GOLD Neonatal Conference 2024

Dr. Jaeger is Coordinator of the Consensus Committee on Infant and Family Centered Developmental Care. She has served in this role since the inception of the committee in 2015. Dr. Jaeger received a Bachelor of Science degree from Syracuse University, and Master of Science and Doctorate of Nursing Practice degrees from The Ohio State University. She has served in multiple professional nursing roles including Neonatal Nurse Practitioner, NICU and NNP Manager, Administrator of the State of Ohio Maternity Licensure Program, Neonatal Services Administrator, Educator, Faculty, and Consultant. She is a retiree of the United States Army.

Dr. Carole Kenner is the Chief Executive Officer, Council of International Neonatal Nurses, Inc. (COINN) and Dean & Professor at The College of New Jersey School of Nursing & Health Sciences. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, a Master of Science in neonatal/perinatal nursing, and a doctorate in nursing. She has authored more than 150 journal articles and 40 textbooks.

Dr. Carole Kenner's career is dedicated to nursing education and to the health of neonates and their families. Her professional achievements include:

• Serves on the Consensus Committee of Neonatal Intensive Care Design Standards, which sets recommendations for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit designs globally, the Gravens Infant and Family Centered Developmental Care Task Force creating standards and competencies.
• She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN), a National Academies of Practice fellow, and Academy of Nursing Education Fellow, past president of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses (NANN) and founding President of the Council of International Neonatal Nurses (COINN).
• She serves on Every Newborn Action Plan- sets metrics for neonatal outcomes globally (UNICEF, WHO, USAID, UN Foundation partnership)
• She received the 2011 Sigma Theta Tau Audrey Hepburn Award for Contributions to the Health and Welfare of Children internationally.
• She received the 2021 AWHONN Excellence in Leadership Award.

Jola Berkman is the Provincial Clinical Coordinator of Newborn Care for Perinatal Services, BC, Canada. She trained as a NICU RN in South Africa before moving to Canada and integrates lessons learned from the global south and global north in her work. She collaborated with a provincial working group to review and transform the care of newborns exposed to substances during pregnancy in British Columbia. This work included the development of an online learning module and practice resources for healthcare providers, a parent resource, and facilitating webinars to introduce the Eat, Sleep, and Console (ESC) model of care.

She continues to support the implementation of the ESC model of care in BC and supports nurse leaders and change-makers in adopting the program across Canada. Jola enjoys time at home on Protection Island, BC, with her family when she is not working.

Dr. Nils Bergman is a consulting Public Health Physician, with specific expertise and interest in maternal and neonatal health care. His qualifications include: MB ChB 1980 University of Cape Town South Africa, equivalent to MD in the USA; Diploma in Child Health in Developing Countries 1987, Uppsala Sweden; Masters in Public Health (cum laude), 1999 University of Western Cape, South Africa; Doctor of Medicine in Clinical Pharmacology, 1997 University of Zimbabwe, equivalent to PhD in the USA.

Dr. Bergman has worked in Zimbabwe (LIC), South Africa (MIC) and Sweden (HIC), hence he is able to bring a global perspective to his research. He contributed to initiating the Immediate KMC Study, and was a Principal Investigator in the WHO Study group that conducted this RCT and recently published results. He has developed and published an underlying scientific rationale that explains the very unexpected findings of profoundly lowered mortality from immediate and continuous skin-to-skin contact to very low birth weight newborns, summarized as "nurturescience".

Fabiana Bacchini is the Executive Director of the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation. She is a journalist and the published author of From Surviving to Thriving, a Mother's Journey Through Infertility, Loss and Miracles.
After years struggling with infertility, she welcomed her first child in 2009. In 2012, pregnant with twin boys, she was introduced to the NICU world after delivering at 26 weeks gestation. Her surviving son was in the NICU for 5 months and was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy.Fabiana's family participated in the study of Family Integrated Care (FICare) while in the NICU, which led her to become a parent advisor at Mount Sinai Hospital, an ambassador for FICare having travelled across Canada and other countries to share her experience with this model of care. She has become a strong voice and advocate for premature babies and their families.

Currently, Fabiana serves as an advisor on the Steering Committee for FICare, on the Critical Care Services Ontario (ONICAC group), Child-Bright Network, EFCNI Parent-Patient Advisory Board. She's been involved in several research projects worldwide and is a member of the CIHR-Institute Advisory Board for the Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health.

Dr. Leslie Parker is a Professor in the College of Nursing and an adjunct Professor in the College of Medicine. She has had an active practice as a nurse practitioner in the neonatal intensive care unit for the last 30 years where she cares for critically ill infants and their families. Dr. Parker directs one of the few research programs dedicated to developing strategies to improve the nutritional health of premature and critically ill infants. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and distinguished by interdisciplinary team science bridging nursing, medicine, microbiology, and public health across the University of Florida and globally. Dr. Parker's research focuses on two important areas of neonatal care;

(1) Optimal delivery of nutrition

(2) Increasing infant consumption of breast milk by improving lactation success in their mothers. Because optimal nutrition including high doses of mother's own breast milk decreases the risk of potentially preventable serious complications, her work has made significant and long-lasting contributions to improving the health of premature and critically ill infants in the neonatal intensive care unit. Dr. Parker has developed nutritional strategies that health care providers have integrated into their daily practice thus improving short and long-term health outcomes of the most vulnerable patients.

Lenora Marcellus is a Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She has practiced as an RN for over 35 years in a range of maternal-neonatal and educational settings and roles. Her research interests include perinatal substance use, neonatal opioid withdrawal, supporting infants in foster care, and supporting young families. She is a co-investigator in the British Columbia Healthy Connections Project, a multi-year provincial RCT of the Nurse-Family Partnership program for young, first time mothers and their children.
She was a long-time volunteer with a local Moms and Mentors group supporting young families. Her research has been published in a range of journals, including Advances in Neonatal Care, the Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing, the International Journal of Health Equity and Qualitative Health Research.

Dr. Christine L. Kan, OTD, OTR/L, IBCLC, is an occupational therapist and a board certified lactation consultant who is passionate at helping parents breast or bottlefeed their baby through challenges. She specializes in lactation, reflux & food allergies, lip and tongue ties, and infant feeding therapy. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a doctorate in occupational therapy in 2013, focusing on feeding therapy. She is trained in Beckman Oral Motor Protocol, Infant and Pediatric Neurodevelopmental training (NDT), Neonatal Oral Motor and Assessment Scale (NOMAS), Neonatal Touch and Massage Certification (NTMC), and has her advanced practice in feeding, eating, and swallowing (SWC). She currently works part time as a neonatal occupational therapist in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) and part time in private practice. She is the NICU therapist at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, CA.

As infant feeding and developmental specialist, she is comfortable working with preterm infants, infants with tethered oral tissues, infants with allergies and reflux, infants with cleft lip/palate, and infants with complex medical backgrounds (failure to thrive, cardiac, chronic lung disease, etc). She is also familiar with down syndrome, clavicle fractures or shoulder dystonia, torticollis/ plagiocephaly or head flattening, neonatal abstinence withdrawal, and autism.

Being a mother of three children has also influenced her practice. Her children all had variations of lip and tongue ties and she understands the stress of ties and how it impacts breastfeeding. Her middle child has multiple severe food allergies, asthma, and eczema, and understands food elimination diets, itchy skin, and anaphylaxis. She hopes with her own personal experience and medical training, she can connect with parents, share their burdens, and support their feeding journey.

Dr. Sonal Patel is a pediatrician, neonatologist, & breastfeeding specialist who founded NayaCare in 2018. NayaCare is a home health clinic focused on improving postpartum care. Dr. Patel has written several articles on this subject published in Scary Mommy, Kevin MD, and Colorado Sun. She wrote her first book, The Doctor and Her Black Bag that examines maternal mortality in historical and personal context and solutions to reduce maternal mortality. She is also a co-founder and co-executive director of Center for 4th Trimester Care, a national physician-led non-profit with the mission of improving postpartum care. She is also a TEDx speaker. In her presentation titled “The Economics of the 4th Trimester,” Dr. Patel explores the economic impact of losing moms during the 4th trimester, a solution that can reduce maternal mortality, and thus positively impact our national economy. Lastly, she has co-created a breastfeeding toolkit helping mothers of premature babies achieve their breastfeeding goals: Small Steps, BIG Gains.

Dr. Nhu Tran is a nurse scientist with a goal of improving developmental outcomes and health equity of vulnerable neonates. Her role blends direct patient care (as an RN in the NICU at Children's Hospital Los Angeles) and research (as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Southern California). She is certified as a critical care registered nurse in the NICU and as a Clinical Research Professional. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Nursing Research, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Southern California Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute.

Currently, her research aims to identify the mechanism of brain injury and developmental delay in infants with congenital heart defects (CHD). Specifically, she is examining the longitudinal association of dysregulated brain blood flow and developmental delays in infants with congenital heart disease compared with healthy controls. By doing so, her research can modulate or tailor early interventions to improve outcomes of high-risk neonates and children.

Dr. Narvey began his training in Pediatrics at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg where he completed a year of further training in Neonatology. This was followed by two years of Neonatal fellowship at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Afterwards he began his career as a Neonatologist in the same city and over the 6 years he spent there, his career included both clinical and administrative duties including 4 years as the Fellowship Program Director and two years as the Medical Director for a level II unit.

In late 2010 he accepted a position in Winnipeg to become the Section Head of Neonatology and continues to hold this post. In 2016 he took on the additional role of Medical Director of the Child Health Transport Team. In 2015 he became a member of the Canadian Pediatric Society's Fetus and Newborn Committee and in 2019 took over as Chair of the same and remained in this role until May 2024.

Jim Thigpen has been a pediatric clinical pharmacist for 30 years and is currently an associate professor of pharmacy at East Tennessee State University Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy. When he began his training at MUSC in Charleston, SC, they were investigating Survanta and he has been witness to and a participant in the evolving world of neonatology since. He has spoken at several neonatal nursing conferences over the years and enjoys helping other practitioners learn about and apply pharmacotherapy in this special population.

Dr. Narvey began his training in Pediatrics at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg where he completed a year of further training in Neonatology. This was followed by two years of Neonatal fellowship at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Afterwards he began his career as a Neonatologist in the same city and over the 6 years he spent there, his career included both clinical and administrative duties including 4 years as the Fellowship Program Director and two years as the Medical Director for a level II unit.

In late 2010 he accepted a position in Winnipeg to become the Section Head of Neonatology and continues to hold this post. In 2016 he took on the additional role of Medical Director of the Child Health Transport Team. In 2015 he became a member of the Canadian Pediatric Society's Fetus and Newborn Committee and in 2019 took over as Chair of the same and remained in this role until May 2024.