The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is the largest professional association of pediatricians in the United States. It is headquartered in Itasca, Illinois, and maintains an office in Washington, D.C. The AAP has published hundreds of policy statements, ranging from advocacy issues to practice recommendations.
The Vaccine Safety Datalink Project (VSD) was established in 1990 by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study the adverse effects of vaccines.
The red reflex refers to the reddish-orange reflection of light from the back of the eye, or fundus, observed when using an ophthalmoscope or retinoscope. The reflex relies on the transparency of optical media and reflects off the fundus back through media into the aperture of the ophthalmoscope. The red reflex is considered abnormal if there is any asymmetry between the eyes, dark spots, or white reflex (Leukocoria).
Philip N. Cohen is an American sociologist. He is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and director of SocArXiv, an open archive of the social sciences.
An alternative vaccination schedule is a vaccination schedule differing from the schedule endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). These schedules may be either written or ad hoc, and have not been tested for their safety or efficacy. Proponents of such schedules aim to reduce the risk of adverse effects they believe to be caused by vaccine components, such as "immune system overload" that is argued to be caused by exposure to multiple antigens. Parents who adopt these schedules tend to do so because they are concerned about the potential risks of vaccination, rather than because they are unaware of the significance of vaccination's benefits. Delayed vaccination schedules have been shown to lead to an increase in breakthrough infections without any benefit in lower side effect profiles.
Dimitri Alexander Christakis is an American pediatrician, researcher, and author from Seattle, Washington.
Uché Blackstock is an American emergency physician and former associate professor of emergency medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. She is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, which has a primary mission to engage with healthcare and related organizations around bias and racism in healthcare with the goal of mobilizing for health equity and eradicating racialized health inequities. During the COVID-19 pandemic Blackstock used social media to share her experiences and concerns as a physician working on the front lines and on racial health disparities and inequities exposed by the pandemic. She is best known for her work amplifying the message on racial health inequities and her media appearances speaking on the COVID-19 pandemic. She has been featured on Meet the Press, PBS NewsHour, Slate and Forbes among others. Blackstock became a Yahoo! News Medical Contributor in June 2020.
Annie F. Luetkemeyer is an American physician and researcher who is Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco. She specializes in infectious diseases, in particular tuberculosis, human immunodeficiency virus and viral hepatitis. During the COVID-19 pandemic Luetkemeyer led a clinical trial of remdesivir. She has also researched treatment of COVID-19 as a co-infection with HIV.
Monica Rose McLemore is an American nurse who is an associate professor of Family Health Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work considers reproductive justice and medical care for marginalised communities, with an overarching aim to eliminate healthcare inequalities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McLemore studied the impact of coronavirus disease during pregnancy.
Rebekah D. Fenton is an American pediatrician and adolescent health advocate. Fenton is an Adolescent Medicine Fellow in The Potocsnak Family Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Lurie Children's Hospital at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. Fenton's clinical work is centered around providing healthcare for marginalized youth populations with a focus on cultural humility and health equity. After the police murder of George Floyd, Fenton provided medical care to protestors and has created virtual grieving spaces for Black and brown people in her medical community. As an avid writer, Fenton uses writing as a platform for advocacy to communicate topics such as public health, adolescent medicine, and diversity in medicine.
Rachel Renee Hardeman is an American public health academic who is associate professor of Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She holds the inaugural Blue Cross Endowed Professorship in Health and Racial Equity. Her research considers how racism impacts health outcomes, particularly for the maternal health of African-Americans.
Monica Gandhi is an American physician and professor. She teaches medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is director of the UCSF Gladstone Center for AIDS Research and the medical director of the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinic, Ward 86. Her research considers HIV prevalence in women, as well as HIV treatment and prevention. She has been noted as a critic of some aspects of the COVID-19 lockdowns in the US.
Alan M. Emond is a British paediatrician and professor emeritus in Child Health at Bristol Medical School at the University of Bristol. Emond is most notable for research into child and adolescent injury, epidemiology and health service evaluation as well as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed race-based health care disparities in many countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Canada, and Singapore. These disparities are believed to originate from structural racism in these countries which pre-dates the pandemic; a commentary in The BMJ noted that "ethnoracialised differences in health outcomes have become the new normal across the world" as a result of ethnic and racial disparities in COVID-19 healthcare, determined by social factors. Data from the United States and elsewhere shows that minorities, especially black people, have been infected and killed at a disproportionate rate to white people.
Benjamin Danielson is a pediatrician and clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Danielson is known in the Seattle community for being an advocate and leader for underserved children and their families. Danielson has devoted his career to increasing access to healthcare and fighting against racial inequities. Throughout his time as a pediatrician, Danielson has facilitated the creation and development of diversity programs and contributed actively to governmental policy as a member of several health boards. Danielson was the medical director of the Odessa Brown Children's Clinic from 1999 to 2020, where he then resigned and spoke out about prevalent institutional racism and a resistance to change from hospital leaders. In September of 2021, it was announced that Danielson would be directing a new program, Allies in Healthier Systems for Health & Abundance in Youth (AHSHAY) to help address and prevent youth incarceration.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unequal impact on different racial and ethnic groups in the United States, resulting in new disparities of health outcomes as well as exacerbating existing health and economic disparities.
Tina Lee Cheng is an American pediatrician. In 2020, she was named the Chair of Pediatrics, Chief Medical Officer, and Research Foundation Director of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Elena Fuentes-Afflick is an American pediatrician who is Chief of Pediatrics at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. She is the former President of the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society. In 2010 she was elected a to the National Academy of Medicine.
Michelle Asha Albert is an American physician who is the Walter A. Haas Lucie-Stern Endowed Chair in Cardiology and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Albert is director of the UCSF Center for the Study of Adversity and Cardiovascular Disease. She is president of the American Heart Association. She served as the president of the Association of Black Cardiologists in 2020–2022 and as president of the Association of University Cardiologists (2021–2022). Albert is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Society of Clinical Investigators.
Renee Yuen-Jan Hsia is an American emergency physician. She is a professor of Emergency Medicine and Associate Chair of Health Services Research at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as an attending physician in the emergency department at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. She is also a core faculty member of the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. Her research is aimed at studying how health services and regionalization of care impact access to emergency care.
