International Speakers
Dr Carolyn La Vita (USA)
Sponsored by Mbuso Medical
Carolyn has been a respiratory therapist for over two decades and is currently the Director for respiratory care services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston MA. Carolyn received her bachelor’s degree in cardiopulmonary care sciences from Georgia State University and her master’s in healthcare administration from Colorado State University. For the past 20 plus years, she has worked in an academic medical center with a focus in critical care for adult, pediatric, and neonatal patients and certification as an ECMO Specialist. She holds Adult Critical Care Specialist and Neonatal Pediatric Specialist credentials from the NBRC. Carolyn is the current vice president of the Massachusetts Society for Respiratory Care. Throughout her career, she has been involved in development of many RT driven protocols and guidelines with a focus on evidence-based medicine. Since becoming the Director, Carolyn has focused on staff development and innovative change to hospital operations. She values mentorship and is dedicated to cultivating the next generation of respiratory therapy leaders.
Dr Carolyn McGann (USA)
Carolyn McGann MD, MSCE is an attending neonatologist and researcher at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in the US. She collaborates with international teams to study the prevention of neonatal sepsis. She graduated from George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and completed pediatrics training at Yale New Haven Children's Hospital. Prior to fellowship training in Neonatology at CHOP, she worked for one year as a NICU hospitalist at Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital in Thimphu, Bhutan. She and her team have been funded by the Gates Foundation to study Klebsiella pneumoniae infection in hospitalized neonates in Botswana and by the US National Institutes of Health to study kangaroo care as a way to prevent neonatal infection in high and low resource settings. Her clinical area of interest is point-of-care ultrasound use in the NICU and she is part of the CHOP Neonatal POCUS faculty.
Dr Peter Reynolds (UK)
Sponsored by Safeline
Dr Peter Reynolds is a Consultant Neonatologist from the UK, and over the past 4 years he has also been working part-time in the commercial medical devices sector, involved in R&D and Innovation, Regulatory and Clinical. This has been a fascinating experience for him, and being able to directly influence the development of devices for use in Neonatology is something he intends to continue. He continues to develop a number of quality improvement and research interests, with a particular interest in less-invasive approaches to neonatal care, and more recently being involved in a novel point-of-care testing roll out. He’s looking forwards, as always, to participating in this excellent meeting.
Dr Alex Stevenson (Zimbabwe)
Sponsored by PMG
Alex Stevenson is a neonatologist who works in public and private hospitals in Harare, Zimbabwe. He is the co-PI of the African Neonatal Network and Director of Global Health at the Vermont Oxford Network. He was the inaugural president of the African Neonatal Association. He is interested in health care systems design and financing and potential improvements to accelerate access to high quality care.