The Vanderbilt Department of Pediatrics continues to grow its class of members elected to the American Pediatric Society (APS) with four new inductees for 2025.
The department’s newest members of APS, one of the oldest and most prestigious societies for academic pediatricians, are Walter Dehority, MD, MSc, Adam Esbenshade, MD, MCSI, Kris Rehm, MD, MMHC, Julie Lounds Taylor, PhD.
With their induction, the Department of Pediatrics now has 44 faculty who are members of the APS. Founded in 1888, the organization was the first North American honorary society for academic pediatricians. Members are recognized for leadership, teaching, research and contributions at an international level.
“We are proud to celebrate the induction of Drs. Dehority, Esbenshade, Rehm and Taylor into the American Pediatric Society,” said William Cooper, MD, MPH, interim chair of the Department of Pediatrics, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Pediatrics and associate dean for Faculty Affairs for Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “Their unwavering commitment and contributions to advancing pediatric medicine, coupled with their profound dedication to the health and well-being of children, exemplifies the highest standards of our profession. We are delighted that you have received this truly distinguished honor.”
The new members will be recognized during the APS Presidential Plenary at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2025 Meeting, which will be held in Hawaii in April.
Dehority is a professor of Pediatrics and associate director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, for which he also serves as the associate fellowship director. Additionally, he is associate director for Pediatric Medical Student Education.
His clinical interests are in bone and joint infections, immunization delivery, vaccine hesitancy and rural health. In research, he focuses on chronic osteomyelitis and vaccine hesitancy. He is interested in developing a systematic approach to understanding and defining clinical presentations of chronic osteomyelitis with the goal that the framework could be used to design prospective studies to optimize management approaches for this disease. He is also interested in developing widely accessible, brief and engaging point-of-care interventions to educate and foster discussion among vaccine-hesitant individuals, and ultimately, increase vaccine confidence, particularly in rural and underserved populations.
Esbenshade is professor of Pediatrics and holds the John N. Lukens, Jr. Research Chair in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology.
As a pediatric neuro-oncologist, Esbenshade’s research focuses on cancer control, supportive care, central nervous system malignancy and cancer survivorship. He is actively investigating risk prediction modeling and establishing evidence-based data for the treatment of infectious disease complications during pediatric cancer. He is also working on studies to improve the treatment of obesity and the metabolic syndrome in cancer survivors and validating a comprehensive risk score that summarizes a cancer survivors’ co-morbidities. In addition, he has clinical trials that focus on targeted therapy for central nervous system tumors.
He is a member of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), serving as the chair of the COG Young Investigators Committee and overseeing a mentorship program with over 180 active pairings. He was also recently appointed as chair of the COG Cancer Control and Supportive Care Committee. He serves on the national study committees of several COG trials and will be the study chair of the upcoming COG ependymoma trial. He serves on the executive committee as the secretary of the International Society of Paediatric Oncology North American branch.
Rehm is a professor of Pediatrics and director of the Division of Pediatric Outreach Medicine. She also serves as associate chief medical officer of Children’s Services for the Vanderbilt Medical Group and is vice chair for Outreach Services in the Department of Pediatrics.
She joined the Department of Pediatrics in 2005, working as a hospitalist at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. In 2009, she became the inaugural director of the department’s Division of Pediatric Hospital Medicine, building and expanding the scope of the hospitalist program at Monroe Carell. When she started, the hospital had three hospitalists; today there are about 30. As part of her community outreach efforts, she has been passionate about working to address health care needs of socioeconomically disadvantaged children. She started a running club for middle-school girls and participated in reading, tutoring and mentoring programs.
In 2023 Rehm became the first pediatrician to serve as president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, adding to her list of service on several national pediatric hospital medicine committees, including the Pediatric Hospital Medicine planning committee, the pediatrics committee chair at SHM and the SHM representative to the Joint Council on Pediatric Hospital Medicine.
Taylor is professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry/Behavioral Sciences, holder of the Directorship in Autism Research and co-director of Vanderbilt Kennedy Center’s University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. She is a scholar in family research whose focus has been on the crucial transition to adulthood for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She investigates behavioral and environmental factors that promote positive adult outcomes.
Taylor’s program of research has contributed critical knowledge about the challenges faced by youth with autism and their families during the transition years. Her work has demonstrated significant service loss as autistic youth transition from school-based to adult service systems. In response, she has developed and tested novel programs to improve transition outcomes through connecting autistic youth and families to adult services. She has identified numerous different social and environmental factors that influence risk for mental health challenges, including peer victimization, traumatic experiences, inadequate social participation and job loss. She has also identified high rates of employment instability for autistic young adults and is currently investigating this issue in greater depth in a large longitudinal study.
