Member Spotlight: W. Christopher Golden

W. Christopher Golden, MD, FAAP, is Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology, Medical Director, Newborn Nursery and Director, Pediatrics Core Clerkship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He earned his medical degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he also completed his pediatrics residency and neonatal-perinatal fellowship. His research areas include congenital and neonatal infections, neonatal bilirubin metabolism, care of healthy newborns, and pediatric medical education.

Dr. Golden is Chair of the Pediatric Section of the National Medical Association (NMA). He has been the moderator for a forum of chairs/presidents of major U.S. pediatric organizations (including PIDS) at the NMA Annual Meetings in 2023 and 2024. These sessions have served as a brainstorming opportunity focused collectively on increasing diversity within the pediatric workforce, including among pediatric subspecialists.

Why Pediatric ID? Pediatrics was pretty clear from the start of medical school. My first intern rotation was in the NICU. I really enjoyed that rotation and by the second time through the unit, I was pretty cemented into a career as a neonatologist. I came to pediatric infectious diseases through neonatology, and my interest has been there since my fellowship, engaging with patients with a variety of congenital infections.

Three months into neonatology fellowship, I cared for a baby with intrauterine HSV infection. That case really piqued my interest, because the condition is a unique presentation of neonatal HSV, as, most commonly, these infections present in the setting of perinatal acquisition. Six months later, we had a similar case, with a totally different clinical outcome. The differences in presentation hooked me into understanding infections in newborns.

Where have you taken your ID focus? Syphilis has become a very strong interest of mine due to the unfortunate rise nationally in the number of cases over the past 10 years. However, even before this increase, Baltimore had what was deemed a neonatal syphilis epidemic in 1995-1996, during my residency. The recent increase has led many pediatricians and obstetricians to identify strategies we can deploy to combat this epidemic. I have become more engaged in groups focused on perinatal syphilis, including work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Additionally, I will be giving talks on syphilis both at the AAP National Conference & Exhibition in Orlando in September and newborn infections (including syphilis) at IDWeek in Los Angeles in October.

What is a recent development in peds ID you are working on? I am working with several people here at Johns Hopkins to look at COVID-19 testing outcomes in mothers and babies to assess what factors influence neonatal COVID infection.

Also, relating back to syphilis, I was senior author on  the first paper to look at neonatal and infant syphilis outcomes using the reverse sequence (RS) testing algorithm. Our paper noted that, despite our hospital going to RS testing in the mid-2010s, there was not a lot of guidance at the time regarding its use in the management of pregnant women and babies. We created our own internal algorithm generated prior to (but approximating) the AAP Red Book’s initial guidelines on the use and interpretation of RS testing in mothers and babies. Our data, though limited, did not show a dramatic uptick in the number of kids diagnosed with congenital syphilis or having negative congenital syphilis outcomes.

This work also showed the power pediatric trainees have in doing these types of projects, as I had two residents – one interested in neonatology and one interested in infectious diseases – who did much of the legwork. One resident, May Chen, is now faculty in neonatology at Johns Hopkins and the other, Ibukun Kalu, is a pediatric infectious diseases physician and medical director of pediatric infection prevention at Duke.

What do you enjoy most about being a PIDS member? Why did you decide to join? Neonates unfortunately are commonly affected by infectious diseases. PIDS affords me the opportunity to be part of the community of ID specialists, and specifically work and learn from those clinicians caring for babies with congenital and neonatal infections.

The Society also is a place to work collaboratively on the lack of trainees in infectious diseases, and particularly those trainees of color. Another PIDS member, Tanya Rogo, also is very active in NMA, and was very vocal in encouraging me to create the Organizational Pediatrics Forum we have held at NMA meetings last year (in New Orleans) and this year (in New York City). The NMA is an outstanding organization that wants to engage with larger organizations (such as PIDS) to introduce pediatricians of color to careers in pediatric infectious diseases. Such interactions also will allow for a better understanding of how infectious diseases impacts African American and Hispanic communities.

Being in PIDS gives me the opportunity to promote ID within neonatology and support communities of color, and is another way of moving the work forward and benefitting pediatrics as a whole.