May 23, 2017

On May 16, Michael Phelps visited with patients at Texas Children’s Cancer Center and was honored at the 12th annual An Evening with a Legend event.

Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, started his day at Texas Children’s by making a special visit to the Cancer Center to spend time with patients and their families. During the one-on-one room visits, Phelps offered words of encouragement and let the families know they are not alone in the fight. As someone who accomplished a seemingly unattainable feat in his career, Phelps emphasized the importance of pushing forward with continued endurance.

Later that evening, nearly 650 guests enjoyed an unforgettable evening at the Hilton Americas – Houston’s Ballroom of the Americas for the 12th annual An Evening with a Legend event honoring Phelps.

Benefiting Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers, the evening included a beautiful seated dinner, exciting paddle raise and an intimate conversation with Phelps, moderated by Emmy® award-winning journalist Andrea Kremer. Guests had the opportunity to learn about Phelps’ journey to become a gold medal legend and what is in store for the next phase of his life.

“Michael Phelps was a wonderful legend,” said Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers Director Dr. David Poplack. “He is a sincere, empathetic person who cares deeply about the issues faced by children with cancer. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to host him and appreciate his support for all that we do.”

Co-chaired by Shelley Barineau, Julie Bergen, Ned Torian and Kathy Zay, the event raised more than $1.2 million for the Cancer Center. Carmen and Butch Mach and Kelli and John Weinzierl served as honorary chairs for the event.

Click here to hear from the co-chairs and to learn more about the Evening with a Legend event. To hear from past legends honored at the event, click here.

More than 300 members of the Texas Children’s Hospital Department of Surgery attended the eighth annual Edmond T. Gonzales, Jr., Surgical Research Day on May 19. The event provided a forum for researchers across the department to showcase their work.

“As the research enterprise within the Department of Surgery grows, this day, where we highlight the research being conducted in the department, is more important than ever,” said Dr. Charles D. Fraser, Jr., surgeon-in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital. “The new research discoveries coming from academic surgeons and scientists at Texas Children’s Hospital are changing the future of health care.”

This year 159 abstracts were submitted for review. Eleven of these abstracts were chosen for oral presentations on Surgical Research Day and 130 were accepted for poster presentations. This year eight students vied for the Best Presentation award and three faculty members were chosen to present their research.

The 2016 keynote speaker was Dr. Michael Longaker, the Deane P. and Louise Mitchell Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Salter and Packard Children’s Hospital. He is a pediatric plastic surgeon who also directs Stanford Medical School’s Program in Regenerative Medicine and Children’s Surgical Research, and co-directs the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.

Laura Laux Higgins, director of special projects in the Department of Surgery at Texas Children’s Hospital, gave an ethics presentation on ethical violations in research. Higgins worked at leading legal firms as a litigator and spent several years at a top management consulting firm before joining Texas Children’s.

Awards presented at the event were the Samuel Stal Research Award for outstanding research by a resident or fellow, the Research Mentor Award, and Best Oral Presentation and Best Poster Presentation.

  • The Samuel Stal Research Award was presented to Dr. Luis De Leon, a post-doctoral research fellow in Congenital Heart Surgery. The award is named after Dr. Samuel Stal, former chief of Plastic Surgery at Texas Children’s.
  • Congenital Heart Surgeon Dr. Carlos Mery was honored with the Research Mentor Award. The award is given on an annual basis to honor a Department of Surgery faculty member who serves as a research mentor through career development, professional guidance or cultivation of research interests.
  • Best Oral Presentation award was given to Dr. James Fisher who is in the first year of his fetal surgery fellowship. He presented his work on the Development and Validation of a Fetal 3-D Surgical Simulator: Implications for Minimally Invasive In-Utero Gastroschisis Repair.
  • Best Poster award was given to researcher Andrew Lee from Anesthesiology for a poster on Use of the Baxter Faces (BARF) Scale to Measure the Severity of Nausea in Spanish Speaking Children.

Recipients of the 2017 Surgical Seed Grant Awards were announced as the grand finale of Texas Children’s Hospital Surgical Research Day. This grant program, funded by the Department of Surgery, allows surgery researchers to generate the preliminary data necessary for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant applications and other extramural funding. Click here to find out who received a seed grant.

The Surgical Research Day Planning Committee included Dr. Jed Nuchtern (chair), Melinda Mathis (co-chair), Dr. Swathi Balaji, Shon Bower, Kathy Carberry, Dr. Jennifer Dietrich, Matthew Girotto, Laura Laux Higgins, Dr. Chester Koh, Dr. Lingkun Kong, Dr. Sandi Lam, Liz McCullum, Anissa Quiroz, Angie Rangel, Dr. Scott Rosenfeld, Stacy Staples and Veronica Victorian.

In support of Patient and Family Services’ Step Up for Patients First initiative, Texas Children’s Well-Being Team invites all staff to participate in the upcoming StairWELL Challenge. This well-being challenge encourages employees to make physical activity a priority while committing to take the stairs to improve the elevator experience for our patients and their families.

Challenge Details
  • The challenge is from Thursday, June 1, through Friday, June 30, 2017.
  • Participants’ goal is to complete two to eight flights of stairs each day and keep track of their progress via a tracking sheet (participants will receive this upon signing up for the challenge).*
  • To sign up for the challenge, click here.

“Stair climbing burns more calories than a traditional walk and increases your chance to achieve weight loss,” said Employee Medical Clinic Physician Dr. Irene Lomeda. The vigorous and continuous movement of your legs results in deeper breathing and increases your heartbeat, which enhances blood flow to all areas of your body. Stair climbing is also an ideal way to improve your energy, increase the function of your immune system and lower your risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and heart disease.”

During the challenge, look out for Well-Being Team and Wellness Ambassadors as they will be in the stairwells periodically to catch you climbing the stairs across all locations. They will be handing out Texas Children’s swag and fun incentives to celebrate stepping up for good health.

All Texas Children’s badge holders are eligible to participate. Commit to the challenge as an individual and encourage your co-workers to participate with you!

For more information about the challenge, visit the Well-Being page on Connect.

*In response to patient and family feedback, Texas Children’s Hospital has provided stairwell access for patients and families in the Mark A. Wallace Tower from Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. We understand taking the stairs isn’t an option for some; however, if you choose to take the stairs, this option is now available to you.

Drs. Hsiao-Tuan Chao and Laurie Robak, physician-scientists at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (NRI) at Texas Children’s, received scholarship grants from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) to support studies on neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases.

Chao, a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Dr. Hugo J. Bellen was awarded the 2017 Neurology Research Training Scholarship for her proposed study titled, “Transcriptional Dysregulation of Neural Circuits in Neurodevelopmental Disorders.” Using the laboratory fruit fly and mouse, she will explore how changes in the function of master regulators of gene expression, like EBF3, can cause childhood neurologic diseases. Chao’s discoveries will provide some answers and improve the quality of life for many of these children and families.

Robak is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Joshua Shulman. She was awarded the 2017 Clinical Research Training Fellowship in Parkinson’s Disease for her proposal titled, “Elucidating Genetic Links Between Lysosomal Storage Disorders and Parkinson’s Disease.” Her study will identify lysosomal storage disorder genes as risk factors for Parkinson’s Disease, which will hopefully lead to improved diagnosis and risk assessment, and development of novel therapeutic strategies.

Twenty award winners, including Drs. Chao and Robak, were recognized at the 69th Annual Meeting of AAN, the world’s largest association of neurologists in April.

Click here for more information about their proposed research studies.

Three distinguished faculty members from Texas Children’s Hospital Department of Surgery have been given the Master Clinician Award for Excellence in Patient Care from Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Ellen Friedman, Dr. Edmond Gonzales Jr., and Dr. David Wesson are among the recipients of this award in 2017.

“Drs. Friedman, Gonzales and Wesson are accomplished academic surgeons who exemplify the ideals of the Master Clinician award,” said Dr. Charles D. Fraser, Jr., Texas Children’s surgeon-in-chief. “Each of these surgeons lead in their clinical specialties through excellent patient care. They are each model surgeon educators as well.”

The Master Clinician Award is Baylor’s highest institution-wide honor for faculty contributions to patient care. To be considered for the award, the faculty member must be an associate or full professor and have 15 or more years of clinical service as Baylor faculty. Consideration is given to the physician’s enduring contributions to clinical excellence, expertise in patient care as recognized locally, regionally or nationally, professionalism and communication, leadership, mentoring, clinical innovation, and continuous service to the Baylor community.

Friedman is a pediatric otolaryngologist at Texas Children’s and a professor of otolaryngology and the director of the Center for Professionalism in Medicine at Baylor. She previously served as chief of Otolaryngology at Texas Children’s and held the Bobby Alford Endowed Chair in Pediatric Otolaryngology at Baylor for 24 years from 1991 until 2014.

Friedman is a respected leader in the field of otolaryngology serving at a national level in many professional societies. She was the first woman to be president of the American Society of Pediatric Otolaryngology (ASPO), and the American Broncho-Esophagological Association (ABEA) renamed a national award for Friedman. The Ellen M. Friedman Award for Excellence in Foreign Body Management is given for excellence in innovation, skill and education in the management of aero-digestive foreign bodies.

Gonzales is a pediatric urologist at Texas Children’s and a professor of Urology at Baylor. He served as chief of Pediatric Urology at Texas Children’s from 1974 until 2012. He was named Chief of Surgery serving from 1988 to 2012 and was the hospital’s first Surgeon-in-Chief guiding surgical efforts from 2008 to 2010. He was then named Director of Surgery at West Campus from 2010 until 2014. In his nearly 40 years at Texas Children’s, Gonzales has established a legacy of excellence for which the hospital and Baylor College of Medicine honored him by creating The Edmond T. Gonzales, Jr., MD, Chair in Pediatric Urology which he held from 2004 until 2012.

Within the field of urology, Gonzales has been a leader in the establishment and expansion of pediatric urology fellowship programs across the country. As a result of his work, pediatric urology fellowship positions have more than quadrupled since the early 1980s. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Urology Medal, the highest accolade bestowed by the Urology Section of the American Academy of Pediatrics, because of his pioneering work in pediatric urology and education. In 2001, the Scott Department of Urology at Baylor College of Medicine honored Dr. Gonzales with the F. Brantley Scott, Jr., Award for Innovation and Creativity in Urology.

Wesson is associate surgeon-in-chief for academic affairs at Texas Children’s and professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at Baylor. He also serves as interim surgeon-in-chief at Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. Wesson served as chief of Pediatric Surgery at Texas Children’s from 1997 to 2012. He led the efforts to grow and obtain Level I accreditation for the Texas Children’s Trauma Center and served as its director from 2007-2014. Dr. Wesson was also instrumental in building other Texas Children’s programs such as the Fetal Center, bariatric surgery and surgical oncology. At Baylor, Dr. Wesson is director of Faculty Education and Development for the Department of Surgery. He was also interim chair of the DeBakey Department of Surgery from 2011 to 2012.

Wesson is well known internationally for participating in some of the earliest definitive studies on the non-operative treatment of solid organ injuries in children. His research brought about a new method of treating splenic trauma non-operatively, and resulted in this protocol becoming the standard of care not only for children but also for all age groups. Wesson received the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma Millennium Commitment Award in 2000 and the Safe Kids Canada Founder Award in 2006. As a member of the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, Wesson is a survey team member for Trauma Center designation. He is a founding member of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention, and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Trauma.

All three surgeons receiving the Master Clinician Award have also received the Distinguished Surgeon Award from Texas Children’s Hospital.

May 16, 2017

Dr. Sundeep Keswani, surgical director of Basic Research and pediatric surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital and associate professor of surgery in the Division of Pediatric Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, was recently awarded a $300,000 grant over a period of three years for his project “Targeting the Extracellular Matrix: an Innovative Strategy to Improve Pulmonary Hypertension in Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia.”

The award was from the March of Dimes Foundation, which supports research consistent with its mission to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. Less than 10 percent of applications submitted annually to the foundation are awarded.

The focus of Keswani’s awarded research is to understand the molecular mechanisms of neonatal pulmonary hypertension and develop new innovative therapies for these patients.

“The data and ideas in this application were developed here at Texas Children’s and are a direct result of the support we have received from the Department of Surgery and the hard work of our team,” Keswani said. “This work illustrates the need for surgeons to engage in basic science research to take observations from the bedside to the bench with the overall goal of improving patient outcomes.”

Keswani is a member of the pediatric surgery and fetal surgery teams at Texas Children’s and the principal investigator for the Texas Children’s Laboratory for Regenerative Tissue Repair. His NIH-funded laboratory was launched about two years ago and spans all 10 surgical divisions at Texas Children’s. Researchers in the lab study the molecular mechanisms of regenerative fetal tissue repair and are actively developing novel therapeutics to achieve postnatal regenerative wound healing.

“Conducting research is essential to provide new techniques and treatments for children’s surgery,” said Texas Children’s Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Charles D. Fraser Jr. “Dr. Keswani’s recent award from the March of Dimes is an example of how the Department of Surgery is continuing to grow in this area, bringing in new funding and contributing significant research findings. We are committed to basic and translational research by supporting surgeon-scientists at Texas Children’s Hospital.”

Other recent awards garnered by researchers in the Regenerative Tissue Repair Lab include:

Balaji receives Wound Healing Foundation Research Grant

Dr. Swathi Balaji received the 2017 Wound Healing Foundation-FLASH Clinical Wound Healing Grant Award for her proposal titled “Pathogenesis of Cutaneous Fibrosis and Scarring.”

It is unknown why some individuals heal with robust fibrosis and scarring while others heal from similar injuries with less scarring. Balaji and her colleagues want to understand how immunoregulatory factors, particularly lymphocytes, make decisive contributions to dermal fibrosis. They propose that there are fundamental biologic differences in how fibroblasts and lymphocytes crosstalk to influence scar formation in different people. At the completion of this study, their team hopes to better understand how inflammation shapes scar formation and start working towards the development of innovative tools to promote immune regulatory responses in wounds to prevent dermal scarring as well as help other disease processes characterized by excessive fibroplasia.

The Wound Healing Foundation (WHF), through the support of the Wound Reach Foundation presented this award to Balaji at the 2017 Wound Healing Society Annual Meeting in San Diego.

Basic science research conducted by Balaji received national awards

Balaji was this year’s recipient of the ACell Young Investigator Faculty Award presented to a junior faculty member for a research abstract at the Regenerative Medicine Workshop at Hilton Head. Balaji presented a keynote lecture on her work titled “Effect of Stretch on Extracellular Matrix and Morphology of Fibroblasts in Regenerative Wound Healing.”

Tissue repair after an injury can have a spectrum of fibrosis outcomes, and fibroblasts are the major cell type that regulates the extracellular matrix and fibrosis. Even within a single tissue, fibroblasts exhibit considerable functional diversity in response to different environmental factors such as biomechanical tension and inflammation.

Balaji and her colleagues want to explain the signaling mechanisms among fibroblasts that communicate and regulate their fibrogenic phenotype. Their group is studying the role of exosomes, which are microvesicles on the order of 30-150 nm and contain functional biomolecules such as proteins, lipids, RNA, miRNA, as biomarkers and/or targeted therapeutics to regulate the functional diversity of tissue fibroblasts and their cellular cross talk.

Dr. Monica Fahrenholtz, the postdoctoral fellow on this research project, received the Wound Healing Society trainee travel award at the conference. She gave a quick presentation at this year’s annual meeting.

Each year as we salute nurses across the country during National Nurses Week from May 6 to May 12, Texas Children’s celebrated our incredible team of more than 3,000 nurses for their many successes, accomplishments and contributions to our patients and their families.

This year’s theme for Nurses Week was Nursing: The Balance of Mind, Body and Spirit. The Nursing Retention Council organized several activities that centered on health and wellness to remind our nurses how important it is to take care of themselves so they can provide the best care to their patients.

Nurses Week activities included educational presentations, grand rounds, blessing of the hands, meditation, massages, yoga, a healthy cooking demo and cake deliveries for all of the units.

On May 12, Texas Children’s Nursing Excellence Awards luncheon honored six recipients for their commitment to improving nursing care and patient outcomes.

The award honorees included:

Staff Nurse of the year: Sabrina Acuna
Preceptor of the year: Curt Roberts
Rookie of the year: Adeline Stephen
Leader of the year: Denise Tanner-Brown
APRN of the year: Kimberly Krauklis
Friend of Nursing: Dr. Jonathan Davies

Corie Harris became the first recipient of the 2017 David and Polly Roth Nursing Education Scholarship Fund during the awards luncheon. This education fund will provide tuition assistance for Texas Children’s employees who have worked in the organization for at least three years and are interested in pursuing a professional nursing degree. Click here to view photos of Nursing Excellence Awards.

The Houston Chronicle Salute to Nurses included nurse scientist Mary Gordon and Cindy Jordan from maternal-child health who were among the top 10 award recipients. Click here for more on the Houston Chronicle Salute to Nurses honorees.

In addition to the two nurses honored in the top 10, 27 Texas Children’s nurses were recognized as being among the top 150 in the Greater Houston area.

Busola Ariyo
Mary Abelt
Rose Calhoun
Angela Carriaga
Tamara DuBose
Barbara Elias
Marty Espina
Sara Fletcher
Mary Gordon
Jamey Griffin
Elizabeth Grover
Emily Herman
Margaret Hirsch
Chastity Jaime
Cynthia Jordan
Tina Kratky
Barbara Levy
Mona Lisa Macapagal
Sarah Marcion
Vanessa Phillips
Elizabeth Sasser
Brittany Turner
Christina Watson
Emily Weber
Ketrese White
Rebecca White
Amy Zodin

Congratulations to our Texas Children’s nurses for their commitment to our patients and families.