General and Community Pediatrics

Research Faculty

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William B. Brinkman, MD, MEd, MSc Director, Division of General and Community Pediatrics, Carl Weihl Professor of Pediatrics

Supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Brinkman’s research has examined shared decision making about treatment options for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and, for those who choose to start medication, the continuity of treatment. Dr. Brinkman also collaborates on shared decision making research for a variety of other medical conditions with funding from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

513-636-2576 bill.brinkman@cchmc.org

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Andrew F. Beck, MD, MPH Attending Physician, Division of General & Community Pediatrics

Andrew F. Beck, MD, MPH, focuses on the intersection between child health and underlying social, economic, and environmental determinants. He then works to improve outcomes for children and neighborhoods, in part through bolstered hospital-community partnerships. He currently leads Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Community Health efforts devoted to reducing disparities in hospitalizations across neighborhoods.

513-636-3170 andrew.beck1@cchmc.org

Kristen A. Copeland, MD Director, NRSA General Pediatrics Research Fellowship

Kristen A. Copeland, MD, studies how the child care center environment—including its facilities, teachers, policies and practices—can promote children’s physical activity, gross motor development and healthy eating habits. Dr. Copeland also directs the three-year general pediatric fellowship program, which aims to prepare independent researchers to focus on prevalent health problems affecting underserved children and adolescents.

513-636-1687 kristen.copeland@cchmc.org

Thomas G. DeWitt, MD, FAAP Designated Institutional Official; Chair, Graduate Medical Education Committee

Thomas G. DeWitt is primarily interested in innovation and research linked to outcomes in educator development, education systems, and early childhood reading and literacy.

513-636-5932 tom.dewitt@cchmc.org

Sheela Rath Geraghty, MD, MS, IBCLC, FAAP, FABM Medical Director, Breastfeeding Medicine Clinic

Sheela Rath Geraghty, MD, MS, IBCLC, FAAP, FABM, conducts clinical research studies on the challenges women face related to successful breastfeeding. Dr. Geraghty’s current research focuses on the influence of breast milk expression on maternal and child outcomes.

513-636-2526 sheela.geraghty@cchmc.org

Mary V. Greiner, MD, MS Medical Director, CHECK Foster Care Center

Mary V. Greiner, MD, MS, is a child abuse pediatrician who is doing clinical research in child abuse and foster care health. She is studying abusive head trauma, with specific interest in the role of diagnostic radiology to determine risk factors for subdural hemorrhages, as well as looking at outcomes of children with head injury. Research in the disparities of foster care health as well as the impact of interventions, such as specialized care and focused screenings, is a second clinical focus.

513-636-9979 mary.greiner@cchmc.org

John S. Hutton, MD, MS Attending Physician, Division of General & Community Pediatrics

John S. Hutton, MS, MD, explores the influence of early home environment, especially shared reading and screen-based media, on emergent literacy and brain development. To help identify children at risk for reading difficulty and correlate behavioral and imaging-based evidence, he is also working to develop clinic-based literacy screening tools. Dr. Hutton is also interested in the use of children’s books for pediatric anticipatory guidance.

513-636-6721 john1.hutton@cchmc.org

Robert S. Kahn, MD, MPH Associate Chair of Community Health, UC Department of Pediatrics

Robert S. Kahn, MD, MPH, studies the social and biologic pathways that lead to child health disparities, and develops interventions to interrupt those pathways. He received NIH funding to launch a large-scale study of disparities in children's admissions for asthma. A partnership he co-founded that embeds legal aid advocates in pediatric primary care to address the social determinants of child health was featured in The New York Times.

513-636-4369 robert.kahn@cchmc.org

Melissa D. Klein, MD, MEd Director, Education Section, Division of General and Community Pediatrics

Melissa D. Klein, MD, MEd, is a general pediatrician with an interest in medical education research. Her main research focuses on the effects of education on pediatric residents’ knowledge of and attitudes towards the social determinants of health. Her most recent projects investigate newly created and innovative teaching techniques and measurement tools to evaluate resident practice change towards screening for social needs in the primary care centers.

513-636-4506 melissa.klein@cchmc.org

Michelle L. McGowan, PhD Member, Division of General and Community Pediatrics

Michelle L. McGowan, PhD, investigates ethical and social implications of reproductive, genetic, and genomic technologies, with a particular focus on how patients, families, consumers, clinicians, and researchers conceptualize the risks and benefits of these technologies. Her scholarship focuses on egg donation, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, fertility preservation, carrier screening, genomic testing and medicine, and participant-centric genomic research.

513-636-3656 michelle.mcgowan@cchmc.org

Stephen E. Muething, MD Chief Quality Officer

Stephen E. Muething, MD, is a leader in quality improvement and transformation at Cincinnati Children's. He led improvement work in evidence-based care and patient flow, and was a leader of the team that launched Family-Centered Rounds. He has a special interest in design for reliability and high reliability organization, and plays a key role in several national improvement efforts supplying expertise in improvement science.

513-636-2068 stephen.muething@cchmc.org

Nicholas Newman, DO, MS, FAAP Attending Physician, Division of General and Community Pediatrics

Nicholas Newman, DO, MS, FAAP, is an environmental epidemiologist who has a translational research project through the Center for Environmental Genetics to engage communities regarding common environmental exposures. Specifically, he recently worked with residents of an inner city neighborhood to prevent lead exposure during a large-scale demolition project.

513-803-3688 environmentalhealth@cchmc.org

Christopher B. Peltier, MD, FAAP Director, Community Section, Division of General and Community Pediatrics

Dr. Christopher Peltier's research involves community based education of medical students and residents. His interests include what motivates community preceptors to teach, how best to train them to become better educators, and the identity of educators. He also collaborates to develop best practices in how to recognize community preceptors and how medical centers can effectively support the needs of community based teachers.

513-752-3650 chris.peltier@cchmc.org

Beth Rymeski, DO Pediatric Surgeon, Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgery

513-636-3240 beth.rymeski@cchmc.org

Zeina Samaan, MD Attending Physician, Pediatric Primary Care Center, Division of General and Community Pediatrics

Zeina Samaan, MD, is a primary care pediatrician whose research interests include primary care quality improvement which include improvement of childhood immunization rate, improvement of influenza vaccination rate in high risk pediatric patients, preventing medical errors in primary care setting, development screening and autism initiatives. She also focuses on the use of electronic health record to deliver quality of care; implemented flu alert using EHR to improve the rate of flu vaccinations.

513-636-4506 zeina.samaan@cchmc.org

Gregory A. Szumlas, MD, FAAP Attending Physician, Division of General and Community Pediatrics

Gregory A. Szumlas, MD, FAAP, is a primary care pediatrician who focuses on quality improvement in chronic disease management, particularly asthma. He also focuses on literacy, including early literacy promotion and health literacy.

513-636-4506 greg.szumlas@cchmc.org

Christine M. White, MD, MAT Associate Chief of Staff

Christine M. White, MD, MAT, is an associate professor for the UC Department of Pediatrics. Dr. White's interests and research focus on quality improvement. She has led efforts to increase medication reconciliation completion. She is currently leading institute-wide improvement projects on improving capacity management and the patient/family experience.

513-803-1422 christine.white@cchmc.org

Kimberly Yolton, PhD Director of Research Section, General and Community Pediatrics

Dr. Yolton’s current research primarily focuses on the impact of exposure to common environmental toxicants on health, growth, and neurobehavioral outcomes from infancy through adolescence. She directs the Health Outcomes and Measures of the Environment (HOME) Study, a Cincinnati-based pregnancy and birth cohort study. She collaborates with investigators from multiple institutions, both domestically and internationally, regarding neurobehavioral assessment and staff training strategies to acquire the most appropriate outcome measures with the highest standards of reliability and validity. The ultimate goal is the identification of short- and long-term neurobehavioral outcomes among infants and children from a variety of samples, advancing our understanding of developmental trajectories and factors that may alter outcomes. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute (FAMRI).

Visit the Yolton Lab.

513-636-2815 kimberly.yolton@cchmc.org

General and Community Pediatrics

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