Childhood Cancer & the Environment

Alan Woolf, MD, MPH, FAAP, FACMT, FAACT

Dr. Alan Woolf is Co-Director of the Pediatric Environmental Health Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and its Pediatric Environmental Health Fellowship Training Program and Co-Director of the Region 1 New England Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. He is a Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Woolf is a past-president of both the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology (AACT) and the American Association of Poison Control Centers. In 2018, Dr. Woolf received the Career Achievement Award from the AACT. In 2019, he was named the Louis Roche Lecturer (its highest career award) by the European Association of Poisons Centers and Clinical Toxicologists. Dr. Woolf has published extensively on childhood poisonings, poisoning prevention and toxic reactions to heavy metals. He is the Medical Editor of two books: The Children’s Hospital Guide to Your Child’s Health and Development and most recently: The History of Modern Clinical Toxicology (Elsevier 2022). 

https://www.childrenshospital.org/directory/alan-woolf

Perry Sheffield MD, MPH

Perry Sheffield MD, MPH is the Co-Director of the Region 2 PEHSU at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) and Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Sheffield is a pediatrician, environmental health researcher, and Co-Director of the NYSCHECK Coordinating Center. She completed her fellowship in Pediatric Environmental Health at Mount Sinai.

Hannah Thompson, MD

Hannah Thompson, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine & Climate Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a NYSCHECK Scholar. She works with the Region 2 Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) consultation service. She is also board certified in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. She is interested in research and has a focus on pediatric and adult cancer and the environment, and she has been working on the PEHSU’s Childhood Cancer and the Environment Initiative.

Jinbing Bai, PhD, MSN, RN, FAAN

Emily Moody, MD, MHS

Emily Moody, MD, MHS, is a pediatrics physician with University of Minnesota Health.  Previously, she served as a pediatric environmental health research fellow in the department of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City.  Her research has focused on how exposure to toxic metals affects growth patterns in children across the globe.  

Joseph Wiemels, PhD

Dr. Wiemels is a professor in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology at USC studying the molecular epidemiology of childhood cancers, particularly childhood leukemia and brain cancer. His work concentrates on etiology and prevention, incorporating concepts of genetic susceptibility and interaction with environmental exposures and infections. His research group is focused on the interaction of inherited genetics and environmental factors to cause specific mutational and epigenetic changes, and the specific timing of these events during the development of the child. Dr. Wiemels is currently an Associate Director of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center (NCCC) at USC.

Vickie Leonard, RN, FNP, PhD

Omar Shakeel, MD

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology-Oncology at Baylor College of Medicine and provide clinical care at Texas Children’s Hospital. During my fellowship, I was frequently asked by families what triggered cancer to develop in their child. As a result, I became interested in environmental exposures on the development of pediatric cancers. Notably, the incidence of pediatric cancers has steadily increased since 1975, which could suggest that other exogenous factors are accounting for an increasing proportion of cases. I wrote a summary manuscript describing the current knowledge on environmental toxicants and risk of pediatric cancers. I also evaluated the association between parental medical radiation exposure and risk of sporadic retinoblastoma in their offspring. Currently, I am the lead physician in the Long-Term Survivor clinic. In collaboration with the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) Network, I recently proposed the creation of the first U.S. Pediatric Cancer Environmental Referral Service (PCERS) to assist providers and nurses in addressing questions and concerns from patients and families about environmental risk factors for cancer and provide counseling on protective measures.

Catherine Metayer, MD, PhD

Dr. Metayer received her medical degree from the University of Bordeaux II in France, and her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Tulane University, School of Public Health in New Orleans.  She is currently Professor at the UC Berkeley, School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Dr. Metayer was a scientist at the US National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. Her work primarily focuses on environmental, dietary, and genetic risk factors of childhood leukemia and testicular cancer, which disproportionately affect the Latinx communities in California. She is the Director of the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment (CIRCLE), and the immediate past Chair of the Childhood and Cancer Leukemia International Consortium (CLIC). She collaborates with researchers at the intersection of various omics including genetics, epigenetics, metabolomics, and adductomics. 

Mark Miller, MD, MPH

MaryKate Cardon, DNP, CPNP-PC

MaryKate is Co-Director of the NW PEHSU. She completed her Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree, with a focus in Pediatric Primary Care, at the University of Washington, and her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) at Boston College. As a nurse she has worked in a various pediatric healthcare settings, ranging from primary to intensive care, and has been a member of the NW PEHSU health consultant team since 2020. Her work with NW PEHSU includes researching and responding to pediatric environmental health inquiries and finding ways to translate evidence into understandable, actionable material for parents, community members, and healthcare professionals. She also directs various NW PEHSU outreach and education projects. She is passionate about pediatric environmental health, and aims to integrate PEH topics into the curricula of healthcare professional programs in order to increase awareness and improve child health outcomes.

Erica Guerrero, PA-C, MS

Nikki Wood, DO

Dr. Wood attended medical school at Kansas City University and completed both pediatric residency and pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. During fellowship, she completed a graduate certificate program in clinical research (part of the Bioinformatics Master’s Program) through our affiliate university (UMKC). She now splits her time between oncology clinical work and cancer informatics. Last year she was trained as a Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit “Childhood Cancer and the Environment” Champion. She is involved with cancer informatics projects locally and nationally in the areas of clinical decision support, data standardization, and data harmonization. I love spending time with patients and have a passion for understanding the “why” and “how.” This is challenging in practice, when admitting a child with newly diagnosed cancer and the parents ask, “how did this happen?”.

Laurie Halmo, MD