Dr. Koh named chief of pediatric neurology

Sookyong Koh, MD, PhD, calls pediatrics a “happy” specialty.

And Dr. Koh has a lot of reasons to be happy these days.

A specialist in pediatric epilepsy, Dr. Koh recently joined UNMC and Children’s Hospital & Medical Center as the new division chief of pediatric neurology. She is excited to join a team of seasoned pediatric neurologists.

“There is room for growth here,” said Dr. Koh, who most recently served as director of pediatric epilepsy research at Emory University in Atlanta. “The strength of UNMC and Children’s is that the faculty is individually quite talented. We have seasoned senior clinicians who can help recruit junior faculty grow with us.

“It’s my first mission to establish a common goal and direction to help us all be successful as a team,” she said.

Dr. Koh arrives in Omaha — her second time in the Midwest, following her first job at Northwestern University — at an exciting time for the entire field of neurology, she said, when advances in molecular diagnoses make more personalized treatment possible.

“In the case of epilepsy, for example, there can be one single base pair variant in the genetic code that causes disease. We now can target that change by gene therapy or by avoiding the medication that is contraindicated. The outcome of children with epilepsy, therefore, has much improved over the past decade or so.”

With a boom in neuroscience and neurology research and more effective treatments and therapies, the time is right, she said, to identify and recruit talented clinicians and faculty for the department, as well.

“Neurology has become quite attractive for next-generation students who are bright and want to help make people better,” she said. “There are many things we can do today that we couldn’t in the past. There is so much research going on, and if not cures, we have answers for many conditions, which makes neurology much more effective now than in the past.”

And Dr. Koh wants her division to take a role in that research.

“I do basic science research, and I will have a laboratory on the UNMC campus,” she said. “There’s a large neuroscience core there, and I plan to work closely with them. But, in addition to basic science research, there’s an opportunity for clinicians to do clinical research and become part of the larger consortium — for example, there’s a Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium that we can join. In that way, we can quickly put UNMC and Children’s on the map.

“We also can provide protected time and use the time efficiently to encourage each junior and senior faculty to be engaged with research and education. Building the culture of scholarship will be important.”

She is looking forward to collaborating with the UNMC Department of Neurological Sciences.

“There is a really strong epilepsy and neurology team, and the surgical epilepsy program is growing. I met with neurology department chair Matthew Rizzo, MD, and he is excited about our collaboration. It’s my expectation that we will grow together as allies, capitalizing on each other’s strength and experience.”

Dr. Koh, who has family members who are affected by epilepsy, said working with children makes her happy.

“Children are resilient,” she said. “They are able to withstand certain challenges, they push back, and fight back — they have this innate ability to heal. We joke sometimes that children do well despite us.

“My PhD was in developmental neurobiology. Thus, for me, the choice of child neurology and pediatric epilepsy was a natural extension. Epilepsy is a family disease — if a child is affected by epilepsy, the entire family is affected. And I know my personal experiences help me understand the difficulties of the families we serve.”

She is pleased to find her commitment to families reflected throughout Children’s.

“The entire staff, everyone I have met, truly care about and are proud of their position at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center,” she said. “Their dedication and care are unprecedented in my view, from the individuals who schedule the appointment and check the patients in, to EEG technicians, to the clinicians, to the nurses. I see such dedication, and I see that everyone is happy and proud to be part of Children’s.

“That pride will form a foundation for us to grow upon, and I am optimistic that we will be able to build a strong program going forward.”