by Christina Echegaray
Shari Barkin, MD, MSHS, division chief of General Pediatrics at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, was honored recently with the 2019 Academic Pediatric Association (APA) Research Award.
The award acknowledges the contribution of an individual or a network in advancing pediatric knowledge through excellence in research, characterized by originality, creativity and methodological soundness. The findings should contribute significantly to the general health of children in such areas as understanding mechanisms of health and disease, methods of education, and/or innovative ways of providing children’s services.
Barkin, professor of Pediatrics, director of Pediatric Obesity Research and the William K. Warren Foundation Professor of Medicine, is internationally known in the field of behavioral interventions, addressing two of the most critical public health problems facing children — youth violence and obesity.
“We are thrilled that the Academic Pediatric Association is honoring Dr. Barkin for her invaluable contributions to research in the field of children’s health,” said Steven Webber, MBChB, MRCP, chair of the Department of Pediatrics, pediatrician in chief of Children’s Hospital and the James C. Overall Professor. “Her dedication to improve the health and well-being of children and youth as well as entire families is deeply deserving of this recognition.”
For more than a decade, Barkin, along with Metro Nashville’s Department of Parks and Recreation, has led a large academic-community partnership called the Nashville Collaborative, which serves as a learning lab to develop and test programs to improve the health of both parents and children, ideally amplifying health throughout families and into communities.
“I am truly honored to receive this award and to be acknowledged by my valued colleagues as making meaningful contributions to pediatric research. Research is a team sport and I am grateful to my research team, collaborators, and all the students and mentees I have worked with over the years,” Barkin said.
The award adds to a long list of accomplishments for Barkin, who joined Vanderbilt’s Department of Pediatric in 2006. Among them, she has served as president of the Society for Pediatric Research, as well as chair of the NIH’s Childhood Obesity Prevention and Treatment Research Consortium. In 2018, she was named Pediatrician of the Year by the Tennessee Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.