2022 Conference Faculty

Adjoa Andoh, MD

Dr. Andoh is a board certified Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.  She attended medical school at Ohio State University School of Medicine, Residency at Indiana University School of Medicine and Fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.


Lalit Bajaj, MD, MPH

Lalit Bajaj is currently a Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and the Chief Quality and Outcomes Officer for Children’s Hospital Colorado. He has been a pediatric emergency physician for over 20 years. In addition, Dr. Bajaj has served in many roles including ED Research Director, Medical Director of the Research Institute, Medical Director of Clinical Effectiveness, and now Chief Quality and Outcomes Officer for the Children’s Hospital Colorado system. He currently focuses on integrating evidence based practice into patient care across the Children’s Hospital Colorado system, working with payers on value based reimbursement, and leading the clinical efforts to ensure equitable health outcomes. 


Todd P. Chang, MD, MAcM

Todd P Chang, MD MAcM is associate professor of clinical pediatrics (educational scholar) at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles / Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.  He serves as the Division’s Director for Research & Scholarship and serves as the HEDA Investigator for CHLA within the PECARN WPEMR (West) Node.  He spends his remaining free time as a Vice Chair in the Institutional Review Board with an emphasis on Exception from Informed Consent studies, and as the Research Director at the CHLA Las Madrinas Simulation Center.  His primary research interests are in outcomes focused technology-based provider education and implementation, and has a clinical research interest in advanced airways and cardiopulmonary arrest.  Back in the day, Dr. Chang led the Survey Subcommittee within the AAP Section on Emergency Medicine’s PEM CRC (Pediatric Emergency Medicine Collaborative Research Committee). 


Christine Cho, MD, MPH, MEd

Dr. Cho is the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship Director at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Her research interests are in the education and maintenance of professionalism in medicine; she is also interested in design thinking in education and cognitive errors in clinical decision making.  Before CHLA, Dr. Cho was the medical director and interim chief of pediatric emergency medicine at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco.


Mary Clyde Pierce, MD

Dr. Pierce is a Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, and an attending physician in the pediatric emergency department at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and serves as research director for the Division of Child Abuse Pediatrics.  She also holds an Associate appointment, Professor of Bioengineering, J.B. Speed School of Engineering, at the University of Louisville. There she serves as the Medical Director of the Injury Risk Assessment and Prevention Laboratory at the University of Louisville, which is a multi-disciplinary lab with emphasis on injury biomechanics. Dr. Pierce’s subspecialty training is in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. She initially studied music theory composition at Loyola University of New Orleans and then changed her focus to medicine. She received her medical degree from Louisiana State University of New Orleans, her specialty training in Pediatrics from Johns Hopkins Hospital, and her subspecialty training in Pediatric Emergency Medicine from the University of Pittsburgh, Children’s Hospital. Dr. Pierce is a member of the Society for Pediatric Research and the Ray Helfer Society that is dedicated to improving the lives of abused children.

Dr. Pierce is an NIH-funded researcher, and her key interest is primarily on injuries in children with an emphasis on differentiating abusive from accidental trauma. Dr. Pierce’s research focus is the development of injury plausibility models, including clinical decision rules, for differentiating abusive and accidental trauma in the young child that combines medical, social, biologic, and engineering knowledge.  Her interest is also in epigenetics, psychosocial risk factors, ecologic factors, and how child maltreatment as well as racial inequities confers health problems later in life. Her collaborative work results in translational research that is guided by case-based studies with clinical, social, and basic science research, experiments, and modeling directly linked to pertinent clinic issues.  She has authored over 70 publications including original research, editorials, chapters and textbooks as well as podcast and soundcloud audiofiles related to child abuse. She serves as the Principal Investigator (PI) for two multi-centered federally funded grants as well as for Foundation awards. Dr. Pierce is also a passionate educator at the local, national, and international level and spans across many disciplines. She has an appointment as Faculty by the Illinois Supreme Court of Justice to provide formal teaching to Illinois judges on the topic of child abuse and neglect. A top priority of Dr. Pierce’s is mentoring the next generation of researchers in the area of child abuse.


 

Laura Dattner, MA

Laura Dattner, MA, is a research writer in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. With both a health communications and public health background, she works to translate pediatric injury research into meaningful, accurate messages which motivate the public to make positive behavior changes. She also coordinates Trainees for Child Injury Prevention (T4CIP), a group of trainees from across the country passionate about child injury prevention that develops outreach materials and strategies for one-day national advocacy campaigns.


Dennis Durbin, MD, MSCE

Dennis R. Durbin, MD, MSCE is the president of the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and professor and vice-chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He provides leadership to the scientific and administrative operations of the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s and provides support to the over 200 faculty conducting a broad portfolio of research, from basic discovery science to population health research. 

He was recruited to Nationwide Children’s to serve as the initial chief scientific officer in 2018, and since that time has supported the recruitment of over 40 new research-intensive faculty, created the hospital’s first chief clinical research officer position, overseen the construction of the hospital’s fourth dedicated research building, set to open in 2023, and contributed to the formation of Andelyn Biosciences, a spin-off contract development and manufacturing organization for cell and gene therapies. 

Dr. Durbin is an internationally recognized injury epidemiologist with over two decades of experience in traffic safety research and developing the evidence base for child and adolescent traffic safety interventions. He has extensive experience translating research findings into policy and practice, and his research has received awards from the Governor’s Highway Safety Association, the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.


Timothy Dribin, MD

Dr. Dribin is a pediatric emergency physician at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center/University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. I completed pediatric residency at University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Hospital and fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. 

My area of research is anaphylaxis, which is a severe, potentially life-threatening acute allergic reaction. I care for a lot of children with anaphylaxis in the emergency department (ED), and I’m driven to learn how to improve the recognition and management of anaphylaxis both in the ED and community. My work aims to determine how long children should be observed in the ED or inpatient setting to monitor for persistent and biphasic reactions. Additionally, my research team seeks to identify diagnostic and predictive anaphylaxis biomarkers and to evaluate barriers to the delivery of anaphylaxis best practices in the ED and outpatient setting. I am honored to have received the Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Training (CCTST) KL2 award (2021) and the research prize through the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Collaborative Research Committee (PEMCRC) through the section of emergency medicine of the American Academy of Pediatrics (2019).


Susan Fuchs, MD

Co-Director, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellows Conference

Susan Fuchs did her pediatric residency at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, (now demolished), and her Pediatric Emergency Medicine fellowship under Dr David Jaffe at Children’s Memorial Hospital (also demolished). Her first attending position was at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, but she returned to Children’s Memorial Hospital (now Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago), where she is an attending in the Division of Emergency Medicine and EMS Medical Director. She is also Chair of the Illinois EMSC Advisory Board. She is still celebrating the Cubs winning the World Series!


Delia Gold, MD

Delia L. Gold, MD is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She completed medical school at the University of Minnesota, and pediatric residency and emergency medicine fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. She completed ultrasound training at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. She currently works as an attending physician in the Division of Emergency Medicine, and is the ED Ultrasound Director. She is also the ultrasound lead of the Simulation Program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Gold has published numerous papers on point-of-care ultrasound, with a focus on medical education and curriculum development.  She has also worked with the PEM POCUS (P2) Network on research projects, as well as serving as the P2 liaison to the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine Academy of Emergency Ultrasound. She is a host and senior editor of the Ultrasound Gel Jr. podcast.  


Javier A. Gonzalez del Rey, MD, MEd

Javier A. Gonzalez del Rey, M.D, MEd., is currently Professor of Pediatrics, Chair Graduate Medical Education (GME), Designated Institutional Officer for ACGME (DIO), Associate Chair for Education and Director of the Cincinnati Children’s Pediatric Education Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He is currently the Past – President at the Association of Pediatric Program Directors (APPD), and Past – Chair for the Executive Committee for the Section of Emergency Medicine at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). He received his university and medical school education at the National University Pedro Henriquez Ureña (UNPHU) in the Dominican Republic, completed his pediatric residency at the University of Connecticut Pediatric Primary Care Program, and Fellowships training in General Academic Pediatrics and Pediatric Emergency Medicine at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He is currently certified in Pediatrics and Pediatric Emergency Medicine. He completed a Master’s of Medical Education and advance training in Quality Improvement Methodology (I2S2). Dr. Gonzalez del Rey’s major areas of interests include resident and subspecialty medical education – PEM national and for Latin America, and improvement science methodology applied to medical education and training.


James Gray, MB, BCh, BAO

James Gray is a staff physician and fellow in clinical informatics in the division of emergency medicine at Cincinnati Children’s. His research interests lie in the intersection of education, technology, and resuscitation. He is particularly excited about how we can use technology to disseminate new knowledge to those who need it most.


Toni Gross, MD, MPH

Dr. Toni Gross is the Chief of Emergency Medicine at Children’s Hospital New Orleans. Dr. Gross received her training at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia and completed her pediatric residency at LSU Health New Orleans and Children’s Hospital. She was a fellow at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine and trained at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medicine and was elected to the National Association of EMS Physicians board of directors in 2020.  She currently serves as the chair of the advisory board for Louisiana’s EMS for Children program.


Tamar Haro

Tamar Magarik Haro has spent nearly 20 years working in health care policy, public health, and advocacy where she has shaped and influenced many of the most consequential laws affecting the lives of millions of Americans, especially children. Currently, Tamar serves as Senior Director of Federal and State Advocacy at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) where she leads federal legislative advocacy and regulatory initiatives on a variety of child health issues including mental health, emergency medicine, disaster preparedness, access to health care, immigration, and nutrition. In this role, Tamar oversees AAP’s state advocacy work. In 2020, she was the recipient of the AAP’s Pursuit of Excellence Award for her service on its COVID-19 Core Response Team.

Prior to joining the Academy in September 2010, Tamar served as staff director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee to U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), during which she played a key role in the development and passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Before that, she was a Legislative Assistant for health care and nutrition for Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and served as a political appointee in the President Clinton administration. She graduated with honors from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in Political Science and Russian Studies. She lives in Arlington, VA with her husband and their twin daughters.


Maya S. Iyer, MD, MEd

Maya S. Iyer, MD, MEd is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine attending physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. She holds a master’s degree in medical education and have a passion for medical education and medical education research, particularly as it relates to faculty development, faculty affairs, maintenance of certification and self-directed, life-long learning. Currently, she is the  Director of Emergency Faculty Development at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She has published in medical education research, mentored several trainees. Nationally, she serves on the Pediatric Emergency Sub Board for the American Board of Pediatrics, the AAMC Group on Faculty Affairs,  and the AAMC Group on Women in Medicine and Science. She was a 2019-2020 Visiting Scholar for the American Board of Medical Specialties. 


Alex Kemper, MD, MPH, MS

Dr. Kemper is the Division Chief of Primary Care Pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.  Dr. Kemper is also Deputy Editor of Pediatrics.  Dr. Kemper completed his pediatric residency training at Duke University followed by combined fellowship training in health services research and medical informatics with residency training in preventive medicine at the University of North Carolina.  His research focuses on preventive services in the primary care practice setting.  As part of this research activity, Dr. Kemper is Chair of the Evidence Review Group for the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children.


Julie C. Leonard, MD, MPH

Dr. Leonard is a Professor of Pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Ohio State University College of Medicine. She is a board-certified pediatric emergency medicine subspecialist and practices medicine in the emergency department at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. At the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, she serves as the Director of Clinical Research for the Center for Injury Research and Policy and the Associate Director for the Center for Pediatric Trauma Research. Over the course of her career, she has developed expertise in the emergency management of injured children. She has published extensively in cervical spine injury management and is the recent recipient of an NIH grant aimed at laying the groundwork for the development and implementation of Pediatric Cervical Spine Injury Risk Assessment Tool that will be for use by both prehospital and emergency department providers. She is also a research collaborator in the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network where she serves as the Emergency Medical Services Scientific Advisor and Co-Principal Investigator of the Great Lakes Emergency Medical Services for Children Research Node. Dr. Leonard currently serves as the Program Director for the State of Ohio Emergency Medical Services for Children Advisory Committee.


Julia Lloyd, MD

Julia Lloyd, MD is an attending physician in the Section of Emergency Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an associate director of the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship Program.  She is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She received her medical degree with Case Western Reserve University in 2006.  She completed her Pediatrics residency (2009) and her Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship (2012) at Children’s Memorial Hospital/Northwestern University.  Her research interests include identification and treatment of patients with sepsis in the emergency department. Current grants include work on prehospital recognition and management of sepsis (Ohio EMS) as well as the PECARN PRoMPT bolus study examining normal saline versus lactated ringers for fluid resuscitation in pediatric sepsis patients. She is the NCH representative to the Children’s Hospital Association’s Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes (IPSO) Collaborative


Charles Macias, MD, MPH

Co-Director of PEM Fellows Conference

Charles Macias is the Chief Quality Officer and Vice Chair of Quality for the University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children’s system of care in Cleveland Ohio and the Division Chief for Pediatric Emergency Medicine for that system. 

He is a co-chair of the Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes quality improvement collaborative of the Children’s Hospital Association- a collaborative of over 54 institutions dedicated to decreasing mortality and morbidity from sepsis. He was the chairman of the Pediatric Septic Shock Collaborative of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the former chairman of a pediatric asthma collaborative for the Texas Pediatric Society. 

He serves as the executive director of the national Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Innovation and Improvement Center, utilizing improvement science to support the EMSC program in 58 states and territories. 

Most recently, he was elected to the newly created subspecialty seat on the Board of Director’s for the American Academy of Pediatrics.


Rebekah Mannix MD, MPH

Rebekah Mannix is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical school, a staff physician in Emergency Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, and co-Director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Brain Injury Center.  Dr. Mannix’s interest in risk assessment stems from her research in traumatic brain injury and the daily clinical questions that ensue from that research including the risks of playing collision sports, the risks of CT in assessing minor head trauma, etc.  


Lara McKenzie, PhD, MA

Lara B. McKenzie, PhD, MA is a Principal Investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine and the Division of Epidemiology, College of Public Health at The Ohio State University. Dr. McKenzie’s research program focuses on how to increase adoption of parent safety behaviors such as the use of carbon monoxide alarms, smoke alarms, child safety seats and booster seats to prevent and/or reduce the consequences of childhood injuries. Dr. McKenzie’s research also focuses on injuries associated with consumer products and sports and activity-related injuries treated in hospital emergency departments.


Tracy Mehan, MA

Tracy Mehan leads the Translational Research team for the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital bringing close to 20 years of experience in management, research, marketing, communications and health education to her role. She works both behind the scenes to formulate strategic media outreach plans for the center and in front of the camera appearing in both national media such as The Today Show and the New York Times and local outlets.


Leah Middelberg, MD

 Dr. Middelberg is an attending physician in the Section of Emergency Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She received her medical degree with Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in 2012. She completed her Pediatrics residency (2015) at Loyola University Medical Center and her Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship (2018) at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago/Northwestern University. Her academic interests include pediatric injury and injury prevention with a focus in utilizing research to inform advocacy. She is an affiliate faculty member with the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital Research Institute. 


Rustin Morse, MD

Rustin Morse, MD, serves as chief medical officer at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Morse is a nationally recognized leader in pediatric quality and safety and currently serves on the national Clinical Steering Committee for Solutions for Patient Safety and the Quality and Safety Committee of the Board of Trustees for the Children’s Hospital Association. His academic interests, national presentations and publications span a variety of topics including patient safety, patient satisfaction, quality measurement, improvement methodologies and variations in care and outcomes. He is a sought-after thought leader on pediatric quality and safety and is regularly recognized by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of “50 Experts Leading the Field of Patient Safety.” 

Dr. Morse received his medical degree from the State University of New York Health Science Center at Upstate Medical University. He then completed his pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and his pediatric emergency medicine fellowship at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. He obtained a master’s degree in Medical Management from the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.

A board-certified pediatric emergency room physician who has continued to practice emergency medicine throughout his career, Dr. Morse has a successful track record leading and advancing quality and safety programs in pediatric health care. This includes serving as medical director for quality at Phoenix Children’s Hospital and senior vice president for quality and safety and chief quality officer at Children’s Health in Dallas.

In addition to his leadership in quality and safety, Dr. Morse has extensive management and operational experience, including overseeing a pediatric specialty care hospital providing rehabilitative services such as neurology, pulmonary and feeding, along with a network of outpatient rehabilitation specialty centers. He is also an experienced professional trainer and coach, having led staff safety, occupational health and patient experience efforts.


Jennifer Muszynski, MD, MPH

Dr. Muszynski is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.  She is an Associate Program Director for Research for the PCCM Fellowship Program and a Principal Investigator in the Center for Clinical and Translational Research.  She has a passion for research education and mentorship and is a trained facilitator for mentorship training through the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (cimerproject.org).  Her research interests include biomarkers of inflammation and immune function in pediatric sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction and effects of blood product transfusion in critical illness.


Joshua Nagler, MD, MHPEd

Dr. Nagler received his medical degree from Cornell University Medical College and moved on to his residency and chief residency with the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics. He completed fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2005, serving as a chief fellow in his final year.  He completed a Master’s degree in Health Professions Education in 2012.   He has been a faculty member at Boston Children’s since completing his fellowship training.  Within the Division of Emergency Medicine, he is the Associate Division Chief, the Director of the Fellowship Program, and the Director of Medical Education.  He holds an academic appointment as Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine through Harvard Medical School.  He teaches in a number of different national courses focused on advanced airway management, leadership and innovation in pediatrics, and professional development.  He has also served as the Associate Editor for Fleisher and Ludwig’s Textbook of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, and an Editor for the Fleisher and Ludwig’s 5-Minute Pediatric Emergency Medicine Consult textbook.


Lise Nigrovic, MD, MPH

Dr. Lise Nigrovic is a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Boston Children’s hospital as well as a member of the PEM fellow conference planning committee.  Her research focus has been in the approach to diagnosis and management of children with infectious emergencies. Her current research is focused on the initial diagnosis and management of children with Lyme disease. She is the founding chair of the only pediatric Lyme disease clinical research network, Pedi Lyme Net, with an associated pediatric biorepository.


Michael D. Patrick, Jr, MD

Dr Mike Patrick is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and serves as Medical Director of Digital Health for Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He has hosted and produced PediaCast since 2006. This award-winning podcast for parents has reached millions of listeners across the country and around the world. He also hosts PediaCast CME, which offers Category 1 CME/CE credit for physicians and nurses. He co-authored the textbook, Social Media for Medical Professionals and directs a health care communications and social media elective for medical students and residents at Ohio State. Dr Patrick is a Spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, serves on the Executive Committee of the AAP Council on Communications and Media and is a dissemination expert for PECARN and EIIC. Dr Patrick attended college at Ohio Wesleyan University, received his medical degree from The Ohio State University and completed his pediatric training at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He practiced primary care pediatrics in an underserved area for over a decade before transitioning to pediatric emergency medicine. He currently serves as an attending physician in the emergency department at Nationwide Children’s.


Ron Paul, MD

Dr Ron Paul is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, where he also serves as Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs.  His clinical work is in the pediatric emergency department of Norton Children’s Hospital in Louisville, KY where he served as Division Chief for over 25 years.  Dr Paul initiated the PEM fellowship programs at both Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in 1988 and at the University of Louisville Department of Pediatrics in 1991.  He has held several leadership roles within the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Emergency Medicine including past chair of the PEM Fellowship Directors Committee.  He currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of the Section on Emergency Medicine.


Rachel Stanley MD, MHSA

Rachel Stanley, MD, MHSA is the Division Chief for Emergency Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Dr. Stanley was educated in her home country of Ireland, receiving her MD equivalent degree at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. After training in Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics in Ireland, she came to the US and did her Pediatrics residency at the University of Connecticut, and completed a Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship at Children’s Hospital in Boston. In 2000, she moved to the University of Michigan, where she served as a faculty member and earned a Masters in Health Services Administration.

Dr Stanley has been continuously funded as the principal investigator of the Great Lakes Emergency Medical Services for Children Research Node of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) since 2008. PECARN is a research network of 18 children’s hospitals. Nationwide Children’s Hospital is currently a member of the PECARN node that Dr. Stanley leads. She has also served as the Chair of the PECARN Steering Committee and currently serves as the Vice-Chair.

She currently serves on the Ohio Emergency Medical Services for Children state advisory committee and the Central Ohio Trauma System (COTS) Emergency Medical Services (EMS) advisory committee.
Dr. Stanley’s research interests include traumatic brain injury, and multi-center clinical trials in pediatric emergency medicine. She also has a strong interest in mentoring and developing the next generation of academic pediatric emergency physicians.


Laura Rust, MD

Dr. Rust is a board certified Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She attended medical school at Wright State University School of Medicine and completed her residency and fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.


Elizabeth Sanseau, MD

Dr. Elizabeth Sanseau is a fellow physician specializing in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Global Health at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA. Prior to fellowship, she worked full-time as a Pediatric Hospitalist at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation in Bethel, Southwest Alaska. Dr. Sanseau has approached her medical education with a broader perspective of the biological, social, ethical, and behavioral aspects of health and human disease. She feels that her role as a Pediatrician is not only as a clinician, but also as an educator, researcher and patient advocate. She is passionate about medical education for pre- and in-hospital medical staff to improve pediatric readiness for emergencies. During her time working in Alaska, she developed a needs-based simulation medical education curriculum for the Community Health Practitioners and studied the efficacy and feasibility of the program. This experience inspired her to returned to academic training to specialize in pediatric emergency medicine and simulation, with the intention to continue to work with Indigenous and resource limited communities during and following her training. She sits on several national and international organization taskforces and has published and presented her work on simulation-based education in resource limited settings in national and international venues.


Bashar Shihabuddin, MD, MS

Dr. Shihabuddin is a board certified Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.  He attended medical school at the American University of Beruit, residency at the University Hospital SUNY at Syracruse and completed his fellowship at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.


Connie Smith

PEM Fellows Conference Coordinator

Connie has served as the national coordinator for the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellows Conference since February 2013 after taking over the reins from Carol Heller, who worked with Co-Directors: David Jaffe, MD and Jane Knapp, MD.  Connie is known as the “busy bee” that handles all of the details of the conference. She began working in this capacity immediately following the 2013 PEM Fellows Conference in Austin, TX with Co-Directors:  Charles Macias, MD, MPH and Susan Fuchs, MD.  She has been employed with Baylor College of Medicine since January 2013 and previously was employed at Texas Children’s Hospital beginning February 1997.  She received a BA in Marketing at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana in December 1983.


Brad Sobolewski, MD, MEd

Brad Sobolewski, MD, MEd is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Pediatric Residency Training Program for the Division of Emergency Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He is the creator and author of the educational website PEMBlog.com, a widely read pediatric emergency medicine blog, and hosts a medical podcast, “PEM Currents: The Pediatric Emergency Medicine Podcast.” In 2016, Dr. Sobolewski received the EBSCO-PEMSoft Award for Technological Innovations in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and in 2012 he received Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center Faculty Teacher of the Year Award, and the 2022 Educational Achievement Award. He is actively involved in curriculum planning and education for the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Emergency Medicine, Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN), The Emergency Medical Services for Children Innovation and Improvement Center, PEM Landscape (the AAP’s emergency medicine review course), and the National Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellows Conference Planning Committee. His educator portfolio is online at BradSobolewski.com. You can find him on Twitter @PEMTweets.


Sandra Spencer, MD

Dr. Spencer is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician at Children’s Hospital Colorado. She attended medical school at Ohio State University and completed her residency and fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.


Gregory Stewart, MD

Gregory B. Stewart, MD, is the current medical director of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Lewis Center Emergency Department and an associate professor of Clinical Pediatrics of Emergency Medicine. He is also the area resident director for Pediatric Emergency Department for Nationwide Children’s Hospital and is active in resident education. His previous roles have included the operations adviser of the Emergency Department.  Over the last decade, he has been involved in yearly medical mission trips to Haiti.


Henry E. Wang, MD, MS

Dr. Wang is Professor and Vice Chair for Research of the Department of Emergency Medicine, The Ohio State University. Dr. Wang is an internationally expert in prehospital airway management and resuscitation and was lead investigator of the landmark Pragmatic Airway Resuscitation Trial (PART). As a lead investigator of the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, he facilitated the execution of multiple cardiac arrest and trauma trials. Dr. Wang is also recognized for his novel research in sepsis epidemiology. Dr. Wang is Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open. 


Jason Woods, MD

Jason Woods, MD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and practices clinically in the pediatric emergency department at Children’s Hospital Colorado. He is the Associate Program Director of the pediatric emergency medicine fellowship at the University of Colorado. Dr. Woods is an expert in the digital dissemination of knowledge and education. He is an inaugural co-chair of the PECARN (Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network) Dissemination Working Group, the founder of the Little Big Med Podcast, and a contributor to several national podcast including PedsRAP, EMRAP, and Academic Life in Emergency Medicine. 


Joseph L. Wright, MD, MPH

Dr. Wright is the Chief Health Equity Officer of the 13-hospital University of Maryland Medical System. He previously served as tenured Professor and Chair of Pediatrics at the Howard University College of Medicine, and as Senior Vice President within the Children’s National Health System, where he provided strategic leadership for the organization’s advocacy mission, public policy positions, community partnership initiatives. He maintains appointments as adjunct professor of emergency medicine and health policy at the George Washington University, and teaches as professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. He served 17 years as the inaugural state pediatric medical director within the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, in addition to 8 years as principal investigator of the National Resource Center for the federally-funded Emergency Medical Services for Children program.

Academically, Dr. Wright is among the nation’s original cohort of board-certified pediatric emergency physicians with scholarly interests that include injury prevention, prehospital pediatrics, and the needs of underserved communities. He has contributed over 120 publications to the scientific literature, served more than 30 visiting professorships, and was principal investigator of the NIH-funded DC-Baltimore Research Center on Child Health Disparities.  Dr. Wright is an elected member of the Alpha Omega Alpha (medicine) and Delta Omega (public health) honor societies, the Academy of Medicine of Washington, and the American Pediatric Society for which he co-chairs the Committee on Diversity, Inclusion and Equity.

Dr. Wright is immediate past chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medicine and also chaired the AAP Task Force on Addressing Bias and Discrimination. He is currently a sitting AAP Board member and chairs the Board Committee on Equity. Dr. Wright has been recognized by the Academy for his long-standing leadership as recipient of two career achievement awards for distinguished contributions to the disciplines of injury prevention and emergency medicine, respectively. He is also recipient of the prestigious Shining Star Award from the Los Angeles-based Starlight Foundation for outstanding community service and the 2020 Diversity in Business Leader Award from the Washington Business Journal.

Dr. Wright provides national leadership through advisory and governance service to several health and human service entities including the Association of American Medical Colleges and the March of Dimes. He previously served as an Obama administration appointee to the Pediatric Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration, and has recently been appointed to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study committee on Addressing the Long-Term Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Families. Dr. Wright regularly presents invited testimony before Congress, state and municipal legislative bodies, has made numerous media appearances, and lectures widely to both professional and lay audiences.

Dr. Wright earned a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, his M.D. from Rutgers University, and a Master of Public Health in Administrative Medicine and Management from George Washington University.