It has been a big year for the UNMC Department of Pediatrics.
To date, the department has hired or promoted 30 faculty members, including naming four new division chiefs, as it continues an expansion that department chair Kari Simonsen, MD, traces back to the affiliation agreement between the College of Medicine and Children’s Hospital & Medical Center.
“Our department has more than doubled in size since the affiliation agreement was signed in 2008,” she said. “It’s been an incredible journey of growth.”
New division chiefs
The UNMC Department of Pediatrics has named four new division chiefs in 2020. They are:
Zebulon Timmons, MD: Dr. Timmons joined UNMC in August as the chief of the UNMC Division for Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM). He previously served as the vice chair for pediatric emergency medicine at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, as well as the associate PEM fellowship director and the PEM department’s quality and safety director.
Jill Beck, MD: Dr. Beck has been promoted as permanent chief of the UNMC Division for Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. Dr. Beck joined UNMC in 2010, following her fellowship in hematology/oncology at the University of Minnesota. She earned her master’s degree in clinical research from the University of Minnesota, as well. She most recently served as the interim division chief in pediatric hematology/oncology and the director of clinical operations.
Shirley Delair, MD: Dr. Delair has been promoted as permanent chief of the UNMC Division for Pediatric Infectious Diseases. Dr. Delair joined UNMC in 2010, following her fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at UCLA. She received her MD from CES University in Medellin, Colombia, and completed her pediatric residency at Saint Joseph’s Children’s Hospital, in Paterson, New Jersey. She completed a Master of Public Health degree in epidemiology at UNMC and is currently working on her PhD in clinical and translational research. Most recently, Dr. Delair, who completed the AAMC Healthcare Executive Diversity and Inclusion Certificate Program in September 2020, has been named the associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the College of Medicine effective Nov. 1.
Sookyong Koh, MD, PhD: Dr. Koh has been hired as chief of the UNMC Division of Pediatric Neurology. She will start in March 2021. Dr. Koh currently serves as the director of pediatric epilepsy research at Emory University in Atlanta. Dr. Koh is board certified in neurology with a special qualification in child neurology, clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy. Dr. Koh earned her PhD in neurobiology from the University of Rochester in New York.
The recent wave of recruitments, she said, brings not just increased clinical prowess to the department, but new expertise and new skills, including developing much greater capabilities in research and expanding the teaching mission by building more subspecialty fellowships.
Recruiting can be challenging, Dr. Simonsen said.
“Some of these pediatric subspecialists can be multiyear recruitments, and every single one of them is a national search,” she said. “If we’re looking for a specialist in adolescent medicine or rheumatology, for example, there are only about 10 to 20 that are trained each year in those disciplines.”
The key to convincing people to come to UNMC, she said, is demonstrating that the med center is a place where faculty members are supported by colleagues and provided a scope for program development.
“The growth that we’ve enjoyed over the last decade has allowed us to expand to some of these more rare disciplines, because people do need to believe they’re part of a team and belong to the larger mission.”
The affiliation with Children’s Hospital & Medical Center is an important draw, she said.
“One of the things that pediatric specialists look for is having a dedicated children’s hospital to support their work. In a children’s hospital, everything is aimed at the care of the child, and that really does help us facilitate having everyone always thinking about children.”
Chanda Chacón, the new president and CEO of Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, said she has been impressed by the caliber of faculty joining the pediatrics department.
“Great people follow other great people,” Chacón said. “The ability to recruit is absolutely a testament to the relationship that both Children’s and UNMC have established . . . The new faculty and physicians that I have met are big players, and the part that I like the most about the team and the physicians that work here is that they also are really great people. These are people you want to work with and be around.”
Zebulon Timmons, MD, who arrived in August to be the new chief of the UNMC Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, said it was an easy choice to join the department.
“It’s an exciting moment, as Children’s Hospital & Medical Center prepares to open a new state-of-the-art emergency department and welcomes a new CEO in Ms. Chacón,” he said. “There are opportunities to realize the academic potential of our department. I’m looking forward to working with the university in expanding the emergency services we can offer to the children of Omaha and the greater region.”
With the opening of the Child Health Research Institute in 2017 and the future opening of the Hubbard Center for Children at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, the affiliation has become even more attractive to potential faculty members.
“When the affiliation was signed, it allowed for hospital-based divisions — emergency medicine, critical care medicine, hospital medicine, neonatology — to become more academic,” Dr. Simonsen said. “Each of their divisions have actively embraced the academic mission and are highly productive at this point, which is really exciting only 12 years in.”
UNMC’s growing national prominence in infectious diseases and global health also is attractive to potential recruits, said Dr. Simonsen, who is a professor in the UNMC Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases.
“We absolutely talk about our alignment with Nebraska Medicine, including the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit,” she said. “For areas such as infectious diseases and critical care medicine, that collaboration also helps enhance our reputation.”
Most importantly, the department has enough capacity to support the academic, clinical and research pieces of the mission, she said.
“We have members of our faculty who are dedicated physician scientists or PhD scientists, and others who are devoted to the educational mission, and still others who are clinical experts – and all of them are truly given the scope they need to be successful in their chosen career path.”