Beginning January 1, 2025, Dr. Emilee Lewis, Associate Professor in Hospital Pediatrics, will be joining the physician advisor team for Care Management at UNC Hospitals.
Dr. Lewis has been a faculty member in Pediatrics since 2019. In addition to her clinical responsibilities, Dr. Lewis is the medical director of the Children’s Short Stay Unit. She also has medical director experience overseeing the prior inpatient pediatrics team at Rex Hospitals.

Emily Vander Schaaf, MD, MPH, Associate Professor in the Division of General Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, has been awarded the Medical Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professorship by the Academy of Educators. Congratulations!

Priyanka Rao, MD was promoted to Associate Professor of Pediatrics effective June 1, 2024. Dr. Rao has been a faculty member in Pediatrics since August 2020. Dr. Rao received her undergraduate degree from UNC Chapel Hill in 2008 and earned her medical degree in 2013 from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa. Before returning to UNC, she served as a Neonatal Hospitalist at the University of Michigan C.S., Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Congratulations Priyanka!

We are excited to announce that April Smithwick, ARNP, NNP-BC has accepted the role of Advanced Practice Provider Manager in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine effective May 26, 2024. April joined our NNP team at UNC in 2020 and quickly demonstrated her excellent clinical and leadership skills. We are very proud to welcome her into this new APP leadership role! We know that our NP team will continue to grow and be successful under April’s leadership! Congratulations, April!

Camilia Kamoun, MD, Assistant Professor in Pediatric Endocrinology, was recently awarded a grant by the Greenwall Foundation through its Making a Difference Program, in support of her project, “Moving Away from Race-Ethnicity Based Clinical Care of Early Female Puberty Towards Race and Ethnicity Conscious Puberty Justice”. Congratulations Camilia!

Dr. Kenya McNeal-Trice will be serving as an American Pediatric Society (APS) representative to the AMSPDC Pediatrics Workforce Initiative for a  three-year term, beginning June 1, 2024.

Samantha Morrissey, MD, PhD, a UNC Med-Peds resident, has been honored with the prestigious Bondurant-Ehringhaus Award for her groundbreaking research conducted at the UNC McAllister Heart Institute under the guidance of Brian Jensen, MD, a professor of medicine in the division of cardiology.

This five-year grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is led by Toni Darville, MD, director of the UNC Children’s Research Institute, in collaboration with scientists at Vaxcyte, Inc. and the University of Chicago.

At PAS 2024, the NEC Society awarded the Early Career Research Award to Lauren Frazer, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. Congratulations!

The Carolina Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (CASP) honored three collaborators with Super Steward Awards. The award recipients were Jenny Boyd, MD; Joseph Stromberg, MD; and David J. Weber, MD, MPH. CASP created the awards in 2022 to recognize colleagues’ efforts to champion stewardship in their settings.