Faculty Honored at 11th Annual Ceremony
Cincinnati Children's celebrated outstanding faculty members on February 18. Congratulations to our honorees and to all who were nominated by their peers.
Advocacy Achievement Award
Carley Riley, MD, MPP, MPH, FAAP
Division of Critical Care Medicine
Carley Riley, MD, MPP, MPH, FAAP, has dedicated her career to improving the lives of children and communities through science, systems change, and activism. Her advocacy work aims to foster health and wellbeing for the families who bear a disproportionate burden of social hardship and adverse health outcomes.
Riley has grown a vibrant research program that advances the theory, measurement, and improvement science of community wellbeing. She has cultivated relationships with an array of community stakeholders, community members, and family partners.
Locally, Riley leads the transdisciplinary All Children Thrive Wellbeing with Community Team to ensure that families in low-resourced neighborhoods have access to basic goods, trusted health information, and emergency food supplies. She also co-leads additional neighborhood-based endeavors to address economic mobility and emotional wellbeing for families.
Her contributions have led to the development and implementation of a measurement framework to drive improvement in community wellbeing at local, state and national levels.
Advocacy Achievement Award
Nana-Hawa Yayah Jones, MD
Division of Endocrinology
Nana-Hawa Yayah Jones, MD, has been a powerful advocate for improving health outcomes in children with diabetes, especially among underserved populations. She has worked with stakeholders in anesthesia and surgery to develop educational materials and protocols to ensure the delivery of safe care.
After identifying a patient who was lost to follow-up and suffered devastating intellectual impairment, Jones led a team which established a permanent registry and tracking system to ensure optimal treatment for all. She led failure modes and effects analysis to eliminate factors that contribute to adverse outcomes. This ongoing work resulted in improvements in communication, coordination and tracking mental healthcare for diabetic youth.
Jones' local success provided her with the opportunity to make an impact at the national level. Her work focuses on integrating social determinants of health screening into routine diabetes care and addressing racial disparities in the uptake of continuous glucose measurement technology.
Jones has been a constant advocate who produces significant, measurable and equitable improvement in outcomes for many individuals with endocrine disorders.
Clinical Care Achievement Award
Donna Claes, MD
Division of Nephrology and Hypertension
Donna Claes, MD, is medical director of Dialysis at Cincinnati Children's and leader of the division's Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Program. She established the first comprehensive program to standardize the care for children with CKD prior to their transition to end-stage renal disease.
Claes invented the GRAB-A-BUCK (Linear Growth, Acidosis, CKD Mineral & Bone Disease, Anemia, Blood Pressure, Proteinuria/UPC, Cholesterol & Weight, overall Kidney & Global Health) clinical scoring system. Implementation of GRAB-A-BUCK has resulted in improved CKD health provision and outcomes—and three other major pediatric centers are now piloting the system.
As the division's primary liaison to the Cincinnati Children's Fetal Care Center, Claes has standardized the prenatal assessment from the nephrology perspective to optimize outcomes for patients across the country.
Since she has become the Dialysis Unit medical director, Claes has elevated the clinical, educational and research missions of the dialysis program to be one of the busiest and best in the country.
Clinical Care Achievement Award
Eric Wittkugel, MD
Division of Anesthesia
Eric Wittkugel, MD, has a long history of clinical excellence, leadership roles, and a strong sense of mentorship that has solidified his reputation for integrity and commitment to children.
As a leader in the perioperative treatment of epidermolysis bullosa (EB) for more than a decade, he has played an integral role in improving the care we offer to this complicated group of patients. This role has included the creation of treatment protocols for children, a perioperative assessment tool that provides critical information to clinicians, and analysis of the specialized products we utilize when addressing the skin-care needs of this patient population.
In addition to addressing the needs of this special population of patients, Wittkugel has been an active academician and author.
Wittkugel's efforts to improve our approach to children with EB has been a model of clinical excellence, communication, and organizational skill.
Clinical Care Team Award
Cincinnati Children's Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center
Row 1 (L-R): Punam Malik, MD; Charles Quinn, MD, MS; Omar Niss, MD; Luke Smart, MD Row 2 (L-R): Theodosia Kalfa, MD, PhD; Naomi Joffe, PhD; Lori Crosby, PsyD; and Russell Ware, MD, PhD (Not pictured: Lisa Shook, DHPE, MA, MCHES, CCP)
The focus on health inequities caused by racism has highlighted the systemic racial inequity that results in health disparities for our sickle cell disease patient population, the vast majority of whom are Black. Negative stereotypes and systemic racism hurt our patients of color—perhaps none more than our children and adolescents with sickle cell disease.
The Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center team has always supported and advocated for this patient population that has often been treated with less respect and dignity than others. They have redoubled their efforts to actively advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the institutional, local, state, regional, national, and international levels by organizing several forums and resources to address racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This team has been a resource to residents, fellows, and nurses by regularly bringing forth issues of equity and encouraging reflection on unconscious biases and negative stereotypes. Their goals are to create an environment that is inclusive, diverse, equitable and respectful to all, end racial disparities, and treat all patients with dignity and respect.