John Kattwinkel
Charles Fuller Professor of Neonatology
University of Virginia
Dr. John Kattwinkel is Professor of Pediatrics and has been on the faculty of the University of Virginia for 33 years. He graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed his residency, fellowship, and research training at Duke, Case Western Reserve, and the National Institutes of Health. He was Chief of the Division of Neonatology and Director of the UVa Neonatal Intensive Care Unit from 1974-2006 and now continues his teaching, research, and clinical practice as the Charles Fuller Professor of Neonatology. He recently was one of the first recipients of a Discovery Health Channel Medical Honor and was recognized as the UVa Alumni Association Distinguished Professor of 2007.
Dr. Kattwinkel’s primary research interests and numerous publications focus on neonatal lung disease and disorders of respiratory control, as well as on development of effective methods of continuing education for health professionals. He was among the first to describe the use of nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for treatment of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) of prematurity and for management of apnea of prematurity, and he has been a pioneer in the use of surfactant to treat RDS.
During Dr. Kattwinkel’s three decades on the UVa faculty he has mentored over a thousand medical students, several hundred pediatric residents, and 30 neonatology fellows, who now as physicians, pediatricians, and neonatologists are applying that knowledge to improve the health of children. He is the founder and medical director of the 4-volume Perinatal Continuing Education Program that is being used for continuing education of practicing physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists across the U.S. and in 5 other countries. While serving as a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and Project HOPE, he helped establish care facilities and outreach education programs for rural perinatal care in China, Poland, Romania, Central America, and South Africa.
For the past 12 years, Dr. Kattwinkel has been editor of the AAP’s and American Heart Association’s Neonatal Resuscitation Program Textbook that has educated over 2 million health professionals in the US and 110 other countries in the techniques of helping newborn babies breathe successfully following birth. As Chair of the AAP Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), he organized the recommendation in 1992 and was a leader in the subsequent national “Back to Sleep” campaign to teach parents to place babies down for sleep on their backs rather than their stomachs. This recommendation and the resulting change in infant care practice has been credited with preventing over 20,000 deaths from SIDS in the United States over the past 15 years.
