Provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider Number CEP55, for 6 contact hours per day.
in alphabetic order of their last names
Dr. Mandy Brown Belfort is a neonatologist and Associate Chief of Research in the Department of Pediatrics at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Belfort's research centers on the influence of early-life nutritional exposures on health and developmental outcomes later in life and emphasizes the NICU hospitalization as a critical window of opportunity for effective diet-based interventions in nutritionally vulnerable preterm infants. She has a particular interest in human milk and breastfeeding and has identified long-lasting neurodevelopmental benefits of maternal milk-based diets for both full-term and very preterm infant populations. Current studies investigate clinical integration of human milk analysis to inform individually targeted fortification for hospitalized very preterm infants, as well as novel approaches to nutritional status assessment in this population.
Dr. Belfort’s research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. Her work has been published widely in peer-reviewed journals and informs both public health recommendations for breastfeeding and clinical nutritional approaches within neonatal intensive care.
Chardá Bell, IBCLC is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Doula, Spinning Babies Certified Parent Educator in private practice serving families in San Diego, CA. Marrying her love of birth with lactation, her clinical interest is in the influence of labor and delivery factors, including fetal positioning as well as social determinants of health that may impact initiation and duration of breastfeeding success. When she is not immersed in all things lactation, she volunteers her time to causes related to human milk, Black maternal child health & reproductive justice and aims to increase diversity in the lactation field through mentorship. Mrs Bell resides in San Diego, with her partner Dr. Watkins and their five children.
Dr. Lars Bode is Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Neonatology and the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, the Larsson-Rosenquist Chair of Collaborative Human Milk Research, the founding Director of the Mother-Milk-Infant Center of Research Excellence (MOMI CORE), and the founding Director of the new Human Milk Institute (HMI) at the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Bode’s main research objectives are to elucidate (i) how milk components are synthesized in the mother’s mammary gland, (ii) how milk composition is affected by external factors such as nutrition, pathogens, or medications, (iii) how milk components affect immediate as well as long-term health and development of infants and mothers, and (iv) how they can serve as natural templates for the development of preventatives, therapeutics, and diagnostics for people of all ages.
Dr. Bode has served as the President of the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation (ISRHML) where he implemented the Trainee Interest Group (TIG) and the Trainee Expansion Program (TEP) and organized the 19th international conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Dr. Bode also served as Chair of the Lactation Interest Group of the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) and created the FASEB Science Research Conference series on Human Milk Bioactives. In addition, Dr. Bode served on the Committee on Scanning New Evidence on the Nutrient Content of Human Milk, established by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Jennifer Canvasser founded the Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC) Society after her son Micah died from complications of the disease. Jennifer completed her undergraduate studies at UCLA, earned her Master’s in Social Work from the University of Southern California, and is currently a part-time doctoral student studying sociology at UC Davis. Jennifer serves as an expert panelist for the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative and served as an advisor for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) for three years. She has served as the project lead on three PCORI Engagement Awards as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s Rare As One Network.
Kristina Chamberlain has been working with families for over 20 years as a Nurse-Midwife and Lactation Consultant in a variety of health settings including community health centers, hospitals, private practice, and most recently telehealth visits. She earned a Master’s in Nursing from the University of Washington specializing in nurse-midwifery and women’s health and remains passionate about empowering her clients to make their best health choices. Aside from her clinical work, her focus is on educating future midwives and lactation consultants. She has contributed to several lactation textbooks. She is the Clinical Director and Lead Faculty of the UC San Diego Extension Lactation Program and sits on the Executive Board of the Lactation Education Accreditation and Approval Review Committee.
Dr. Hiutung Chu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and The Center for Mucosal Immunology, Allergy, and Vaccine at the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Chu is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley where she completed her BS degree in Microbial & Environmental Biology, and received her PhD degree in Immunology from University of California, Davis. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in mucosal immunology and the gut microbiome at the California Institute of Technology. She has received numerous prestigious awards including the NIH Pathway to Independence Award and the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar in Humans & the Microbiome.
Dr. Chu leads a basic research laboratory studying how commensal bacteria modulate host immune responses during health and disease. This includes deciphering how host-derived glycans, such as human milk oligosaccharides and mucins, promote stable commensal colonization during early life, which in turn provide numerous benefits to the host.
Dr. Richard Daneman received his Bachelor of Science McGill University, in Montreal Canada majoring in biochemistry. He then received his Ph.D in developmental biology from Stanford University where he studied the molecular mechanisms that regulate blood-brain barrier formation in the laboratory of Dr. Ben Barres. Dr. Daneman then started his own lab as a Sandler Fellow at UCSF, before moving to a position as Assistant Professor in the departments of Pharmacology and Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Daneman focuses his studies on understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate blood-brain barrier (BBB) function during health and disease. In his lab uses a combination of cellular, molecular and genetic approaches to understand the mechanisms of BBB formation and function, addressing important questions such as: What are the mechanisms that regulate the formation and function of the BBB? How does the BBB interact with the neuronal circuitry to regulate brain function and behavior? What are the molecular mechanisms that lead to BBB disruption during neurological disease? The overall goal of our work is to elucidate these mechanisms, such that we will be able to develop therapeutics to modulate the barrier to treat neurological diseases.
Dr. Daneman has received a number of honors including the Klingenstein-Simons Award in Neuroscience, the Rita Allen Foundation Milton E. Cassel Scholar award, the AAA young investigator award, the ASPET Neuropharmacology Early Career award and the NINDS Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship.
Karen Deutsch is a graduate of University of California, San Francisco’s FNP program with a specialty in HIV/AIDS. She also holds a Master’s degree in Public Health and Migration from Columbia University. Currently, she works as a Nurse Practitioner with the Mother, Child and Adolescent HIV Program (MCAP) at UC San Diego where she provides care and support to women and children living with HIV. Mrs Deutsch has extensive domestic and international experience with displaced populations and rural communities, having spent many years in Sierra Leone, Angola, Malawi, Sri Lanka and the Dominican Republic.
With the recent change in guidelines around HIV and Chestfeeding, Mrs Deutsch and her colleagues created the HIV and Patient-Centered Infant Feeding Initiative. They have worked tirelessly to educate and train medical providers, nurses, and lactation services so that patients from all across San Diego county feel supported and empowered in their decisions around infant feeding.
Dr. Philip L.S.M. Gordts is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, the Glycobiology Research and Training Center and the GlycoAnalytics Core at UC San Diego. Dr. Gordts received both his Master of Science and PhD degree in Medical Science from the Catholic University Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium and completed a pre-doctoral internship at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego.
Dr. Gordts leads a group of scientists investigating the impact and medical applicability of heparan sulfate proteoglycans and human milk oligosaccharide in the context of cardiovascular and metabolic disease such as atherosclerosis, diabetes, hyperlipidaemia, and obesity. Dr. Gordts has authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications and collaborated biopharma in developing therapies against drug-resistant pathogens.
Dr. Tim Hand is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Immunology and the Director of the Gnotobiotic Animal core facility at the University of Pittsburgh. His laboratory is within the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Dr. Hand received a B.Sc. (Hon.) from the University of Toronto and a PhD from Yale. While a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Hand developed his interest on the interaction between intestinal resident lymphocytes and the microbiota.
Currently, Dr. Hand directs the Immunity to Bacterial Colonization Lab at UPMC Children’s Hospital. His research focuses upon the interaction between the host immune system and the intestinal microbiota, with a particular focus on the moments when microorganisms first colonize the host. Dr. Hand's research has provided new knowledge on how immune cells are shaped by the microbiome and in turn how colonizing bacteria are shaped by intestinal immunity. Regulating microbial colonization is especially critical in infants where his lab studies how antibodies provided in breast milk shape the development of the infant microbiota and intestinal immune response. Other lab focuses include studies of how the microbiota affects health issues relevant to children, such as vaccination, cancer and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. These studies have been published in Immunity, Nature Medicine and other prominent journals.
Dr. Hand has received nationally competitive awards, including awards from the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, the Rainin Foundation and the March of Dimes and is the recipient of several NIH grants. Dr. Hand has published over 35 research articles and scholarly reviews and was named the inaugural ‘Emerging Leader’ by the Society for Mucosal Immunology in 2022.
Dr. Kelsey Johnson is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on identifying genetic influences on human milk composition, and leveraging natural variation in milk composition to assess its impact on infant health. Dr. Johnson earned a BS from the University of Wisconsin and her PhD in Genetics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Stephen Kennedy graduated, in 1978, from Keble College, Oxford, in Experimental Psychology. He qualified in medicine at Guy’s Hospital, London, in 1984, and then trained at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford; Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea Hospital, London, and the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading.
Dr. Kennedy held the posts of Research Fellow (1986-89), Clinical Lecturer (1992-94), and Senior Fellow in Reproductive Medicine (1994-99) in the Nuffield Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, University of Oxford, before being appointed to the post of Clinical Reader in 1999 and Professor of Reproductive Medicine in 2011. He was Head of Department (2005-19). He was also Clinical Director, Women’s Services (2011-13) in the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and then Divisional Director of Children’s & Women’s Services (2014-19).
Dr. Kennedy jointly leads INTERGROWTH-21st, a large-scale, multicentre project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, involving health institutions in 11 geographically diverse countries around the world that aims to assess fetal and newborn growth under optimal and various sub-optimal conditions (e.g. exposure to malaria, HIV and malnutrition).
The key public health message of the INTERGROWTH-21st Project is that healthy, adequately nourished women who live in a clean environment and receive good health care, have babies that grow in a similar way in the womb and achieve a similar size at birth irrespective of their ethnicity/ancestry/geographical location. By 2 years of age these same infants have grown appropriately and attained similar neuro-developmental milestones.
Dr. Kennedy has published over 250 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including The Lancet, JAMA Pediatrics, BMJ, American Journal of Human Genetics, Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Nature Communications. He also co-authored the paper entitled: ‘Small vulnerable newborns - big potential for impact’ in The Lancet Small Vulnerable Newborn Series (2023).
Dr. Sydney McCune is the LRF MOMI CORE Clinical Translational Research Fellow and a postdoctoral researcher in the Bode Lab at UC San Diego. Her research focuses on how maternal factors impact human milk composition and infant outcomes. She is a trained registered dietitian and completed her PhD in nutrition from UNC Greensboro where she studied donor human milk uses outside of the hospitalized preterm infant.
Dr. Jeremiah Momper is a Professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego. Dr. Momper’s research focuses on the application of quantitative pharmacology approaches to optimize the development and clinical use of drugs. Current research directions include evaluation of potential therapies for HIV infection in infants and pregnant women and the use of model-based methods to support scientific decision making in drug development. Dr. Momper directs the MPRINT Pharmacometrics and Analytical Chemistry Core which provides LC-MS/MS-based quantitation of drug and metabolites in biological matrices, including plasma, tissue, and human milk.
Dr. Pia S. Pannaraj is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego and Infectious Disease Specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital. She serves as the Director of the Pediatric Immunization Advancement Laboratory. Dr. Pannaraj’s global research focuses on maternal and infant vaccinations. She seeks to better understand infant immune development, responses to mucosal vaccination, and the role of human milk and gut microbes on immune responses. Dr. Pannaraj serves as President for the California Immunization Coalition and has been appointed to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) expert panel for a Global Immunizations Initiative. She also serves on the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases (Red Book Committee).
Dr. Pannaraj completed her Infectious Diseases fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine and Master of Public Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center. She finished medical school and residency training in pediatrics at University of California, San Diego. She received her undergraduate degree in Economics and Biology from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Maryanne Perrin is trained as a nutrition scientist, industrial engineer, and registered dietitian. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina Greensboro where her research focuses on providing evidence-based guidelines for the processing, storage, and use of donor human milk. She currently serves as the Principal Investigator on a National Institute of Health funded project to study the composition of milk from approved milk bank donors in low-, middle-, and high-income countries.
Dr. Perrin served on the Board of Directors for the Human Milk Banking Association of North America from 2016 to 2020 and currently co-chairs the World Health Organization's Guidelines Development Group for donor human milk banking.
Dr. Nigel Rollins joined the WHO Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing in July 2008. He trained as a paediatrician in Belfast, Northern Ireland and his work focuses on interventions to improve child survival, growth and development. This includes implementation research related to the coverage and quality of infant feeding practices, improving linear growth of children and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. He led the Lancet Breastfeeding series in 2016 and 2023.
Prior to joining WHO, Dr. Rollins was Professor and head of the Centre for Maternal and Child Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Durban, South Africa, where he lived and worked for 14 years.
Dr. Leyla Sahin is an obstetrician-gynecologist who is the Deputy Director for Safety in the Division of Pediatrics and Maternal Health in the Office of New Drugs, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at FDA. She oversees pregnancy and lactation safety activities and leads various maternal health related scientific and regulatory/policy initiatives. She joined FDA in 2008 as a medical officer after practicing obstetrics and gynecology for twelve years.
Dr. Sarah Taylor is Professor of Pediatrics, Professor of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, and Chief of Neonatal Perinatal Medicine at Yale University. She leads the Yale Neonatal NOuRISH team in investigations of how nutrition and metabolic exposures impact infant outcomes.
Dr. Taylor serves on the Human Milk Banking of North America executive board. Previously, while on faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina, she started the Mother’s Milk Bank of South Carolina.
Dr. Elizabeth J. Thompson is a board eligible pediatric cardiologist, current third year fellow in pediatric critical care at Duke, research fellow on the UNC-Duke Collaborative Clinical Pharmacology T32, and a Pharmaceutical Sciences PhD student at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She completed her undergraduate studies and medical school at Georgetown University before coming to Duke for her pediatric residency and fellowships. She developed an interest in clinical research after learning of the tremendous knowledge gap that exists in understanding how development affects drug disposition in infants and children.
Dr. Thompson's overarching career goal is to be a physician scientist with a focus on combining advanced pharmacokinetic modelling and simulation with innovative trial design to improve the safety and efficacy of drugs in special populations, including breastfeeding infants.
Kim Updegrove has dedicated her career to saving babies’ lives and caring for women and children around the world. A registered nurse and certified nurse midwife (CNM), Updegrove earned a bachelor of science degree in nursing at William Paterson University, a master of public health degree at Rutgers University and a master of science degree in nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. After finishing her MSN, Updegrove left the Penn faculty and moved to New Haven, Conn., where she worked as a CNM, delivering more than 500 babies and providing well-woman care. She also served on the graduate faculty of the Yale University School of Nursing.
Updegrove joined the Mothers’ Milk Bank at Austin in December 2002. Now, serving as executive director, she oversees all administrative and clinical aspects of the milk bank. Updegrove provides education and outreach to hospitals, community and professional organizations, and collaborates with US and international researchers on nutritional effects of donor human milk for premature and vulnerable infants.
Updegrove is a past president of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA), a member association for nonprofit milk banks across the continent. She chairs the guidelines committee helping to ensure safety of donor human milk and cultivates the development of nonprofit milk banks. She has traveled to multiple states, China, Poland, Turkey and the province of Alberta to foster and mentor milk banks. Updegrove annually participates in teams of advanced practice nurses and graduate students who provide clinical care to women and children in rural villages in Belize. A coveted speaker on the topic of donor human milk, Updegrove has presented at national conferences in Prague and British Columbia, and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, ABC News and NBC News.
Dr. Kevin Watt received his medical degree and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed his pediatric residency, pediatric critical care fellowship, and a research fellowship at Duke University. He was a faculty member at Duke for 7 years before accepting a position in 2019 at the University of Utah. He is currently the Robert M. Ward Endowed Chair in Clinical Pharmacology and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics. He serves as the Chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology in the Department of Pediatrics and treats patients in the pediatric intensive care unit at Primary Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Watt’s overarching career goals are to advance public health by optimizing drug therapy in critically ill children and to train the future generation of health care scientists. To accomplish these goals, I lead a multidisciplinary team of cross-trained scientists and staff who have expertise in critical illness physiology, advanced pharmacokinetic (PK)/ pharmacodynamic (PD) modeling, biostatistics, and clinical trial design and conduct. His NIH-funded research program uses modeling and simulation to determine optimal drug dosing in vulnerable populations (e.g., critically ill children, breastfeeding women and their infants). In addition, he has led and continues to lead, single and multi-center trials for pediatric labeling including several first-in-human and first-in-children trials. He serves in a leadership role in the NICHD-funded Collaborative Pediatric Critical Research Network and the NCATS-funded Utah Trial Innovation Center and HEAL-initiative.
Shana is a dynamic and dedicated public health professional with over 10 years of experience dedicated to supporting healthier communities. Shana’s commitment to human milk access is evident in her involvement in local and state level work implementing policy, systems, and environmental change strategies to create breastfeeding-friendly environments and ensure proper lactation accommodation. Previously, Shana led the UC San Diego Center for Community Health’s Lactation Supportive Environments projects, collaborating with community-based organizations, businesses, school districts, and community healthcare centers. Shana is excited to continue this work in a new capacity as the HMI Director of Community Outreach & Engagement. In addition, serves as the Director of the San Diego County Childhood Obesity Initiative.
