2023 Department of Pediatrics Academic Annual Report

Academic General Pediatrics

PEDIATRIC FACULTY Dr. Terry Wall.....................................Director | Professor Dr. Jennie Andresen...........................Associate Professor Dr. Heather Relyea Ashley..................Assistant Professor Dr. Cason Benton..................................................Professor Dr. Channing Brown...........................Assistant Professor Dr. Jennifer Chambers......................Associate Professor Dr. Caroline Densmore.......................Assistant Professor Dr. Candice Dye..................................Associate Professor Dr. Crayton Fargason............................................Professor Dr. Callie Grey.......................................Assistant Professor Dr. Erika Harris.......................................................Instructor Dr. DeeAnnee Jackson.........................................Professor Dr. Carin Richard Kiser.......................Associate Professor Dr. Rachel Klein....................................Assistant Professor Dr. Morissa Ladinsky..............................................Professor Dr. Adria Luk..........................................Assistant Professor Dr. Jaime McKinney...........................Associate Professor Dr. Susan Powell..................................Assistant Professor Dr. Kathleen Vincent...........................Assistant Professor

FEATURED RESEARCH The research conducted by the UAB Division of Academic General Pediatrics focuses largely on advocacy and quality improvement (QI). Elizabeth Cason Benton, M.D., FAAP, serves as director of the Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance (ACHIA). Dr. Benton leads this QI initiative through partnerships with practitioners, payers, families and organizations that deliver care to improve health outcomes of children in the state. In 2023, 14 Alabama pediatric clinics who have more than 60,000 annual teen visits participated in Screening Effectively & Efficiently Now (SEEN): An ACHIA Teen Mental Wellness QI Collaborative. Over nine months, practices met or exceeded the collaborative 80% goal of reliably screening for depression at teen well visits and of standardizing plans for positive screens. For patients with positive screens, they almost doubled follow-up within 30 days to 56%. Practices expanded their brief interventions toolbox to teach patients and caregivers stress-reducing and self- supporting skills. Channing Garber Brown, M.D., serves as the assistant program director for the Combined Medicine-Pediatrics Residency Program and was an invited speaker at the University of Michigan Med-Peds Noon Conference, “Weight-Neutral Evidence-Based Lifestyle Counseling” on April 6, 2023. DeeAnne Jackson, M.D., MPH, is medical quality officer for the UAB Newborn Nursery. In this role, she works closely with neonatology, obstetric and nursing leadership to assure high-quality care for infants born at UAB. She oversees QI for the newborn nursery, including participation in the Alabama Perinatal Quality Collaborative (ALPQC) Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Initiative and a current project to implement universal cytomegalovirus (CMV) screening in the newborn nursery. She serves on the Executive Leadership Committee of the ALPQC, where she is active in planning statewide QI projects and informational webinars. Current topics include screening for and management of syphilis and HIV in pregnant women and their newborns. She is a member of the Alabama Perinatal Advisory Committee and participates in the Alabama Newborn Screening Advisory Committee. Dr. Jackson works with UAB Health System Marketing to provide content for Birmingham Mom’s Collective, UAB Health System social media and online patient education sites. Morissa Ladinsky, M.D., works with Dr. Shawn Galin in the UAB Department of Medicine and others to develop a programmatic expansion of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine Standardized Patient Program around LGBTQ curricular metrics. This makes the Heersink School of Medicine one of only two US medical schools to utilize transgender individuals as standardized patients to enhance medical students’ abilities to communicate with this growing underrepresented population. Dr. Ladinsky co-leads, with Dr. Chrystal Rutledge in the Division of Pediatric Critical Care, the UAB Pediatrics Curricular Innovation and Health Equity Scholars. The purpose of this initiative is to enhance curricular content for UAB Pediatric trainees as well as structured learning for a core group of scholars around improved health equity and active dismantling of barriers to health embedded in systemic racism.

2023 Academic Annual Report

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