Champions for Children

In 2010, when he was 15, Dr. Manuel "Manny" Gonzales was a sophomore in high school and a varsity cross-country runner when he received a stunning diagnosis: cancer. At that time, he underwent a grueling regimen to battle the disease: 10 rounds of chemotherapy, thirteen lumbar punctures, and countless hours spent in both the inpatient and outpatient settings of the hospital where he was being treated: Nemours Children’s Hospital, Delaware. His experience changed his life, creating a passion for becoming a pediatric oncologist. Dr. Gonzales shared his story on Episode 56 of the podcast. We've invited him back to check in on his health and career path as he completes his pediatric residency at Nemours and heads into a hematology/oncology fellowship. Dr. Gonzales was recently nominated as a Visionary of the Year Candidate for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He is raising money to power innovative research for newer and safer therapies needed in pediatric oncology. Click here for more information on his campaign and to join his fundraising team. Carol Vassar, producer

The season of rebirth, renewal, and growth is here: Spring. And for many, it brings with it thoughts of putting our hands in the soil and planting seeds or transplanting seedlings in gardens. That’s exactly what is happening right now on the Nemours Estate in Wilmington, Delaware. The Can Grow Garden is a collaboration between the estate and Nemours Children’s Hospital Delaware to grow plants and provide a place for patient, family, and associate education and respite. The grown plants - mainly vegetables - provide food for the community to help alleviate food insecurity and teach healthy cooking and eating. Carol Vassar, producer View the Can Grow Garden video here. For more information on the Can Grow Garden, contact Judy Lieberman

Nemours' Chief Well-being Officer Dr. Maureen Leffler provides an update on the well-being of the healthcare workforce, both nationally and at Nemours. We'll explore the burnout that is plaguing the healthcare workforce and what Nemours is doing to counteract that, get an update on the enterprise peer support program launched in 2020 and now open to all associates, and the newly created Nemours Center for Associate well-being. Well-being resources for Nemours associates. Nemours' Employee Wellness Benefits Carol Vassar, producer

As the pandemic was settling in on the world in 2020, a Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando resident was pondering a way to take her work out of the hospital and into the community. Her vision of well beyond medicine: a mobile clinic providing health care (and so much more) to underinsured or uninsured children and families in Greater Orlando. A fortuitous encounter with a Nemours grant writer yielded the seed money to make this resident’s dream a reality. Featuring Nemours Associates Dr. Laura Chilcutt, Dr. Branden Trandai, and Gabe Krivenko. Carol Vassar, producter

Ensuring the U.S. has a well-trained pediatric workforce is critical. Listen in as Dr. Larry Moss, President and CEO, Nemours Children’s Health, and Amy Knight, President of the Children’s Hospital Association, discuss Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education funding. They offer policy recommendations to address the current pediatric workforce shortage, including a call to Congress to increase CHGME funding, reauthorization of the program, and more. Carol Vassar, producer

On Mar. 2, 2023, the Lisa Dean Moseley Foundation of Wilmington, Delaware donated $78 million to dramatically expand Nemours' capacity to provide clinical care for children with cancer, sickle cell disease, and other blood disorders. Learn more about this donation, including how it happened, from William (Bill) Martin, President of the Lisa Dean Moseley Foundation, and Mark Mumford, Chief Operating Officer for Nemours Children's Health. Carol Vassar, producer

This episode features conversations about raising resilient kids based on the video series of the same name. It’s a partnership between Nemours Children’s Health and the Michael Phelps Foundation and features the most decorated Olympian of all time and his wife, Nicole, as your hosts. Together, they talk with Nemours experts about the world’s hardest job: being a parent. Nicole and Michael are the parents of three young sons and face the same concerns and challenges that all parents do when it comes to helping kids grow to be healthy, happy, and resilient. Learn more about the Michael Phelps Foundation Carol Vassar, producer

We’re talking about how parents learn to become parents, focusing on a parent training management program launched last fall at Nemours Children’s Hospital Floridie for parents whose children have been diagnosed with ADHD. Our guests on this episode developed it: Dr. Lisa Spector, division chief of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics at Nemours Children's, Florida, and her colleague Dr. Corinne Bria, a pediatric emergency medicine physician. Dr. Bria holds a master's of medical education with an emphasis on curriculum, implementation, and evaluation, which fits nicely with her role as interim program director for the Nemours Children's, Florida, pediatric residency program. For more information on this parent training program, please email FLPrevention@nemours.org Carol Vassar, producer

Nemours' Director of Talent Services Dr. Allison Craft is an ardent advocate for associate engagement across the enterprise. In this podcast, she'll share high-level results of the most recent employee engagement survey. She'll also reveal the very personal reason why she's so passionate about employee engagement, which has its origins in an experience so profound that it led her to leave her dream job with NASA to join Nemours and further the engagement mission. Carol Vassar, producer

For more than forty years, Nemours has been leading the way in voice synthesis, voice banking and related assistive technology. This is thanks to the leadership of Dr. Tim Bunnell, Director of the Center for Pediatric Auditory and Speech Sciences at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Delaware. He also heads up Model Talker, a small group of Nemours scientists who helps create synthetic voices for people worldwide, applying the latest technology and research, including predictive analytics. They even allow people to bank their voices, if able, or for you to bank a voice for someone else who might need one. Carol Vassar, producer.

Strange as it may sound, spite was exactly why Child’s Play was founded in 2003. Child’s Play - based in the technology hub of Redmond, Washington, home to Microsoft and Nintendo in America - is a gamer-led charity driving the movement to bring video gaming to pediatric hospitals like Nemours and other non-profits that serve children across the nation and across the world. Hear more about Child’s Play - its background, mission, and partnership with Nemours in both Delaware and Florida - from Erick Blandin, Pediatric Gaming Technology Manager for Child’s Play, and Nemours Gaming and Technology Specialist Scott Shaw, whose position is funded by a capacity building grant from Child’s Play. Carol Vassar, producer

Video games and virtual reality (VR) have long been a staple in the pediatric healthcare setting, and it's now becoming a part of the Child Life mission of leading pediatric hospitals like Nemours. In this episode, we talk with Scott Shaw, Nemours' Child Life Gaming and Technology Specialist. He is one of just 50 such people in the burgeoning field of gaming in healthcare. He joined Nemours in 2022 to take a position funded partly by a grant from Child’s Play, a game industry charity. Child’s Play provides funding, technical assistance, and ongoing education to grantees to make the healthcare experience a little less daunting for patients, families, and even staff. Learn more about the Child's Play Charity Donate to support the Child Life Gaming and Technology Program Carol Vassar, producer

It's our first episode of 2023, featuring the final episode in our occasional series on Precision Medicine at Nemours. Our topic is predictive analytics for the purpose of research. Collecting it, preparing it, analyzing it, and protecting it are the realm of the Nemours Biomedical Research Informatics Center (BRIC). BRIC provides consultation, training, and computational resources to biomedical research investigators across the enterprise and beyond. Our guests are BRIC Director Dr. Timothy Bunnell, and Daniel Eckrich, BRIC’s Supervisor for Research Applications. Carol Vassar, producer Listen to other episodes in the Precision Medicine series: Episode 153: What is Precision Medicine (July 25, 2022) Episode 160: Changing Medicine through Pharmacogenomics Research (Sept. 12, 2022) Episode 161: Pharmacogenomics in Practice (Sept. 19, 2022) Episode 168: Biobanking at Nemours (Nov. 7, 2022) Episode 171: Genetic Medicine and Genetic Counseling for Kids (Nov. 28, 2022)

Nemours Pediatric Psychologist Dr. Danika Perry reveals that her Nemours experience began when she was a high school volunteer - a volun-teen - at what is now the Nemours Children's Hospital in Delaware. For Dr. Perry, this and other volunteer opportunities would point her to her life's passion: a career as a pediatric psychologist. Carol Vassar, producer

Respiratory therapist L'Tanya Pierce talks about the Nemours Hair Care for Champions project she started in the Delaware Valley Region. It's aimed at providing hospitalized Nemours patients with clean, healthy-looking, and attractive hair as a matter of dignity and pride. It's also a grassroots, bedside example of how Nemours associates go beyond medicine daily. Please be advised: There are two patient stories in this podcast. Certain details have been left out to ensure their privacy. Details that remain could be difficult or disturbing for some listeners. This is a REBROADCAST of Episode 129, originally released on February 7, 2022 Carol Vassar, producer

It’s our year-end holiday remix, and at the center of this podcast episode is what’s likely at the center of many traditional holiday celebrations: food. Whether its Ghanaian groundnut stew or Nigerian jollof rice for Kwanzaa, the traditional “seven fishes” served in many Italian-American homes on Christmas Eve, latkes for Chanukah, pork pie for boxing day, or buckwheat soba noodles served at midnight on New Year's Eve in many Japanese homes, traditional foods and holidays seem to go hand in hand. But what happens if none of the aforementioned foods - or any other traditional holiday foods from across the world - don’t fit with your disease state or diagnosed metabolic condition? In this episode, we revisit the Killian family: Nemours associate and mom-of-two Lindsey and her husband, Tom, who, in November 2021, visited us on the podcast to outline the struggles and joys of being a PKU family. We’ll look back on their story, the 2022 formula storage that affected them and get an update on how the family is today now that TJ is a kindergartener. Carol Vassar, producer

Nigeria is a multicultural country of 218 million people, nearly half of whom, according to UNICEF, are under 15. Over the past five years, infant and under-five mortality rates have remained steady and alarmingly high in Nigeria: one in every eight children born in Nigeria does not survive to their fifth birthday. Nemours intensivist Dr. Odiraa Nwankwor is working with a team of his colleagues from Nemours, Cooper University HealthCare in Camden, New Jersey, and his medical school alma mater, the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital in Enugu to put a dent in that devasting statistic by building and continuing to support Nigeria's first pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) Also featuring Nemours associates Rachel Baskin, RN; Manish Purohit, MD; Erin Dwyer, RN; and Douglas Katz, MD Carol Vassar, producer

On Nov. 29, 2022, The Nemours Community Relations team put together a webinar featuring Dr. Alexander along with board-certified pediatrician Dr. Maria Petrini from Nemours Children’s Health Delaware and moderated by pediatrician Dr. Laura Chilcutt, a policy advisor to the external affairs team at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando. During the webinar, they opened the chat room to parents’ pressing questions about each of the tripledemic viruses - for example, how they spread, how they are diagnosed, and how they’re treated (or not treated). They also answered some general pediatric medicine questions, such as what constitutes a fever, when and for how long should a sick child stay home from school or daycare, and the role adults play in prevention. Here today, we present highlights from that Q & A session. Carol Vassar, producer

The word of the season - you’re hearing it everywhere - is tripledemic. What is it? How might it affect you and your family, especially your children, and, perhaps most importantly, what can you do to keep yourself and your family safe and healthy? On Nov. 29th, The Nemours Community Relations team put together a webinar featuring Nemours experts in pediatrics and infectious diseases to provide information on the current tripledemic landscape and answer parents' questions about it. It’s information so important we’re highlighting it on the podcast this week and featuring our experts' answers to parents’ questions posed in the webinar next week. The voices you hear are those of Dr. Kenneth Alexander, board certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in Infectious Diseases and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Nemours Children's Hospital in Orlando, and Dr. Maria Petrini. Dr. Petrini is a board-certified pediatrician at Nemours Children's Health, Delaware. She also serves as the medical director of the Delaware Children's Health Network. Nemours pediatrician Dr. Laura Chilcutt serves as moderator. Dr. Chilcutt is a policy advisor with the external affairs team at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando. Carol Vassar, producer