Person wearing a red dress and conference lanyard holding a sign that reads “SPR Awardee” in front of a backdrop with repeated Society for Pediatric Research logos at a Pediatric Academic Societies 2022 meeting.

Fellows’ Clinical Research Awards

The Fellows’ Clinical Research Awards are presented annually by the Society for Pediatric Research® (SPR) to honor fellows engaged in pediatric clinical research. This award encourages pediatricians-in-training to pursue careers in academic pediatrics.

Recipients are selected based on the quality of work in clinical, health services, or translational research, as presented in abstracts submitted to the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) Meeting.

Awards

  • Five recipients are selected annually:
  • Two Clinical Research Awards
  • One Richard D. Rowe Award
  • Two Clinical Research Awards, sponsored by the SPR Emerging to Established (E2E) Section

All award recipients are chosen from the general category of SPR Fellows’ Clinical Research Awards applications.

Person standing in front of a backdrop with “Society for Pediatric Research” logos, holding an open folder displaying a certificate.

Fellows’ Clinical Research Award

Eligibility Criteria

  • Be a fellow-in-training (PhD post-doctoral fellows do not qualify)
  • Submit and present the abstract during the PAS Meeting prior to the completion of fellowship
  • Complete the online application form and submit their abstract and supplemental materials by the abstract submission deadline
  • The applicants need to describe their contribution to the project when asked to provide “brief description of the work performed”
  • The abstract must be clinical, health services, or translational research
  • First authorship on an abstract submitted to the PAS Meeting; the abstract must be accepted for presentation at the upcoming PAS Annual Meeting to be considered
  • The recipient must present the study at the PAS Meeting

Applications that do not meet the conditions stated above will not be considered for the awards. The accuracy of your abstract and application is the applicants’ responsibility. Please proofread carefully before submitting. After submission, no corrections will be permitted. By submitting, you approve the accuracy of your abstract and application.

Current Recipients

Our study team examined HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis dispensing to young adults using a national pharmacy database between 2016 and 2023. We found that both PrEP dispensing and initiation increased in young adults during the study period, but that duration of treatment episodes shortened.  In partnership with my mentor and collaborator, I conceptualized the research question for the study, analyzed and interpreted the results, and drafted the abstract for Pediatric Academic Societies.

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Nina Hill, MD

University of Michigan

Jeanette Van Steyn is a second-year Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellow at the University of North Carolina and a Master of Public Health student at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.  Her research focuses on enhancing neonatal and child health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), to inform interventions that promote equitable health outcomes for vulnerable populations.  Her current work examines the impact of pre- and postnatal growth on neurodevelopmental outcomes among children of ASPIRIN trial participants in LMICs.

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Jeanette Van Steyn, MD

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • 2024 | Landon Krantz, MD, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH
  • 2024 | Cal Robinson, MD, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada
  • 2024 | Kristan Scott, MD, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2023 | Ashley Bedner, DO, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD
  • 2023 | Arthur Lee, MD, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2023 | Jacqueline Razzaghy, UAB, Birmingham, AL
  • 2022 | Mauro Caffarelli, MD, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
  • 2022 | Anna M. Cushing, MD, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
  • 202 | Stephanie Gilley, MD, PhD, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO
  • 2021 | Timothy M. Bahr, MS, MD, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
  • 2021 | Xochitl Castillo, MD, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine, Memphis, TN
  • 2021 | Jonathan Reiss, MD, Stanford University/Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Palo Alto, CA
  • 2020 | Samia Aleem, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC
  • 2020 | Julie Thai, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
  • 2020 | Temima Waltuch, Mount Sinai Hospital Beth Israel, New York, NY
  • 2019 | Maya Heath, MD, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, LA
  • 2019 | Andrew P. Klinger, MD, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birminham, AL
  • 2019 | Abhinav Pal, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY
  • 2018 | Megan Griffiths, Johns Hopkins University, Taussig Heart Center
  • 2018 | Anne Fuller, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore
  • 2017 | Nitin Arora, UPMC, Pittsburgh, PA
  • 2017 | Vickie M. Bailey, University of Oklahoma HSC, OKC, OK
  • 2017 | Erin F. Carlton, University of Michigan, Anna Arbor, MI
  • 2016 | Cortney Ballengee, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
  • 2016 | Madeleine L. Barnett, King’s College London, St Thomas’ Hospital, London, UK
  • 2016 | Sharon Rikin, Columbia University, New York, NY
  • 2015 | Michael Barrett, Children’s Hospital, University College Dublin, Ireland
  • 2015 | Sujith S. Pereira, Royal London Hospital, England, United Kingdom
  • 2015 | David Smith, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
  • 2014 | Melanie Cree-Green, University of Colorado, Aurora, CO
  • 2014 | Brittany P. Jones, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY, NY
  • 2014 | Justin E. Paulson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
  • 2013 | Akshay Mehta, Government Medical College and Hospital, Chandigarh, India
  • 2013 | Deborah Schonfeld, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
  • 2012 | Lana Friedman, Mount Sinai Hospital, NY, NY
  • 2012 | Rebecca Ruebner, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2012 | Elisha Wachman, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA
  • 2011 | Michelle  Hsiang, University of California, San Francisco, CA
  • 2011 | Jennifer L. Rehm, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI
  • 2011 | Charles Christoph Roehr, Charité University Medical Center, Berlin, Germany
  • 2010 | Ming T Chien, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Phoenix, AZ
  • 2010 | Rachel T. McCandless, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
  • 2010 | Abigail F. Nixon, Jacobi Medical Center, Bronx, NY
  • 2009 | Sachin N. Desai, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
  • 2009 | Alex Kentsis, Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston, MA
  • 2009 | Jonathon Maguire, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada
  • 2008 | Monisha Bahri, Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC
  • 2008 | Mark Cicero, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
  • 2008 | Quynh Doan, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
  • 2007 | Kristen Crossman, Denver, CO
  • 2007 | Arvin Garg, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD
  • 2007 | Michael H. Stroud, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR
  • 2006 | Deepika Bhatla, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH
  • 2006 | Maria Miranda, Copenhagen University Hospital, Hvidovre, Denmark
  • 2006 | Joshua Schiffman, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
  • 2005 | Chadi M. El Saleeby, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
  • 2005 | Frank Esper, Yale University, New Haven, CT
  • 2005 | Heidi AB Smith, Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, Nashville, TN
  • 2004 | Khalid Al Faleh, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
  • 2004 | Hubert O. Ballard, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
  • 2004 | Andreea Cazacu, Texas Children’s Hospital / Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
  • 2003 | Natascha Ching, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2003 | Jeffrey Sirninger, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
  • 2003 | David Spiro, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL
  • 2002 | Tamara S. Hannon, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN
  • 2002 | Anita Shet, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
  • 2002 | Hong-Ha M. Truong, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2001 | Hulya Bayir, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
  • 2001 | Wikrom Karnsakul, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
  • 2001 | Susmita Pati, Columbia University, New York, NY
  • 2000 | Michael J. Ackerman, Mayo Foundation, Rochester, MN
  • 2000 | Okan Elidemir, University of Texas-Houston Medical School, Houston, TX
  • 2000 | Mika Ramet, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA
  • 1999 | Bethany J. Foster, McGill University, Children’s Hospital, Montreal, Canada
  • 1999 | Misrak Tadesse, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC
  • 1999 | Wayne Tworetzky, University of California, San Francisco, CA
  • 1998 | Catherine M. Gordon, Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
  • 1998 | Catherine A. Welch Dinauer, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC
  • 1997 | Inger L. Ackerman, Indiana University Medical Center, Indianapolis, IN
  • 1997 | Darlene A. Calhoun, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
  • 1997 | Willem A. Hanekom, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
  • 1996 | Nancy Braverman, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
  • 1996 | Brenda B. Poindexter, Indiana University Medical Center, Riley Hospital, Indianapolis, IN
  • 1996 | Naomi Taylor, Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, CA
  • 1995 | Kathryn A. Ellerbeck, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD
  • 1995 | Lorraine Katz, Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1995 | Prasad Mathew, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
  • 1994 | Mariana Contreras, University of Wisconsin, Children’s Hospital, Madison, WI
  • 1994 | Said A. Omar, University Medical Center, Stony Brook, NY
  • 1994 | Milen Velinov, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT
  • 1993 | Eileen Gillan, University of Utah Medical Center, Salt Lake City, UT
  • 1993 | John R. Kelley, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
  • 1993 | Irena Nulman, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada
  • 1992 | E. Kirk Neely, Stanford Medical Center, Stanford, CA
  • 1992 | Richard J. Scarfone, Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1991 | Preston W. Campbell, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 

Richard D. Rowe Award in Clinical Research

Established in 1988 by colleagues, trainees, and friends of Dr. Richard D. Rowe, the Richard D. Rowe Award in Clinical Research honors his commitment to academic excellence, personal integrity, and humility. The recipient is selected among the SPR Fellows’ Clinical Research Award applicants whose abstract has been accepted for a platform session.

This award must be applied for at the time of PAS abstract submission.

Eligibility Criteria

  • Be a fellow-in-training (PhD post-doctoral fellows do not qualify)
  • Submit and present the abstract during the PAS Meeting prior to the completion of fellowship
  • Complete the online application form and submit their abstract and supplemental materials by the abstract submission deadline
  • The applicant needs to describe their contribution to the project when asked to provide “brief description of the work performed”
  • The abstract must be clinical research
  • First authorship on an abstract submitted to the PAS Meeting; the abstract must be accepted for presentation at the PAS Meeting to be considered
  • The recipient must present the study at the upcoming PAS Meeting

Applications that do not meet the conditions stated above will not be considered for the awardsThe accuracy of your abstract and application is the applicants’ responsibility. Please proofread carefully before submitting. After submission, no corrections will be permitted. By submitting, you approve the accuracy of your abstract and application.

Current Recipient

Claire Foster, MD, MPH is a fellow physician in Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Her research is focused on identifying potential risk factors for cognitive, developmental, or behavioral sequelae after critical illness and understanding approaches that could improve outcomes after pediatric ICU admission.

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Claire C. Foster, MD MPH
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

  • 2024 | Scott Jelinek, MD, MPH, MAEd, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2023 | Dallin Hubbard, MD, PhD, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
  • 2022 | Shipra Jain, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH
  • 2021 | Alexandra Medoro, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
  • 2020 | Peter Cosgrove, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
  • 2019 | Jarred Garfinkle, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
  • 2018 | Catherine O. Buck, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, Providence, RI
  • 2017 | Helen E. Chitty, The James Cook University Hospital, Middlesborough, UK
  • 2016 | Laura Figueroa-Phillips, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2015 | Dina D. Daswani, The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY
  • 2014 | Jessica H. Mouledoux, Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
  • 201 | Stefan Minocchieri, University Children’s Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2012 | No Award Given
  • 2011 | No Award Given
  • 2010 | Sarah E Haskell, University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, Iowa City, IA
  • 2009 | Doff B. McElhinney, Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
  • 2008 | Kathryn Farrow, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL
  • 2007 | Robert B. Hinton, Jr., Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH
  • 2006 | Yong Zhao, Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, UCSF, San Francisco, CA
  • 2005 | Vidu Garg, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
  • 2004 | Patrick Y. Jay, Children’s Hospital, Boston
  • 2003 | Hiroyuki Yamagishi, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas
  • 2002 | Vernat Exil, Vanderbilt University, Nashville
  • 2001 | Hiroko Wakimoto, Children’s Hospital, Boston
  • 2000 | Mark W. Russell, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • 1999 | Ronald Mark Grady, Washington University, St. Louis
  • 1998 | Robert W. Dettman, University of California, San Francisco
  • 1998 | Deepak Srivastava, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas
  • 1997 | Quin Wang, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston
  • 1996 | Harold S. Bernstein, University of California, San Francisco
  • 1995 | David Cornfield, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
  • 1994 | Thomas D. Scholz, University of Iowa, Iowa City
  • 1993 | Award Not Presented
  • 1992 | Harry Dietz, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore
  • 1991 | Jeffrey A. Towbin, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston
  • 1990 | Anne M. Murphy, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
  • 1989 | Philip Shaul, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas
  • 1988 | Einat Birk, University of California, San Francisco 

SPR Clinical Research Awards for Fellows, sponsored by the SPR Emerging to Established (E2E) Section

Established in 2013, the SPR Clinical Research Awards for Fellows, sponsored by the SPR Emerging to Established (E2E) Section, recognizes outstanding clinical, health services, or translational research conducted by fellows. The recipient is selected among the SPR Fellows’ Clinical Research Award applicants. Candidates must be a member of the SPR E2E Section.

This award must be applied for at the time of PAS abstract submission.

Eligibility Criteria

  • Be a SPR Emerging to Established (E2E) Section Member
  • Be a fellow-in-training (PhD post-doctoral fellows do not qualify)
  • Submit and present the abstract during the PAS Meeting prior to the completion of fellowship
  • Complete the online application form and submit their abstract and supplemental materials by the abstract submission deadline
  • The applicants need to describe their contribution to the project when asked to provide “brief description of the work performed”
  • The abstract must be clinical, health services, or translational research
  • First authorship on an abstract submitted to the Pediatric Academic Societies’ (PAS) Meeting; the abstract must be accepted for presentation at the PAS Annual Meeting to be considered
  • The recipient must present the study at the PAS Meeting

Applications that do not meet the conditions stated above will not be considered for the awardsThe accuracy of your abstract and application is the applicants’ responsibility. Please proofread carefully before submitting. After submission, no corrections will be permitted. By submitting, you approve the accuracy of your abstract and application.

Current Recipients

Prior research has highlighted barriers to scheduling of patients referred to subspecialty pediatric clinics. Existing data have focused on family experiences that may impede access; however, limited data are available on potential barriers embedded within referral processes. Referral processes requiring pre-appointment questionnaires create barriers to developmental evaluation services in populations utilizing public insurance and those living in areas with lower health literacy rates and higher neighborhood disadvantages. Healthcare organizations must assess the impact of social determinants of health on referral workflows to improve access to pediatric subspecialty care.

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Paige Nettles, MD

Prisma Health

Joey Starnes is a third-year pediatric cardiology fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He also completed medical school and pediatrics residency at Vanderbilt. His recent research has focused on inequitable performance of optical medical technologies based on skin color, including pulse oximetry and near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). His work on pulse oximetry was recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

He is receiving the SPR fellows clinical research award for his prospective study quantifying the effect of skin color on the performance of NIRS. He found that NIRS significantly overestimates the mixed venous saturation in patients with darker skin. This may lead to differences in management and contribute to inequities in outcomes. His work has been supported by a T32 grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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Joseph Starnes, MD, MPH

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

  • 2024 | Michael Cookson, MD, MHS, Children’s Hospital Colorado & University of Colorado, Aurora, CO
  • 2024 | Gabriel Devlin, MD/CM, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, CA
  • 2024 | Nikita Kalluri, MD, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
  • 2024 | Jeremy Sandgren, MD, PhD, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
  • 2023 | James Nugent, MD, MPH, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT
  • 2023 | Rameshwar (Ram) Rao, MD PhD, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
  • 2023 | Kevin G. Williams, MD, FAAP, University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL
  • 2023 | Mattie Wolf, MD, Emory University School of Medicine/Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA
  • 2022 | Leslie Doucette, MD, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD
  • 2022 | Thu Tran, DO, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, TX
  • 2022 | Mausma Bawa, MD, Jacobs School of Medicine, University of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
  • 2022 | Elizabeth Salazar, MD, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2021 | Senthil Velan Bhoopalan, MBBS, PhD, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
  • 2021 | Josef Newman, MD, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL
  • 2021 | Vivek Shukla, MD, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
  • 2021 | Mausma Bawa, MD, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
  • 2020 | Lila Nolan, MD, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
  • 2020 | Vivek V. Shukla, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
  • 2020 | Cara Slagle, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH
  • 2020 | Christopher Thom, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2019 | Jason M. Nagata, MD MSc, UCSF, San Francisco, CA
  • 2019 | Fotios Spyropoulos, MD, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
  • 2019 | Michelle Starr, MD, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
  • 2019 | Elizabeth Taglauer, MD PhD, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
  • 2018 | Fredrick Dapaah-Siakwan, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida
  • 2018 | Jennifer Davidson, UTHSC
  • 2018 | Andrew Franklin, Northwestern University/Ann & Robert H Lurie Children’s Hospital
  • 2018 | David Neil Matlock, Jr., University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
  • 2017 | Colm R. Breatnach, The Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, Ireland, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
  • 2017 | Steven L. Ford, Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, TX
  • 2017 | Geoffrey A. Preidis, Baylor College of Medicine & Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, TX
  • 2017 | Aaron Jeffrey T. Yee, University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL
  • 2016 | Petter Bjornstad, Children’s Hospital Colorado and Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes, Aurora, CO
  • 2016 | Shanlee Davis, Children’s Hospital Colorado/University of Colorado, Aurora, CO
  • 2016 | Ashley L. Steed, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
  • 2016 | Allison E. Zanno, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2015 | Prem Fort, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
  • 2015 | Laura Madore, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA
  • 2015 | Pratik Parikh, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
  • 2015 | Annette Scheid, Floating Hospital for Children, Floating Hospital for Children, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA
  • 2014 | Vishnu Priya Akula, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA
  • 2014 | Hitesh Deshmukh, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2014 | Birju A. Shah, Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, Providence, RI
  • 2014 | Daniel T. Swarr, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2013 | Danielle E. Soranno, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
  • 2013 | Peter M. Wolfgram, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, Madison, WI