Excitement and challenge at Children's Memorial

aSpring 1997

THESE ARE EXCITING and challenging times for Children's Memorial. Children's and Northwestern University Medical School have recruited several internationally known physicians to create a multi-organ Transplantation Center at Children's. Within a few years, the center that is opening this summer is expected to become a national center for pediatric transplantation and a major site for transplantation research. Leading the effort is Peter F. Whitington, MD, who has accepted positions as head of the newly named Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition and as the director of the Transplantation Center of Excellence.

Joining him is gastroenterologist and hepatologist Estella M. Alonso, MD, who is the director of Liver Transplantation. Both Drs. Whitington and Alonso have come from the University of Chicago Children's Hospital where they had built one of the nation's leading programs in pediatric liver transplantation.

Riccardo A. Superina, MD, the foremost pediatric liver transplantation surgeon in Canada, will be joining the team as director of Transplantation Surgery. He has achieved international recognition as a leader in pediatric transplantation and has performed more than 250 pediatric liver transplants at the University of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.

The recruitment of Dr. Martha Bohn to lead the Neuroscience research effort at Children's Memorial Institute for Education and Research likewise bolsters the basic effort with the medical center.

At the same time, NUMS has just published Outlook 21, which caps several years of introspection and planning by the medical school faculty. The result is a plan to move the medical school into the group of top 20 US research medical schools. The plan greatly expands the base of extramural research support, invests in infrastructure including the addition of almost 400,000 square feet of new research space and facilities, and fortifies the research staff by the recruitment of more than 100 new research faculty members.

In other news, in December, The Child's Doctor received the Distinguished and Best of Show Award in the publications division of the 24th annual Chicago Technical Publications, Art, and Online Communication Competition sponsored by the Chicago chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. This was the highest award possible for the publication division. Congratulations are in order for all the magazine's participants. Additionally, you should be aware that you can access the entire contents of the journal on the Internet at www.childsdoc.org. For those of us who have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern electronic era, it is amazing to be able to access this publication (and so much more) in this way.

TOP