Well Beyond Medicine: The Nemours Children's Health Podcast

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

Our occasional series on precision medicine at Nemours continues with a look at medical genetics and genetic counseling. According to the American Society of Human Genetics, medical genetics is any application of genetic principles to medical practice. This includes studies of inheritance, mapping disease genes, diagnosis and treatment, and genetic counseling, all offered here at Nemours. 

Featuring:

Karen Gripp, MD, Pediatrician, and Genetic researcher, NCH Delaware

Laura Baker, Genetic Counselor, NCH Delaware

Louise Amlie-Wolf, Genetic Counselor, NCH Delaware

Carol Vassar, producer

It's Thanksgiving week when families gather to celebrate that for which they are grateful. With the family together in one place, it's a rare opportunity for relatives to talk about and even record family history, including family health histories.

That's one lesson that is being learned by teenagers across the nation whose teachers have chosen to avail themselves of a no-cost, evidence-based health education curriculum called "Navigating the Health Care System," developed here at Nemours. Today we are joined by the Nemours associates who created and have made available this curriculum and teachers from Delaware, Illinois, and Alabama to talk about how they have used or are using it in their classrooms. 

Kate Blackburn and Denise Hughes from Nemours Children's Health, along with Ayanna Sterling, Program Manager, Health Literacy Program, Southeast Alabama Area Health Education Center; Christine DeGuzman, Health Education teacher, Brookside campus, Waukegan High School, Waukegan, Illinois and Katie Marianello, Delaware teacher and original curriculum pilot researcher. 

Download the "Navigating the Health Care System" curriculum here. 

Carol Vassar, producer