I am a "lifer" at Columbia. I was born in this very hospital, grew up running the halls with my father who was chief of the Division of Adult Infectious Diseases, attended medical school here, and then did a fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases. You could say that infectious diseases are in my blood. Not many kids at age eight say, "I like bugs and drugs." That was my childhood.
I treat children of all ages, from infancy to young adulthood. My specific areas of interest are post-operative wound infections and infections of the bone, as well as sexual health concerns such as sexually transmitted diseases (STD), vaccines, and HIV. I also enjoy helping families sort out mystery illnesses such as recurrent fevers and fatigue. Often these illnesses are not due to an infection, and sometimes it just takes time and listening to figure them out.
My research interests are focused on infection control and prevention for children at home, school, and when they live in long term care facilities such as a pediatric post-acute care facilities. I teach healthcare providers through our NYC STD prevention and training grant to provide excellent sexual health services to all young adult populations (those who have easy access to care and those who don’t). Specific issues that we train on are how to increase access to STD screening, how to recognize, test, and treat STDs, how to offer HIV testing, and pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV.
As the pediatric infectious disease fellowship director, I am also very involved in training and inspiring future pediatric infectious disease physicians. The work that we do in infectious diseases is collaborative, and we often work as a team with other services to provide the best, most efficient care to our patients.
