As a family physician, my clinical practice focuses on the comprehensive care of children and adults, working with the whole family whenever possible. Practicing on Buffalo’s lower West Side has equipped me with a wealth of experience and expertise in caring for individuals from diverse cultures from around the world. Providing primary care for the neighborhood’s refugee and immigrant populations also offers rich opportunities for training medical, nursing and other students in the health professions. I currently practice within the Neighborhood Health Center, a federally qualified health center that offers the full range of primary care services where community health workers and a dedicated professional staff share the goal of improving individual and community health.

I am responsible for the hospital care of patients at Buffalo General Hospital, where I work with Family Medicine residents to provide complete inpatient management of adults. I enjoy the teaching and research components of my faculty role, which include mentoring students, working with pre-med and medical students, and conducting research projects centering on psychiatry, cultural care and public health. With the help of an NIH grant, I was able to collaborate with other professionals in the community to establish a Cultural Competency Program at the medical school. This project aims to teach students how to care for patients with diverse cultural backgrounds while also improving access to preventive and primary services for refugees who have legally immigrated to Western New York.

I feel fortunate to have worked as a nurse and in the field of public health before going to medical school. Blending my nursing, public health and physician perspectives continues to help me become a better practitioner by broadening my view of how we affect individuals and communities through our health care system.

As the chief of the division of neonatology in the Department of Pediatrics, I oversee clinical, teaching, research and administrative tasks related to the evaluation and treatment of critically ill preterm and term newborn infants, and I am actively involved in teaching medical students, pediatric residents and fellows in neonatal-perinatal medicine. My practice is primarily located at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo. My division provides high-risk newborn care at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital, plus telephone consultation and transport services for sick newborn infants throughout Western New York.

Over the past decade, I have developed an interest in managing newborn infants with hypoxic respiratory failure and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN). I have investigated the role oxygen free radicals, nitric oxide and antioxidants play in the pathogenesis and management of PPHN. More recently, I have focused my attention on optimal strategies for neonatal resuscitation. Based on this work, I have published and co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed manuscripts.

As the director of the Center for Developmental Biology of the Lung, my research focuses on the pathophysiology of the cardio-pulmonary transition – how fetal lungs change at birth in order to breathe air – and disorders of this transition such as birth asphyxia, PPHN, retained lung liquid and respiratory distress syndrome. My laboratory’s translational research aims primarily at preventing and treating these disorders with optimal neonatal resuscitation techniques, steroids, nitric oxide, surfactant and judicious use of oxygen.

In 2011, our division joined the NICHD Neonatal Research Network – a group of 18 Academic Neonatal Centers to conduct multicenter trials with the goal of improving outcomes in sick preterm and term neonates. Together, we work to transfer innovative discoveries from our laboratory to the bedside through clinical trials, improving outcomes for this vulnerable population.