Cross-Campus Collaborations

The Pediatric Divisions Collective Power Challenge is a new collaborative initiative between pediatric leaders at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital to accelerate children’s health research, education, and clinical care within the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital system. The joint projects resulting from the collaboration are poised to create meaningful opportunities to ensure the goal shared by our three institutions: to provide the best pediatric care regionally and across the nation.

Thirteen cross-campus teams submitted proposals in the summer of 2021. A group of reviewers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), Weill Cornell Medicine, and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, along with members of the NewYork-Presbyterian Family Advisory Council, assessed the submissions on the basis of their:

• Impact on pediatric care
• Collaboration
• Feasibility
• Sustainability
• Advancement of collective power and underlying values

The team chose the following projects for advancement and funding:

Collaborative Sleep Center

This project’s objective is to unify the existing pediatric sleep programs at CUIMC and Weill Cornell Medicine into a single program that will address the sleep medicine needs of children in and around New York City and improve care for children with complex disorders. Collaborators include Drs. Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, Josh Milner, and Meyer Kattan (CUIMC) and Karen Onel and Stefan Worgall (Weill Cornell Medicine), from the Divisions of Pulmonary Medicine and Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology.

Pediatric Gene Therapy

This collaboration will create a gene therapy program based on the expertise of specialists in hematology/oncology and transplantation at Weill Cornell Medicine and CUIMC. Program leaders aim to provide care for a large number of patients in the region, to work toward a cure for inherited monogenic diseases of children, and to build on existing collaborations between the complementary divisions. Collaborators include Drs. Darrell Yamashiro (CUIMC) and Sujit Sheth (Weill Cornell Medicine) from the Divisions of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation.

Joint Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery Program

Through this program, pediatric neurologists Drs. Cigdem Akman (CUIMC) and Zachary Grinspan (Weill Cornell Medicine) will put in place an enterprise-wide pediatric epilepsy navigator, joint pediatric epilepsy surgery conferences, shared electronic resources (i.e., patient lists, reporting pipelines), clinical protocols, training programs, and outreach/media campaigns.

Rapid Genome Sequencing Program

This collaboration will implement rapid genome sequencing for children with likely genetic conditions who are inpatients in our intensive care units. Patients will benefit from appropriate treatment and reduced hospital length of stay, while faculty will benefit from improved communication, shared learning, and the ability to jointly evaluate the clinical utility and impact of rapid sequencing on child and family outcomes. Collaborators include pediatric geneticists Drs. Wendy Chung (CUIMC) and Christopher Cunniff (Weill Cornell Medicine).

Bicampus Visiting Professorship

Over the course of a three-day stay, visiting professors in this program will present a significant lecture on each campus, participate in formal and informal meetings as appropriate for their expertise, and attend a bicampus reception to spark cross-campus discussion and collaborative ideas between teams. Program leaders include Drs. Melissa Stockwell (CUIMC) and Susan Bostwick (Weill Cornell Medicine) from the Divisions of General Pediatrics.

PEDIatric Transfusion Research Collaborative (PEDITREC)

The PEDITREC collaboration aims to reduce the number of blood transfusions in children who have undergone bypass surgery. Pediatric intensivists Drs. Jennifer Chapman (CUIMC) and Marianne Nellis (Weill Cornell Medicine) and their teams will assess the hemostatic efficacy of new blood products in children following cardiopulmonary bypass and use implementation science to incorporate pediatric transfusion guidelines into EPIC and to track compliance.

Environmental Bisphenols and Risk of Hypospadias

This project’s goals include defining the impact of plastics on human development, specifically the link between in utero exposure to environmental bisphenols and potential risks such as hypospadias and genital differences. Collaborators include pediatric endocrinologists Drs. Sharon Oberfield (CUIMC) and Zoltan Antal (Weill Cornell Medicine), along with researchers from the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH).

Collective Power in Pediatric Chronic Kidney Disease Care and Research

This project aims to expand existing services at Weill Cornell and CUIMC to fill unmet needs for clinical care and research in pediatric chronic kidney disease (CKD) and to increase patient enrollment and diversity through the CKD registry. Collaborators include pediatric nephrologists Drs. Fangming Lin (CUIMC) and Eduardo Perelstein (Weill Cornell Medicine).