Pediatric Divisions

Academic General Pediatrics

 

Pediatric Faculty

Dr. Terry Wall
Director | Professor

Dr. Jennie Andresen
Associate Professor

Dr. Heather Relyea Ashley
Assistant Professor

Dr. Cason Benton
Professor

Dr. Channing Brown
Assistant Professor

Dr. Jennifer Chambers
Associate Professor

Dr. Candice Dye
Associate Professor

Dr. Crayton Fargason
Professor

Dr. Adnan Haque
Assistant Professor

Dr. Erika Harris
Instructor

Dr. DeeAnne Jackson
Professor

Dr. Rose James
Assistant Professor

Dr. Carin Richard Kiser
Associate Professor

Dr. Rachel Klein
Assistant Professor

Dr. Morissa Ladinsky
Associate Professor

Dr. Jaime McKinney
Assistant Professor

Dr. Susan Powell
Assistant Professor

Featured Research

The research conducted by the UAB Division of Academic General Pediatrics focuses largely on advocacy and quality improvement (QI).

Elizabeth Cason Benton, M.D., FAAP, serves as the director of the Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance (ACHIA). Dr. Benton leads this QI initiative through partnerships with practitioners, payers, families and organizations that deliver care to improve health outcomes of children in the state. In 2021, 13 practices across Alabama participated in ACHIA’s Healthy Beginnings Obesity Prevention Quality Improvement Collaborative. Practices updated work flows to lower the risk of obesity in the first two years of life by assessing and addressing:

  • weight for length measurements
  • dietary intake and nutrition
  • behavior strategies such as adequate sleep duration and minimizing screen time
  • social determinates of health, such as food insecurity.

In addition, the peer-to-peer learning platform was highly valued, as practices revamped workflows to meet COVID-19 needs.

DeeAnne Jackson, M.D., MPH, collaborates with the UAB Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology to study trends and outcomes of babies with birth injuries. She presented a poster at the Pediatric Hospital Medicine virtual meeting on the impact of an enhanced recovery program for cesarean delivery on newborn outcomes.

Dr. Jackson serves on the Executive Leadership Committee of the Alabama Perinatal Excellence Collaborative. Through this role, she has been active in planning and presenting a series of webinars on hospital policies and management of infants born to women who are positive for COVID-19. She worked with other providers from the UAB Divisions of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Infectious Diseases and Adolescent Medicine, as well as the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) and other HIV providers in Alabama, on a task force to address an increase in perinatal transmission of HIV in the state, which resulted in a Public Health Alert issued by ADPH. She is in the planning stages of a quality improvement project to improve birth-hospital preparedness for care of infants born to women who are HIV positive.

Dr. Jackson participates in an ongoing quality improvement project with the Division of Neonatology to improve the care of infants who transfer between the Neonatal and Newborn units and to improve documentation and coding in both units. She oversees ongoing quality improvement for the newborn nursery regarding the use of antibiotics and blood cultures among infants born at 35 weeks gestation and older at UAB, and analyzes trends since Implementation of the Early Onset Sepsis calculator and on improving staff and resident education and scripting to address maternal concerns regarding the birth dose of the Hepatitis B Vaccine. She also leads monthly Newborn Emergency Simulations for UAB Newborn Nursery residents, nurses and students in collaboration with the Simulation Center.

Morissa Ladinsky, M.D., continues working with Dr. Shawn Galin in the UAB Department of Medicine and others to develop a programmatic expansion of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine Standardized Patient Program around LGBTQ curricular metrics. This will make the Heersink School of Medicine one of only two US medical schools to utilize transgender individuals as standardized patients to enhance medical students’ abilities to communicate with this growing underrepresented population.

Dr. Ladinsky co-leads, with Drs. Tina Simpson, Adolescent Medicine, and Chrystal Rutledge, Pediatric Critical Care, the UAB Pediatrics Curricular Innovation and Health Equity Scholars Special Interest Group. This initiative will enhance curricular content for UAB Pediatrics trainees as well as structured learning for a core group of scholars around improved health equity and active dismantling of barriers to health embedded in systemic racism.

She also co-authored of the Alabama Perinatal Quality Collaborative’s Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Project. A statewide QI endeavor uniting Alabama delivery hospitals in optimizing the quality of care provided to pregnant women facing opioid use disorder and their neonates.

Dr. Ladinsky is a member of the Quality Improvement Center for Collaborative Community Court Teams, Jefferson County Site Steering Committee, a collaboration between Family Court, DHR and Medicine around enhanced care for mothers facing substance dependence and their children. The Safe Care Program was awarded a $2 million grant by the US Bureau of Justice’s Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant and Substance Abuse Prevention (COSSAP) Division for sustainability and dissemination to other Alabama counties.

Terry Wall, M.D., MPH, received a Health Service Foundation (HSF) General Endowment Fund Grant Award for her project CARE BHAM. These funds will be used to imbed pediatric behavioral health services within the UAB Pediatric Primary Care Clinic to help with the tremendous community challenges of providing mental health services for pediatric patients. The team includes pediatricians as well as child and adolescent psychiatrists.

The Pediatric Primary Care Clinic was selected to participate in the Pfizer-sponsored NeXXstep 11, Phase III, Randomized, Double-Blind Trial to Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity of a 20-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine in Healthy Infants.

2021 Publications

High-Impact Publications

Cancer. 2021 Nov 12; How can we create resilient research systems in a pandemic? Julie A Wolfson, Candice C Dye, Jennifer M Levine.

Pediatric Hospital Medicine. 2021. August 4, 2021. Impact of an Enhanced Recovery Program for Cesarean Delivery on Newborn Outcomes. Jackson DS, Morgan, C, Powell, M, Anathasekar, S.

South Med J. 2021 Mar;114(3):129-132. Suicide Simulation in Primary Care. Candice Dye, Sai Krishna Surapa Raju, Abigail Dy, Stacy L Gaither, Nancy M Tofil

Extramural Awards & Leadership Roles

DeeAnne Jackson, M.D.

  • Dr. Jackson serves on the Executive Leadership Committee of the Alabama Perinatal Excellence Collaborative.

Morissa Ladinsky, M.D.

  • Dr. Ladinsky serves on Mayor Randall Woodfin’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board for the city of Birmingham.
  • She serves on the Board of Directors for the Children’s Policy Council of Jefferson County.
  • She serves on the Alabama Medicaid Medical Advisory Council.
  • She is a member of the Governor’s Opioid Council/Alabama Opioid Overdose and Addiction Council.
  • She received the Alabama Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics Chapter President’s Award.
  • Dr. Ladinsky is a member of the Quality Improvement Center for Collaborative Community Court Teams.

Jaime McKinney, M.D.

  • Dr. McKinney transitioned from the American Board of Pediatrics National Certifying Exam Review Committee to the Certifying Exam Writing Committee.
  • She remains an active participant on the American Board of Pediatrics Oversight Advisory Committee.

New Faculty 2021

Channing Brown, M.D.
Assistant Professor

Erika Harris, M.D.
Instructor