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.

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

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.

May 9, 2017

Texas Children’s recently received an impressive report card from The Joint Commission with surveyors commending the hospital for demonstrating several best practices.

“Our survey results are a great indication that we are meeting the expectation of quality care for our patients,” said Texas Children’s President and CEO Mark A. Wallace. “This should only propel us to continue our focus on providing safe, quality care every single day for every one of our patients.”

Every three years, Texas Children’s undergoes an accreditation process to ensure our delivery of high-quality patient care. On May 1, the Joint Commission survey team arrived at Texas Children’s for a 5-day unannounced survey. The surveyors consisted of an administrator, a pediatrician and ambulatory specialist, four pediatric and OB/GYN nurses, and a life safety engineer.

What Joint Commission noted

The survey is intended to assess the organization’s compliance in patient care areas that contribute to positive outcomes and to measure and improve performance. The Joint Commission team was very impressed with our improved outcomes in asthma, diabetes, radiology efficiency and flow, patient flow and surgical complications.

The team also identified several best practices observed during the survey including:

  • Time out processes across the system
  • NICU infection control practices
  • Error prevention technology in the anesthesia and pharmacy areas
  • Critical lab documentation
  • Simulation of new buildings and processes for latent safety threats

“The Joint Commission survey team visited several Texas Children’s facilities to evaluate patient care processes through on-site observations, staff interviews and tracer methodology,” said Texas Children’s Quality and Safety Director Elaine Whaley. “This year, Joint Commission implemented a new survey methodology called Survey Analysis for Evaluating Risk (SAFER), a matrix that uses a color-coded grid to evaluate the likelihood of harm to our patients, staff and visitors based on the number of occurrences.”

The surveyors were impressed with the knowledge and confidence exhibited by staff and faculty who participated in the tracer interviews. They complimented them on their ability to navigate Epic and explain the continuum of care, and they were impressed by our staff’s ability to talk about quality projects and outcomes.

How we prepared for the survey

Preparing for regulatory surveys is an ongoing process underscored by Texas Children’s daily focus on patient safety and high quality programs. Texas Children’s uses a consultant on an ongoing basis to review our processes and evaluate our survey readiness. The information provided by the consultant helps the organization fine tune.

“The results we get from area tracers during the preparation process provide information we need to develop and implement an organization-wide readiness education program,” said Danyalle Evans, Texas Children’s assistant director, System Accreditation and Readiness. “We regularly evaluate our internal processes against regulatory guidelines to identify opportunities for improvement. Regulatory surveys are valuable evaluation tools, but we have a deliberate focus on the quality and safety of our patients’ care every day.”

The Joint Commission accredits and certifies more than 20,500 health care organizations and programs in the United States. Approximately 77 percent of the nation’s hospitals are accredited by The Joint Commission.

Dr. Jordan Orange has been selected to receive a 2017 Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research Award, a prestigious honor given annually to Baylor College of Medicine faculty who have made the most significant published scientific contribution to clinical or basic biomedical research during the past three years.

Orange’s peers – Drs. Emily Mace, Lisa Forbes and Tiphanie Vogel – nominated him for the award in honor of his work as a distinguished pediatrician-scientist who has made seminal contributions to the fields of clinical immunology, basic immunology and cell biology.

Specifically, they highlighted three papers that represent the breadth, caliber and recent impact of Orange’s work as chief of the Section of Immunology, Allergy and Rheumatology and director of the Center for Human Immunobiology. These papers were published in Nature Genetics, the Journal of Clinical Investigation and the Journal of Cell Biology and are described in greater detail below.

“Dr. Orange orchestrates a vibrant and successful clinical and basic research program applying cutting-edge cell biology to questions of important clinical relevance,” Mace said. “In addition to being a pioneer in the field of NK cell deficiency and an international authority in the study and treatment of primary immunodeficiency, he is also a world’s expert in the field of highly quantitative imaging, including super-resolution and total internal reflection microscopy.”

Mace added that Orange’s scientific accomplishments are paralleled only by his success as a leader and mentor.

“His scientific vision and innovation are combined with tireless dedication to both teaching and learning,” she said. “We all are honored to count him as a colleague.”

Orange will be presented with the DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research Award on May 15. To learn more about the award, click here. To learn more about the scientific research that garnered Orange the DeBakey award, see below.

Nature Genetics – Through collaboration with the Baylor Hopkins Center for Mendelian Genomics, Orange has become a leader in the discovery of novel monogenic causes of primary immunodeficiency. The discovery of COPA syndrome (Watkin et al., Nature Genetics 2015) was the result of a multi-institute collaboration led by Orange. This rare, autosomal dominant autoimmune syndrome leads to arthritis and interstitial lung disease and was identified through whole exome sequencing of affected patients and their unaffected family members. This genetic discovery was validated in Orange’s laboratory by identifying the mechanism of disease through modeling of the impacted pathway. This work was also recognized with the Lee C. Howley Sr. prize for the most outstanding paper of the year by the Arthritis Foundation in 2015.

Journal of Clinical Investigation – NK cells are innate lymphocytes that eliminate infected or diseased cells. The field of primary NK cell deficiency (NKD) is one in which Orange has been a pioneer; he penned one of the first descriptions of NKD in 2003. While rare, NKD is severe and frequently fatal. To date, four monogenic causes of isolated NKD have been published, two of these from Orange’s group. Most recently, Orange led an international team that discovered biallelic mutations in the transcription factor IRF8 are a novel cause of NKD. This paper, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation in 2017 (Mace et al.), ended a decade-long quest to solve the original published case of NKD. Again, modeling of patient mutations in the Orange laboratory using cutting-edge cell biology revealed the mechanism of impaired NK cell development in a cohort of patients from unrelated families.

Cell Biology – As NK cells lie at the heart of Orange’s research, it is not surprising that understanding NK cell function has been a cornerstone of his basic science program. He has led the field of NK cell biology by using highly quantitative microscopy and image analysis to deeply probe their function. In the January 2017 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology, Hsu et al. describe the purpose of NK cell lytic granule convergence, a mechanism by which NK cells direct their potent cytolytic machinery to prevent damage to bystander cells. This finding, which has important clinical implications for the field of immunotherapy, featured the application of novel technology to mimic an NK cell microenvironment. This work was showcased on the cover of the journal and merited an editorial from the well-known cell biologist Dr. Ira Mellman, as well as a feature on the journal’s weekly podcast.