R Baby Heroes

Joel Berezow

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Columbia University Medical Center and Director of Emergency Medicine Resident Pediatric Education, New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital

One of the most important things we do at R Baby is to support training programs that measurably improve pediatric emergency care.  We are pleased to introduce Dr. Joel Berezow as our 2016 R Baby Medical Hero.

Joel’s passion for improving healthcare for children has encompassed his entire career and no better example can be seen than his R Baby funded program, Pediatrics for Emergency Physicians (PEP) Network. R Baby has supported this program from the beginning and Joel has gone above and beyond to make sure this grant is as successful as possible. Joel has worked tirelessly to insure that The PEP Network succeeds, along with his mission to insure that all ill and injured children have the opportunity to receive the best, safest, and highest quality emergency care at whatever emergency department they go to.

The PEP Network’s “Vital Signs Save Babies’ Lives” initiative marks the first collaborative use and uniform acceptance of standardized vital signs for children in emergency rooms in the U.S. The initiative is tailored specifically to identify serious illness in babies and children seen in emergency rooms who appear otherwise well.

If not solely for the recognition of these dangerous abnormal vital signs, such well-appearing children have frequently been inappropriately discharged, with disastrous consequences, including death.

Beyond R Baby grants, Joel is a leader in his field and has a selfless passion for improving care. His work has focused on the belief that better and more effective educational resources, geared specifically to the needs of emergency physicians and nurses, is the key to improving pediatric care in our community hospital emergency rooms .

He began locally, by creating a curriculum and protocols in Emergency Pediatrics for the New York Presbyterian Emergency Medicine Residency Program.  The graduates of this EM residency soon began standing out among their peers for their confidence and precision  caring for children.  It was his goal to take that education to the national level and it was this vision that led to his work with R Baby through The PEP Network initiative.

He has served as the Co-director for “The Steven Z. Miller Pediatrics for Emergency Medicine Course”, a national on-site CME conference sponsored by The Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, and he is a frequent guest lecturer promoting Emergency Pediatrics at both academic emergency medicine residency training programs and community hospital ED’s throughout New York City and New York State.  With the help of colleague and fellow R Baby grantee Dr. David Kessler,  this year Joel had the opportunity to team up with  Drs. David Kessler, Mark Auerbach , and Robert Dudas of the ImPACTS  Group, and together they have created  “PEPTalks” –a series of   live webcasts  on  selected topics in Emergency Pediatrics  hosted by ImPACTS and delivered to  a national audience of emergency physicians and nurses. We are honored to have Dr. Berezow on R Baby’s team.

— Phyllis & Andrew Rabinowitz