Kim Smith-Whitley, MD, is currently the clinical director of the Division of Hematology and the director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). In addition, she is also an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
With over 20 years of clinical experience, Dr. Smith-Whitley’s research interest focuses on sickle cell survivorship: predicting and preventing long-term, chronic, and life-threatening complications of the disease. She’s assisted in the development of two initiatives programs at CHOP, “A short-stay Hematology Acute Care Unit” and “The Blue Tie Tag program to recruit blood donors for pediatric transfusions.”
In 2015, Dr. Smith-Whitley was the Co-Principle Investigator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)-funded grant focused on sickle cell disease newborn screening follow-up programs. The grant was a national effort to develop, implement and maintain a strategy to identify and assess the care quality and outcomes of individuals with sickle cell disease in order to improve access to comprehensive care. Through this effort an agreement was reached between Sickle Cell Disease Association of American (National) and the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) which allowed SCDAA to use NBSTRN’s Longitudinal Pediatric Data Resource (LPDR) tool for their data collection. The grant involved 5 HRSA regions, 20 states and 26 sites.
Dr. Smith-Whitley received a Master of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She then received her medical degree from The George Washington University School of Medicine. Her dedication and hard work led her to receive the Blockley-Osler Award for excellence in teaching clinical medicine at the bedside in 2010. The NBSTRN is extremely pleased to give this month’s spotlight to Dr. Smith-Whitley and value the impact that she has made to the Sickle Cell community!
Sources:
http://www.chop.edu/doctors/smith-whitley-kim
https://www.nbstrn.org/sites/default/files/smith-whitley_scdaa_scdnbs_acmg.pdf