Pediatrics Chair Renowned Cardiologist and Researcher

He also will be president of UBMD Pediatrics and serve as the pediatric chief-of-service at Kaleida Health and the medical director, pediatrics services business development, for Oishei Children’s Hospital.

The joint announcement was made by:

• Michael E. Cain, MD, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School
• Jody L. Lomeo, president and CEO, Great Lakes Health System of WNY and Kaleida Health
• Allegra C. Jaros, president of Oishei Children’s Hospital

The appointment takes effect in November.

“Together with our partners at Kaleida Health and Oishei Children’s Hospital, the Jacobs School is most pleased to welcome to Western New York such an outstanding physician-scientist,” Cain said.

After a comprehensive national search, Cain said that Lipshultz rapidly emerged as the top candidate, possessing the administrative, scientific, clinical, leadership and visionary skills needed to move the Department of Pediatrics forward.

Cain said he anticipates Lipshultz will expand the department’s translational and clinical research programs, enhance the excellence of its graduate medical education and mentored research training programs, and develop and align a comprehensive clinical program on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and in the community.

Lomeo and Jaros noted his international reputation, expertise in preclinical and clinical areas, and experience leading multicenter clinical trials will significantly enhance the quality of care for patients at Kaleida Health’s hospitals.

Cain noted that Lipshultz will be the first chair of pediatrics to be located in the Jacobs School’s new downtown home on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, just steps from Oishei Children’s Hospital, further cementing collaborations between the two institutions.

Lipshultz has been with the Children’s Research Center of Michigan since 2013 and was pediatrician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital of Michigan until 2017. He also was specialist-in-chief, pediatrics, at the Detroit Medical Center and president of University Pediatricians.

Previously, he was the inaugural holder of the George E. Batchelor Chair in Pediatrics and the Batchelor Family Pediatric Cardiology Endowed Chair at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Lipshultz is credited with having helped establish the field of pediatric cardio-oncology and has been principal investigator of several landmark National Institutes of Health (NIH) studies on the causes and treatment of cardiomyopathy in children.

His clinical studies have established the efficacy of therapies that can prevent heart disease in children with HIV. He also uses comparative genomics and proteomics to study the development of pediatric cardiomyopathy.

As a scientific leader, Lipshultz chairs the medical advisory board and scientific review committee of the Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation Inc., a national non-profit organization he helped found that is dedicated to finding causes and cures for pediatric cardiomyopathy.

He has chaired the cardiomyopathy working group for the World Health Organization’s Global Burden of Disease project supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lipshultz has received a congressional commendation for leading a coalition task force to improve the outcomes for children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the state of pediatric health care in the Ukraine.

He also conducts research aimed at improving health care services and population health, and in reducing health disparities among racial, ethnic and minority populations.

His interests include enhancing preventive medicine to transform health care systems. For more than two decades, Lipshultz has been the principal investigator of numerous large NIH international registries and research projects that have developed and implemented evidence-based clinical practices that have resulted in marked improvements in health care delivery and population health.

His research programs have received considerable funding, with his group among the top 2 percent of NIH-funded investigators in 2010 and the top 1 percent of scientists globally on the Essential Science Indicators (Thompson Reuters, 2016) rankings.

The author or co-author of more than 650 peer-reviewed manuscripts, chapters, review articles and textbooks, Lipshultz has also been an invited lecturer, reviewer and advisory board member for numerous organizations.

He is the editor-in-chief or associate editor of several medical journals and was invited to be the founding editor-in-chief of a new journal, Cardio-Oncology, in the field he helped to create.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also earned a master of arts in biology, Lipshultz received his medical degree from Dartmouth Medical School and completed a pediatrics residency at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland.

At Boston Children’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School, he completed both a fellowship in clinical cardiology and a research cardiology fellowship at the American Heart Association-Bugher Foundation Centers for Molecular Biology in the Cardiovascular System.

He later served on the faculty at Harvard Medical School as an instructor and assistant professor of pediatrics. He was chief of pediatric cardiology at the Boston University School of Medicine and later at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where he led the Children’s Heart Center at Golisano Children’s Hospital at Strong.

Lipshultz is a diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics with a lifetime certification in general pediatrics.