The Department of Pediatrics at NYU Langone Health strives to provide safe, cutting-edge care to infants, children, and adolescents in a manner that always keeps the unique needs of a child and family in mind. We care for patients at several locations through Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone: the recently opened Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital—34th Street, the Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Tisch Hospital in Manhattan, and the Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn. We also provide care at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island.

For more than a century, our faculty have cared for inpatients and outpatients at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue. We provide ambulatory care to outpatients at Bellevue, the Stephen D. Hassenfeld Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, and Fink Children’s Ambulatory Care Center. We collaborate closely with pediatric surgeons, pediatric radiologists, pediatric physiatrists, and pediatric and adolescent psychiatrists to provide seamless diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care upon discharge from the hospital.

Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital—34th Street opened in 2018 and is a 160,000-square-foot facility with 68 single-patient rooms providing the most advanced pediatric care in the New York City area. This unique facility contains a 1,000-plus-square-foot hall with flexible space for faculty meetings, community events, and bringing patients together for entertainment or education. A state-of-the-art broadcast center encourages therapeutic use of technology and media, allowing children to create and share content to minimize the stress of illness and the hospital experience.

NYU Langone welcomes innovative approaches to the delivery of patient care. We are home to Sala Institute for Child and Family Centered Care, which advances the health and wellbeing of children and families at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital. Sala Institute provides support services and resilience programs, family partnership programs, and safety and quality initiatives. Our Sala Family and Youth Advisory Councils provide the perspective of what it’s like to be a patient and the parent of a child treated at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital. Their input shapes our programs and resources.

We are excited to have established pediatric-specific specialty programs critical to the delivery of innovative care for children. Among these are the Pediatric Allergy Program, the Pediatric Diabetes Center, the Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program, the multidisciplinary Pediatric Aerodigestive Center, and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation–accredited Pediatric Cystic Fibrosis Center.

We are proud of our Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education–accredited training programs. Our residency program offers trainees a three-year path to achieve broad clinical competency in general pediatrics or a two-year combined pediatric neurology pathway with NYU Langone’s Department of Neurology. Our goal is to prepare highly competent pediatricians for careers in either primary care or academic medicine. Fellowship training is offered in many of the pediatric subspecialties.

Multiple clinical and basic research efforts thrive in the department. Many of our investigators have federal funding to deepen our understanding of areas critical to child health. In the Division of General Pediatrics, these include preventing pediatric obesity, improving immunization delivery, and enhancing health literacy. Investigators in the Division of Developmental–Behavioral Pediatrics focus on early child language development and school readiness. The translational research program in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases aims to decrease morbidity and mortality in pregnant women and children by developing new knowledge, treatments, diagnostics, and vaccines for infectious diseases, in particular group B Streptococcus. The Division of Environmental Pediatrics is home to one of 35 centers across the country participating in the National Institutes of Health’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes program. Its work focuses on identifying the role of environmental exposures in childhood obesity and cardiovascular risks.

History of the Department of Pediatrics

The Department of Pediatrics at NYU Langone was born of the consolidation of two separate departments at two separate medical schools: the University Medical College, established in 1841 as part of the University of New York, and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, established in 1861.

The department’s first chair, Abraham Jacobi, MD, was commonly called the “father of pediatrics” in the United States. His interest in children brought him to the University Medical College as a faculty member, and he became the first chief of the Children’s Medical Service at Bellevue, where he walked the wards from 1874 to 1905. His dedication to pediatrics led him to establish services at many of the New York hospitals.

Dr. Jacobi was followed by John Howland, MD, who is credited with having established academic pediatrics as it is known today. Dr. Howland served as chair from 1908 to 1911, and he revolutionized teaching of medical students by creating the first successful full-time university clinical department in any field in this country. In the process, he also fostered the development of many famous academic pediatricians. The John Howland Award—the highest honor the American Pediatric Society bestows—is named after him.

In a remarkable achievement, four of the department’s chairs have received the Howland Award: L. Emmett Holt Jr., MD (1966), an internationally acclaimed pediatrician known for his efforts to improve nutrition and childcare throughout the world; Saul Krugman, MD (1981), a leading figure in the development of vaccines against measles, rubella, and hepatitis who was the first to distinguish hepatitis A from hepatitis B; Joseph Dancis, MD (1988), who conducted innovative research on the placenta and its crucial role in the immediate health of the fetus and newborn; and Michael L. Weitzman, MD (2017), who has published extensively on the damaging effects of environmental toxins on children’s health and behavior.

Other notable figures who have passed through the department include Edith Lincoln, MD, one of Bellevue’s first women interns. Dr. Lincoln was interested in studying childhood tuberculosis, and with the assistance of a small staff and fellows and residents from all over the world, an ambitious project was started and completed—the follow-up of 1,000 consecutive patients until they had reached adulthood. Dr. Lincoln and her staff became worldwide authorities on childhood tuberculosis, revealing what had been considered a benign, self-limited disease as a potential crippler and killer.

Under the leadership of the current chair, Catherine S. Manno, MD, a renowned pediatric hematologist, the department continues to build on its long tradition of excellence. Dr. Manno has been a driving force in the growth of pediatrics at NYU Langone and the launch of a new children’s hospital, Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital—34th Street, which opened in 2018, marking an exciting new chapter in pediatric care. The dedicated educators, physicians, scientists, and researchers in the department are committed to training the next generation of experts who will continue to shape the future of pediatrics training, scientific discovery, and clinical care.