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Children's National Physician-in-Chief named Vice President and President-elect of the American Pediatric Society

Mark Batshaw

WASHINGTON, DC— Mark L. Batshaw, MD, Physician-in-Chief and Chief Academic Officer of Children’s National Health System, will assume the role of Vice President and President-elect of the American Pediatric Society (APS) beginning May 2015. He will serve in this role for one year and will then take on the role of Society President in May 2016.

Dr. Batshaw has been an active member of the APS since 1989. As the previous Chairman of Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences for 16 years, he worked with the APS on initiatives like the development of a pediatric research network. He has also spoken extensively with APS members about finding alternate approaches to their research funding.

Trained as a developmental pediatrician, Dr. Batshaw spent 40 years leading research and treating children with developmental disabilities and rare genetic diseases. He is the author of the leading textbook on the subject, Children with Disabilities, now in its seventh edition. He has published more than 200 articles and reviews about birth defects and developmental disabilities in journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Batshaw is an internationally renowned researcher in the area of inborn errors of metabolism, and is currently the principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded Rare Diseases Clinical Research Center on Urea Cycle Disorders and a project grant on testing an innovative therapy in a model of ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency.

In addition to being the Physician-in-Chief at Children’s National, Dr. Batshaw serves as the Chief Academic Officer and Director of the Children’s Research Institute. In these roles, he leads and identifies synergies at Children's National across patient care, research, and education. He oversees research, medical education/training, and medical staff activities while continuing to bring an evidence-based approach to patient care. Dr. Batshaw also serves as the Fight for Children Professor of Academic Medicine at Children’s National as well as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

The American Pediatric Society promotes advocacy, scholarship, education, and leadership development in pediatric research and scholarship. The society works to recognize and honor achievement, cultivating excellence, diversity, and equity in the field of pediatrics. 

Contact: Emily Hartman, 202-476-4500

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