Current Opinion in Pediatrics was launched in 1989. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The field of pediatrics is divided into 18 sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. In addition to this, Hank Bernstein also invites a prominent authority in the field of Office Pediatrics to write on the subject for each issue. Here we are pleased to introduce the editors and three of the Journal's Section Editors for this issue.
Editors
Richard B. Johnston
Dick Johnston grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School. He had residency training in pediatrics there and had additional residency and fellowship training in immunology at Children's Hospital, Harvard. He served on the faculty at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and Rockefeller University and was chair of Pediatrics at National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine, Denver, and at the University of Pennsylvania/Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. From there he moved to the March of Dimes as Medical Director while conducting research and serving as Chief of Pediatric Immunology at Yale. He is currently Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Research Development at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at National Jewish Center.
His research interests include host defense, the cell biology of phagocytes, immunodeficiency disease, and child health. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Science and has chaired six IOM committees and served on the IOM Board of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. He is former President of the Society for Pediatric Research, the American Pediatric Society, and the Board of the International Pediatric Research Foundation, and is a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is kept current in medicine by his family: two sons are physicians, one in practice and one in academic medicine, his wife is a PhD medical educator, and his daughter is a practicing child psychologist.
Henry (Hank) Bernstein
Dr Bernstein is Chief of General Academic Pediatrics at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Extensive experience as a primary care pediatrician in a variety of settings (e.g., in private practice, a community health center as a member of the National Health Service Corps, and in two children's hospitals) have provided him with a valuable and rewarding perspective, which is unique from that of many others in academia. Besides various administrative, teaching, and care responsibilities at Children's, he leads several national initiatives in medical education and clinical primary care research.
Dr Bernstein is Editor-in-Chief of the American Academy of Pediatrics' online learning system, PediaLink™ (www.pedialink.org), which utilizes state of the art information and communication technology to provide an interactive learning environment for practicing pediatricians and housestaff. He also serves as Senior Editor of Pediatrics in the collaboration between Harvard Medical School and InteliHealth, supervising all the pediatric content appearing on the web site and developing novel ways to transmit and support the evolution of information for the public (www.intelihealth.com). In addition, Dr Bernstein is Chair of the multi-disciplinary Bright Futures Health Promotion Workgroup, which has created a curriculum and website (www.pediatricsinpractice.org) to help integrate health promotion into clinical practice.
Dr Bernstein's research focuses on issues important to the community-based practice of primary care including medical education, health promotion, postpartum newborn discharge, preventive screening tests, and immunization development, education, and delivery. His clinical research studies have had significant impact on the practice of primary care pediatrics and national policy. The Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have used these results to make changes in the way previously licensed vaccines are used or to recommend to the FDA that new products be licensed. The outcomes from his newborn discharge study are helping to monitor federal legislation (The Newborns' and Mothers' Health Protection Act of 1996) and to influence the AAP's Committee on Fetus and Newborn policy statements around: (1) postpartum discharge of healthy, term newborns; (2) the implementation of hyperbilirubinemia guidelines; and (3) the shaping of a new national initiative, Safe First Week, intended to insure the health and well-being of newborns, postpartum mothers, and their families during the first week after hospital discharge. In addition, screening guidelines used in primary care practice (e.g., using Reticulocyte Hemoglobin Content [CHr] for identifying iron deficiency before anemia) have been enhanced through the results of his studies. Dr Bernstein is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.
Mitchell Weiss
Mitchell Weiss received his BS from Pennsylvania State University in 1982. He received MD and PhD degrees at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1989. He did a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at The Children's Hospital (Boston) and The Dana Farber Cancer Institute. His first faculty appointment was as Instructor in Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Boston and Dana Farber in 1994. In 2000, he became an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at The University of Pennsylvania and in 2006 he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Dr Weiss' research interests are in the role of transcription factors in hematopoietic cell development, differentiation and leukemia. He has published over 60 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Nature Genetics and The Journal of Clinical Investigation, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including an NIH Clinical Investigator Development Award and an American Society of Hematology Junior Faculty Award. He serves on the editorial board of Blood and on the Cooley's Anemia Foundation Medical Advisory Board. In addition to conducting research, Dr Weiss has clinical responsibilities in hematology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and is actively involved in teaching graduate students, medical students, residents and fellows.
Daniel W. Green
Dr Green specializes in Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery and Scoliosis. He earned his medical degree at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, and completed his orthopedic residency at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, New York. He was a Pediatric Orthopedic Fellow at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
From 1997 to 1998, Dr Green served as Assistant Professor and surgeon at Yale University School of Medicine, and currently serves as Associate Professor at Cornell University School of Medicine. His special clinical interests lie in pediatric scoliosis, hip disorders, pediatric sports. Dr Green is certified by the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Robert S. Baltimore
Dr Baltimore was born in New York City and graduated from the University of Chicago with an AB in Biology in 1964. His medical school training was at the State University of New York at Buffalo, School of Medicine, graduating in 1968. He did an internship and residency in pediatrics at the University of Chicago's Wyler Children's Hospital from 1968–71. After completing his residency he was a Major in the US Army stationed at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research from 1971–74 where he did research in bacterial infections and clinical training in infectious diseases. From 1974–76 he was a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School's Channing Laboratory situated at the Boston City Hospital. In 1976 he accepted a position in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine where he is currently Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology.
While a faculty member at Yale Dr Baltimore has held research grants from the Hood Foundation, The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. His research has centered around studies of group B Streptococcus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, infections in the neonate and nosocomial infections. He is currently the Associate Director of Hospital Epidemiology at Yale-New Haven Hospital and Epidemiologist for Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital and Co- Director of the Training Program in Pediatric Infectious Diseases.
Dr Baltimore has authored more than 150 research papers, reviews and book chapters, edited 3 books and is on the editorial boards of several pediatric and infectious diseases journals. He is currently a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases (The “Red Book Committee”), a liaison member of the CDC's Task Force on Smallpox Vaccination, and the American Heart Association Committee on Rheumatic Fever, Infective Endocarditis, and Kawasaki Disease.
Hal B. Jenson
Dr Jenson specializes in clinical infectious diseases and molecular virology. He graduated with Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from Brigham Young University, and a Doctor of Medicine from George Washington University School of Medicine. He completed a pediatric residency at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he also served as Chief Resident, and completed a fellowship in Infectious Diseases in the Departments of Pediatrics, and Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine. He was a Visiting Fellow in Molecular Biology in 1984 at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Cambridge, United Kingdom. In 2003 he graduated with a Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin.
Upon the completion of his infectious diseases fellowship, Dr Jenson joined the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, and Epidemiology and Public Health. In 1990 he became Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas. He was Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology there until July 2002 when he became Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics, and Director of the Center for Pediatric Research, at Eastern Virginia Medical School and Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters in Norfolk, Virginia. In 2005 Dr Jenson assumed his current position of Chief Academic Officer and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dean of the Western Campus of Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr Jenson received the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society in 1990. He has served in numerous capacities in many professional societies.
Dr Jenson is active in the general pediatric and infectious diseases teaching and clinical activities. His research has focused on the molecular biology, epidemiology, and clinical aspects of infections, especially Epstein-Barr virus and human herpesvirus type 8 and their associated cancers. He has authored over 250 papers, commentaries, and book chapters and is an Associate Editor of Infectious Disease Alert, a monthly newsletter. He is an editor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases: Principles and Practice, which was published in the 2nd edition in 2002, and an editor of Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, now in the 17th edition, which was published in 2004.
Ramsay Fuleihan
Dr Fuleihan received his medical and undergraduate degrees from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon in 1985. He completed residency training in Pediatrics at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina in 1988 and a fellowship in Allergy and Immunology at Children's Hospital in Boston Massachussetts in 1991. He remained on faculty at Children's Hospital until he moved to the Department of Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine in 1994 where he is currently the director of the Allergy and Clinical Immunology Program. Dr Fuleihan is involved in both clinical activities and bench research. He is board certified in Pediatrics and in Allergy and Immunology and is a member of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the American Association of Immunologists, the Clinical Immunology Society and the Pan American Group for Immune Deficiency, and the Society for Pediatric Research. His clinical practice is in both allergic diseases and primary immunodeficiency diseases and he is director of the Jeffrey Modell Diagnostic Center for Primary Immunodeficiencies at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr Fuleihan's research is focused on the pathogenesis and therapy of primary immunodeficiency diseases as well as the transcriptional regulation of lymphocyte development.
