gary Shaw, MD, and David Stevenson, MD, are co-authors on the paper. The paper's findings received coverage in several major news outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Vox.
• A review article in the June issue of Clinics in Perinatology explores the success of statewide quality collaboratives in improving the uptake of key perinatal interventions. In particular, the paper spotlights the work of the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative, whose data center is based at Stanford and has been led by faculty member, Jeffrey Gould, MD, MPH, for the past twenty years. Authors include clinical fellow Vidya Pai, MD, and faculty members Henry C. Lee, MD, MS Epi, and Jochen Profit, MD, MPH.

Highlights

• Faculty, clinical fellows and postdoctoral trainees from the Division made an impressive showing at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting May 5-8 in Toronto, Canada. We presented 7 platform lectures and 40 poster sessions in addition to developing and leading a number of special interest groups and scientific programs. In total, the Department of Pediatrics boasted 202 presentations with 231 presenters, representing faculty, staff, and trainees.
• William Rhine, MD, and Maurice Druzin, MD, attended a conference on high-risk obstetric and neonatal care in Beijing, China in May. Dr. Rhine spoke on updates regarding neonatal resuscitation, antibiotic management, and respiratory care. Both physicians rounded at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing, which is one of the larger high-risk maternity hospitals in the country. Dr. Rhine hopes to collaborate with this academic hospital to reestablish a milk bank in Beijing. Dr. Rhine also toured four other cities in China; he give lectures at conferences and rounded at hospitals in each city. One talk was teleconferenced to over 9,000 healthcare workers in the province.
• Dr. Rhine and Vinod Bhutani, MBBS, MD, are collaborating with a Chinese biotech company that has developed a smartphone app to measure bilirubin levels in newborns. Kernicterus continues to be a major cause of newborn neurologic impairment in China.
• In May, Krisa Van Meurs, MD, and Kathy Randall, NNP, RN, were invited speakers at the 25th Encontro International de Neonatologia da Santa Casa in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and pre-conference workshop on NeuroNICU.  
• Janene Fuerch, MD, was named a 2018 Rosenman Innovator for her work in developing medical technology to improve the health and wellbeing of women.
• At the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting May 5-8, 2018, Ron Cohen, MD, gave an invited lecture about using simulation to do rapid multiple PDSA cycles to test and improve a new tool for triage of pediatric inpatients in a situation necessitating hospital evacuation (e.g. earthquake, fire). After several cycles, the tool called TRAIN (Triage by Resource Allocation for INpatients) was found to be accurate and readily adapted to the electronic medical record. TRAIN is now part of the CPQCC/CAN Disaster Toolkit.
• Louis Halamek, MD, delivered a keynote address at the tenth annual meeting of the International Pediatric Simulation Society in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, May 13-17. He spoke on the need for objectivity in debriefing (akin to what is done in other high-risk industries such as aerospace) and the imperative to embrace augmented and virtual reality within the healthcare simulation community.
• David Stevenson, MD, received the LPCH Medical Staff Distinguished Service Award on May 14.
• William Benitz, MD, was an invited speaker at the 1st International Symposium on PDA (Patent Ductus Arteriosus) in Preterm Infants in Memphis, TN on May 18, 2018. His remarks addressed the challenge of identifying the few infants who might benefit from PDA closure. 
• Dr. Stevenson gave a lecture on "Understanding Disparities from the Perspective of Basic Science Research" at the March of Dimes Prematurity Prevention Summit in Washington, D.C., May 21-22.

Highlights

• Neonatal research was well represented at the 9th Annual Pediatrics Research Retreat at Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge on Stanford’s campus on April 26. Vinod Bhutani, MD, MBBS, and Gary Shaw, DrPH, were presenters, and Dr. Shaw also served on the Research Retreat Committee. Faculty, staff, and trainees presented posters at the event.
• Nilima Ragavan, MBBS, MD, Arlene Sheehan, MS, NNP, Paul Cole, MS, NNP, RNTS, and Robert Gales, RRT, conducted a one-week intensive training program in neonatal transport for the staff of Shrimad Rajchandra Hospital in Gujarat, India. This hospital serves a tribal low resource population in Western India. The Stanford team also planned and conducted a two-day conference in neonatology for Gujarat state pediatricians. The conference included speakers from Stanford, health advisors from the Government of India, and faculty from the State Government Medical colleges. Didactic sessions were followed by interactive hands-on sessions and simulation exercises.
• Shazia Bhombal, MD, serves on the Leadership Council of the Women In Neonatology (WiN) of the Section on Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine (SONPM) of the AAP. In April, the WiN Leadership Council organized the 2018 Inaugural WiN Meeting, which immediately followed the Workshop in Neonatal-Perinatal Practice Strategies in Scottsdale, AZ. WiN plans to meet next at the ‪2018 National Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, FL, November 2-6.
• Nicole Yamada, MD, Janene Fuerch, MD, and Louis Halamek, MD, hosted a large team of healthcare professionals from China at a Simulation Instructor Training Program at the Center for Advanced Pediatric and Perinatal Education (CAPE).  This is the latest in a regular series of programs conducted for teams from China, who then return to their country to spread the CAPE methodology throughout their region.
• Drs. Yamada and Halamek and Henry C. Lee, MD, MS Epi, attended a meeting of the Neonatal Task Force of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ILCOR is the international body charged with reviewing the science of resuscitation. Drs. Yamada, Halamek, and Fuerch contribute to the development of U.S. neonatal resuscitation guidelines through their work with ILCOR.

Notable Publications

Antibiotic stewardship and “safely doing less” are the themes of a Pediatrics quality improvement (QI) paper published on April 1. The article reports on a QI project at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford that monitored well-appearing late preterm and term infants born to mothers with chorioamnionitis. This differed from current practice, which calls for administering antibiotics to every baby born to a mother with an infection.

            With the increasing appreciation for the importance of the gut microbiome in infant health and development as well as the negative and lasting impact of antibiotic exposure on this microbiome, antibiotic stewardship in the newborn is a national initiative. This project helped demonstrate Stanford’s commitment and push on this front. Monitoring led to a significant reduction in unnecessary antibiotic exposure by 55% across all infants ≥ 34 weeks gestation born at the hospital since the QI initiative’s implementation in March 2015. No cases of early-onset sepsis occurred.

            The initiative was led by neonatal hospitalists and involved a large team across the Johnson Center for Pregnancy and Newborn Services; Neha Joshi, MD, and Arun Gupta, MD, are co-lead authors on the paper and Adam Frymoyer, MD, is senior author. Dr. Frymoyer presented the results at the annual meeting of the California Association of Neonatologists. 

• The work was recently featured in a Scope blog post.
• Additional coverage from PM360.

Postdoctoral scholar Krista Sigurdson, PhD, is first author and Jochen Profit, MD, MPH, is senior author on a Journal of Perinatology paper that provides narrative accounts to show disparities in the ways families are treated in the NICU environment. Researchers collected and analyzed 324 stories, the vast majority of which chronicled perceived disparate care that resulted in perceived worse care. Based on analysis, stories were grouped into three broad themes: neglectful care, judgmental care, and systemic barriers to care.

• Read the press release on the study featured on the website for the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative (CPQCC).
• The work was done in conjunction with the CPQCC who released a Tip Sheet on Improving Family Centered Care for Diverse Families in the NICU in response to the paper’s publication on April 5. 

A review article in the June issue of Clinics in Perinatology explores the success of statewide quality collaboratives in improving the uptake of key perinatal interventions. Authors include clinical fellow Vidya Pai, MD, and faculty members Henry C. Lee, MD, MS Epi, and Jochen Profit, MD, MPH.

            While it takes on average 17 years for evidence-based findings to be translated into clinical practice, statewide quality improvement efforts can facilitate strategies for adoption on a multicenter as well as individual hospital level. The article provides evidence to show how neonatology has been a leader in the field of quality improvement and outlines efforts in several states related to antenatal steroid usage and congenital heart disease screening among other quality improvement measures. It concludes with a discussion about the strategies used by statewide collaborations and the barriers to improving care using a state-based quality improvement structure.

            In particular, the paper spotlights the work of the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative, whose data center is based at Stanford, and has been led by faculty member, Jeffrey Gould, MD, MPH, for the past twenty years. The CPQCC is a prominent leader of statewide neonatal quality improvement and has served as a model for other states’ perinatal collaborative organizations.

A manuscript describing the Stanford NeuroNICU was published in American Journal of Perinatology in April.  Co-authors included Stanford neonatology faculty Krisa Van Meurs, MD, Valerie Chock, MD, MS Epi, Alexis Davis, MD, MS Epi, and Sonia Bonifacio, MD.

Highlights

• The 24^th Annual California Association of Neonatologists (CAN) meeting was held March 2-4 in Monterey, California, where Adam Frymoyer, MD, Bill Benitz, MD, and Valerie Chock, MD, MS Epi were invited speakers. President of CAN, Ron Cohen, MD, served as the conference moderator. Clinical fellow, Neha Kumbhat, MD, also presented a poster at the meeting.
• Alexis Davis, MD, MS Epi, was elected as District IX representative for the Executive Council of the AAP Section on Neonatal Perinatal Medicine.
• Krisa Van Meurs, MD, Sonia Bonifacio, MD, and Beth Ball attended a Neonatal Cranial Ultrasound: the Basics and Advanced course at Imperial College London in London, England on March 21 & 22.
• Jochen Profit, MD, MPH, received the 2018 David Wirtschafter Award at the 24th Annual Conference of Cool Topics in Neonatology presented by the California Association of Neonatologists and AAP District IX Section on Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine.
• Shazia Bhombal, MD, led the pre-conference session on targeted neonatal echocardiography for the 3rd Annual NeoHeart Conference in Fort Worth, TX, March 22-24, 2018. She is a board member for the Neonatal Heart Society, which organizes this annual meeting focusing on the cardiovascular management of neonates. 
• Nicole Yamada, MD, and Lou Halamek, MD, and their team at the Center for Advanced Pediatric & Perinatal Education (CAPE) conducted intensive simulation-based training in critical care transport medicine for the neonatal and pediatric nurse transport specialists working at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. This is a relatively new training program and includes conducting, recording, and debriefing simulated transports in a moving ambulance.

Highlights

• In February, Lou Halamek, MD, traveled to Moscow, Russia, where he serves on the International Scientific Advisory Council (ISAC) for the National University of Science and Technology (NUST).  The ISAC provides strategic guidance to the university as it evolves to meet the needs of the international scientific community.
• The National Institutes of Health have awarded Suzan Carmichael, PhD, two grants that relate to maternal health and examine data on California births. The first will assess severe maternal morbidity in the context of racial/ethnic disparities, maternal weight, and social disadvantage. This work is funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, and has co-funding from the Office of Research on Women’s Health. Co-investigators at Stanford include Elliott Main, MD, Henry Lee, MD, MS Epi, Deirdre Lyell, MD, and Lu Tian, Sc. D. The second grant will examine the frequency of and reasons for maternal hospital readmission after delivering a stillborn infant. Stanford Co-investigators are Alex Butwick, MD, MS Epi, Yasser El-Sayed, MD, and Ron Gibbs, MD.

Highlights

• Bill Benitz, MD, gave the inaugural Philip Sunshine State of the Art lecture at the 2018 Western Society for Pediatric Research (WSPR) Annual Meeting. This lectureship was established in partnership with the WSPR by our Division to honor Dr. Sunshine. Dr. Benitz spoke about Dr. Sunshine’s legacy of mentorship of the many individuals who have contributed to the care and well being of babies, and the ongoing changes in evaluation and management of babies at risk for early onset sepsis. 
• Residents have submitted their mid-year feedback, and the PICN rotation is currently the overall top-ranked rotation in the Stanford Pediatrics Residency Program. Run by our Neonatal Hospitalist Group, the rotation is compared against 26 others in the Program. For the past several years the rotation has claimed the #1 or #2 spot.
• Lou Halamek, MD, was an invited speaker at the Inaugural Simulation and Modeling Symposium sponsored by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and held in Los Angeles, January 12-13, 2018.  He spoke on the role of augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence in healthcare.
• In January, Nicole Yamada, MD, Janene Fuerch, MD, and Lou Halamek, MD, and their team at CAPE conducted four days of intensive simulation-based training in neonatal resuscitation for the neonatal nurse practitioners working in the neonatal intensive care unit at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. This training was sponsored by the Division as part of its ongoing efforts to enhance the care of neonatal patients at the hospital.
• The Fetal and Pregnancy Health Program was well represented at the 38th Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in Dallas, TX, January 29 – February 3, 2018. Division faculty members were co-authors on presented research.

Notable Publications

Collaborative, multidisciplinary research from the Fetal and Pregnancy Health Program include two recent publications: 1) Noninvasive Prenatal Diagnosis of Single-Gene Disorders by Use of Droplet Digital PCR (Clinical Chemistry), and 2) Prenatal treatment of ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency (Molecular Genetics and Metabolism). Fetal Program Medical Director Susan Hintz, MD, MS Epi, is an author on both papers. 

The first is a multidisciplinary collaboration between medical genetics, maternal-fetal medicine, Dr. Steve Quake’s lab, and neonatology. It is a Hearst Foundation-funded study that was housed within the Fetal and Pregnancy Health Program. Findings indicate non-invasive prenatal testing may be used to detect metabolic disorders as early as the first trimester of pregnancy. Using this methodology, thereby avoiding amniocentesis and other invasive testing, will alleviate anxiety and allow clinicians and families to formulate a tailored course of action for delivery depending on if the test delivers positive or negative results.

Two other neo faculty, William Benitz, MD, and Jonathan Palma, MD, MS, are co-authors on the second paper. This paper provides evidence showing that intravenous treatment during labor is safe and effective for mothers and babies born with urea cycle defects. The study follows two women whose male fetuses were diagnosed prenatally with ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency, an x-linked condition. The mothers received intravenous infusions of Ammunol shortly before birth to jump-start treatment for their babies; together with post-natal drug delivery, the infusions helped to prevent their babies from getting acute hyperammonemia. Both babies recovered and show normal development after receiving liver transplants at 3 and 5 months after birth.