Dr. Oberfield, a professor of pediatrics, has been the director of the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Columbia University Irving Medical Center since 2004. Throughout her career, Dr. Oberfield has been dedicated to educating the next generation of pediatric endocrinology sub-specialists. She was for many years director of the fellowship training program in pediatric endocrinology, and is currently associate program director. Since 2005 she has been the principal investigator of a T32 training grant in pediatric endocrinology from the NIH National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases, one of only a handful of such programs in the country. Since 1998, she has mentored more than 35 fellows and more than 30 pre-doctoral students including Endocrine Society, DERC, and Doris Duke summer fellows.
From 2021-2022 Dr. Oberfield served as president of the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society (PES), an international organization of more than 1,300 members, that provides resources for healthcare professionals and trainees and affords educational support for patients and families affected by disorders of the thyroid, adrenal, and pituitary glands; growth disturbances; and conditions of bone metabolism and diabetes. Her priorities as president, she says, were “to maintain and expand the relevance of bench, translational and clinical researcher as well as the importance of the practicing pediatric endocrinologist, even in an era when delivery of health care and research related to children and adolescents is being dramatically eroded.”
Dr. Oberfield has been engaged in patient-oriented research for her entire career, with a particular focus on disorders of adrenal hormone synthesis, adrenarche, and PCOS. She has conducted studies of body composition in children and continues to be involved in multiple studies of childhood obesity.
Her clinical research has centered around the developmental/pediatric endocrinology, specifically the HPA axis which intimately affects metabolic function, interacting with adiposity, including studies of body composition in adrenarche and PCOS. She has been the author or co-author of more than 225 articles, multiple chapters and reviews, and is an invited speaker at national and international meetings, including the 2012 NIH-sponsored Evidence Based Methodology Workshop on Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. She is currently an editor for the Journal of Pediatrics and is an associate editor for Hormone Research in Pediatrics. She continues to be listed in Castle Connelly’s “America’s Top Doctors” and NY Magazine’s “Best Doctors."
