Friedman chairs Med School's pediatrics department

by Wendy Y. Lawton

Fresh from a Midwest move, Aaron Friedman, M.D., started work at Hasbro Children's Hospital last week. Friedman hasn't seen a patient yet. "No license," he laughs.

Friedman is busy anyway - quite busy. The 55-year-old physician is the new Sylvia Kay Hassenfeld Professor of Pediatrics and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical School and the new pediatrician-in-chief at Hasbro Children's.

After 10 years overseeing pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and serving as medical director of the University of Wisconsin Children's Hospital, Friedman is now one of the most influential pediatricians in Rhode Island.

At the Medical School, Friedman oversees 183 campus and clinical faculty and the academic pediatric programs at Hasbro Children's, Memorial Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island. He is also responsible for planning pediatric inpatient and ambulatory services, advancing research programs, recruiting faculty and coordinating graduate and undergraduate programs.

What lured him to Providence, Friedman said, was Hasbro Children's national reputation for excellence, particularly in areas such as cancer care and developmental pediatrics. The hospital is also highly regarded, Friedman said, for its strong community support.

"There's this test," he explained. "You travel someplace and ask the taxi drivers and other people you meet where they would go if something happened to their children. If they all name the same hospital, you know it's a good one. Hasbro passes that test."

Friedman was also attracted to Brown's strong commitment to biomedicine.

This year, the Corporation agreed to make significant investments in the Division of Biology and Medicine, from expanding the faculty to giving the dean $12.5 million over five years to improve academics. Construction of two new science laboratories is well under way.

On the research front, Friedman plans to continue the Brown tradition of creating multidisciplinary teams. "What better way to study the developing brain and dysfunction than bringing a pediatrician together with a neuroscientist?" he said. "When your training is different, the discussion will elevate the output of everyone."

Ripe areas for pediatric research, Friedman said, include depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, autism, obesity and diabetes. Asthma is of particular interest: "What triggers it? Is it really a chronic disease? Because asthma affects so many children, this is an area we can make a real contribution to."

Friedman's own pediatric specialty is nephrology, or the study of the kidney and its diseases. The subject captured his attention during his third year of medical school at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y. His resident had assigned him to study a rare kidney ailment, saying: "If you can figure this out, you'll be far ahead of everyone else."

Friedman took the assignment as a challenge, and got hooked. Now he has authored nearly 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Pediatrics, and Pediatric Nephrology.

The father of two grown daughters, Becca and Robin, Friedman said much has changed in pediatrics since he raised his girls. Pediatricians are, more than ever, advocates for children in the policy arena and in the exam room - pushing Congress to pass gun control laws or counseling parents on the importance of bike helmets.

Pediatric education has changed, too.

Medical students and residents today need a strong grasp of genetics, immunology and neuroscience to understand the latest research and what it will mean for their patients. This is why medical education must foster a passion for life-long learning, Friedman said.

"When you're in medical school, it's easy to learn new things. It's your job," he said. "But when you've got a practice, a family, and community interests, they all invade the time you have as a learner. So we need to make sure students are independent thinkers who know how they learn best. In this area, I think Brown excels."