Pediatrics professor appointed to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services committee on newborn screening

Beth Tarini, MD, Fred G. Smith Chair in Academic Pediatrics in the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics at University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, has been appointed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborn Children.

The four-year appointment to the federal committee was made by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell. Tarini has served as a liaison to the committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics since 2011 and her appointment will be a continuation of that representation.

The committee answers to Burwell’s office and was created to help provide guidance to the states about their newborn screening programs. Newborn screening tests are done very shortly after birth to test for a variety of inherited diseases that, when identified and treated early, lead to better outcomes for children, Tarini says.
As a full member of the committee, Tarini now has voting privileges and can have a broader impact on decisions made by the committee.

“Since my research focuses on ways to improve the healthcare that newborn screening programs deliver, I am thrilled and honored to have a hand in creating national policy that can do the same,” says Tarini, who is also director of the General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at UI Children’s Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics at UI Carver College of Medicine.

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Media Contact: Jennifer Brown, UI Health Care Marketing and Communications, jennifer-l-brown@uiowa.edu