Caring Holistically: NYU’s Approach to Pediatric Infectious Disease

We are continuing our new series, Media Day, where we spotlight individual medical institutions and their infectious disease (ID) programs. This episode profiles New York University (NYU).

The Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases in NYU Langone Health’s Department of Pediatrics, faculty and fellows provide clinical care to children with infectious diseases. They care for patients at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone, Fink Children’s Ambulatory Care Center, NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital, and NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue.¹

The division also provides fellowship training and education through its Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education–accredited program and medical student electives. Trainees have opportunities to learn about clinical care for families and young adults affected by a wide range of infectious diseases and immunodeficiencies.¹

In addition to training young clinicians, Margaret Aldrich, MD, assistant professor of Pediatrics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, says her institution’s collaborative environment helps even experienced clinicians. “Something I've noticed since joining NYU is that our adult infectious disease and pediatric infectious disease divisions work very closely together. And we work very closely with our other specialists, surgeons, primary doctors, and oncologists. I think it's a very collegial environment. To me, that's important because we are never done learning as doctors, we're constantly learning, and we have to be humble that new information and new evidence comes along every day, and we learn from our colleagues,” said.

Aldrich serves in dual capacities as a clinician and an epidemiologist, and she sees the value of the former as playing a role for the latter. This helps her to take a holistic approach for both. Aldrich can see how systems work and also use her specialty training to provide care for patients and their families. For example, she thinks as an epidemiologist and a clinician when thinking about potential viruses and infections young patients can be exposed to when they are admitted to the hospital.

“My job is always first to think of my patient and to provide excellent patient care. I think that plays a really important role in hospital epidemiology, because as a hospital epidemiologist, I'm really looking at the whole health system and not the individual patient,” said Aldrich. “But without my role as a clinician, first and foremost, it would be really hard for me to do my job thinking about the whole health system, because I really need to be able to focus on the individual patient's experience and the diseases they may encounter bringing them into the hospital.”

Of course, in her specialty she is seeing young patients who are dealing with various serious ailments including respiratory viruses and serious infections such as bloodstream, osteomyelitis, central nervous system, and surgical-site infections. In addition, she works to prevent and treat healthcare-associated infections, perinatal infections, and travel-related infectious diseases. She understands the stresses this can cause families and she knows in pediatrics it is about caring for the whole family not just the individual patient.

“In pediatrics, we always think of our practices not just caring for the pediatric patient, but really the whole family, because a child comes with parents or caregivers, and our job really is to make sure that we are listening to what the concerns of the family are,” Adrich said.

This concludes the NYU series. To review past interviews, go here.

Reference

1.NYU Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases. NYU. Accessed December 15, 2025.
https://med.nyu.edu/departments-institutes/pediatrics/divisions/pediatric-infectious-diseases