Lisa Chamberlain takes helm of pediatric unit at College of Medicine – Tucson
The U of A medical school grad returns to where her career started to provide care for kids and run Steele Children’s Research Center.
Lisa Chamberlain, MD, MPH, has been busy since she took over March 1 as the U of A College of Medicine – Tucson’s pediatrics chair and director of Steele Children’s Research Center.
Photo by Noelle Haro-Gomez, U of A Health Sciences Office of Communications
Lisa J. Chamberlain, MD, MPH, believes in acts of service. It’s her love language.
Lisa Chamberlain, center, took a recent tour of the Banner – University Medicine Center Tucson’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit with Anantha Harijith, MD, left, and Merlin “Chan” Lowe, MD.
Photo by Noelle Haro-Gomez, U of A Health Sciences Office of Communications
She ships cookie care packages — good ol’ Toll House chocolate chippers are a standby — to her two grown daughters, Kate and Olivia. And it was common practice for Chamberlain to hand out her cell phone number to the families who visited the East Palo Alto, California, health center where she was a primary care pediatrician.
“I came to know those families so well,” said Chamberlain, the new chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson and director of Steele Children’s Research Center.
She’s eager to create fresh bonds with patients this summer once she has her Arizona medical license and with new friends and colleagues in the city where her career began. Chamberlain has big plans as soon as she and her husband, Kurt, pick up the keys to their Tucson house.
“My favorite thing in the world is to throw a big dinner party and have people sit for hours,” she said. “I can’t wait to have people over.”
And she can’t wait to make a difference at the helm of Arizona’s only academic children’s medical research facility.
“Everyone I’ve met here seems to have such energy and excitement, and they are ready to take things to the next level,” she said. “I’m excited to have a job where my work is to help other people reach their full potential. I’m excited to see how together we can improve health care for kids in Arizona.”
A new beginning
When Fayez K. Ghishan, MD, stepped down earlier this year from his role as pediatric chair and director of Steele Children’s after three decades, it was a big loss. The physician-scientist and educator was quite beloved. His leadership resulted in numerous groundbreaking scientific discoveries, the publication of hundreds of scientific manuscripts and countless awards and honors. Ghishan received not one but two MERIT awards from the National Institutes of Health for consistent and excellent contributions to scientific knowledge.
As Ghishan advanced pediatric health and care in Arizona, Chamberlain was busy building her own legacy at Stanford.
Chamberlain, a professor of pediatrics and education, focuses on reducing pediatric health and early childhood education disparities through health services research and policy engagement. After growing increasingly frustrated at seeing the repeated, disturbing pattern of youngsters’ lack of preparedness for kindergarten, Chamberlain, as a junior faculty member, developed and launched community and advocacy rotations for pediatric residents, creating what went on to become a nationally replicated program to address child poverty. Then, she went after funding for school-readiness interventions and built transdisciplinary programs to create the evidence base for “Kinder Ready” clinics.
In the announcement of Chamberlain’s departure, the chair of the Department of Pediatrics, Mary Leonard, MD, MSCE, hailed Chamberlain as “a dedicated clinician, beloved mentor, tireless advocate and guiding light to many here at Stanford Medicine.”
“One cannot overstate her impact on every aspect of our mission,” Leonard wrote. “It is because of her vision and leadership that advocacy, policy and community engagement are recognized as core to our mission.”
A perfect opportunity
Chamberlain’s light-filled, third-floor office at the College of Medicine – Tucson is filled with framed photos, many of them bordered by expansive white mats filled with handwritten messages.
A large, framed certificate hangs on the eastern wall. It’s a resolution from the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors for Chamberlain’s outstanding service as a child health advocate. It’s a memento that speaks to what she values.
After spending 30-plus years in California, Lisa Chamberlain said she’s excited to get to know the Tucson community.
Photo by Noelle Haro-Gomez, U of A Health Sciences Office of Communications
“I love knowing and learning from the community and the people who are responsible for the health of our communities,” Chamberlain said.
She’s been busy introducing herself to the college and Tucson community leaders since she officially started at the U of A on March 1. The past month, Chamberlain said, has been both “crazy and awesome.”
“I’m liking it even more than I thought I would — and I thought I would really like it,” she said, smiling broadly.
Chamberlain spoke at a Rotary Club of Tucson meeting and is conducting what she calls a “listening tour,” reaching out to faculty asking for their thoughts ahead of a fall retreat.
She’s working on filling empty positions and overseeing a bid to start a neonatology fellowship. She also had the chance to witness Match Day, when graduating medical students learn where they’ll train. Chamberlain was delighted to see 14 of the 119 medical students announce they were going into pediatrics.
“It was wonderful,” she said. “Peds is the best.”
The last thing Chamberlain expected after graduating from medical school, loading all her belongings into a Ford Escort and moving to California, was that she’d spend more than 30 years there. She figured she’d come back home to Arizona, with her three-year residency at Stanford a mere bullet point on her CV.
Instead, she met the engineer who would become her husband, had kids and laid down enough roots that she had no intention of leaving. When she came across the U of A job posting, though, “it just felt different.”
With her husband and children’s blessings, she decided to go for it.
“The primary thing that was exciting to me about this job was the people here and the opportunity to work with just amazing people who are doing research and education and great clinical care,” Chamberlain said.
Making a choice
Raised in Tempe, Chamberlain comes from a family of Arizona State University Sun Devils. Her parents went there, her two brothers followed suit and her nephew is a student. But Chamberlain loved science and planned on a career in medicine.
“Back then, if you wanted to do anything in STEM, you went to the U of A,” she said.
Her parents supported the choice, and Chamberlain’s mom sent her down Interstate 10 with the advice to study what interested her. That turned out to be … anthropology. It still incorporated plenty of science but also introduced the idea of systems and functionality and how people do things for functional reasons.
Though she was raised in Sun Devil country and most of her family attended Arizona State University, Lisa Chamberlain chose the U of A for her undergraduate education and medical school.
Photo courtesy of Lisa Chamberlain
“I use it all the time in medicine,” she said, offering the example of a mother whose young children struggled with their weight that’s stuck with her for years.
Chamberlain talked to them about their daily life and learned that the McDonald’s drive-through was the busy family’s go-to dinner. The mom knew it wasn’t the healthiest, but she did it because eating in the car was the best way to ensure time for homework later.
Chamberlain coached them through better ordering options. She credits her undergraduate degree with helping her connect the dots when it comes to human behavior.
“Cultural anthropology is about function, basically,” Chamberlain said. “So, if you look at what's universal around the world, people do things for functional reasons. I never would have known to see that if I hadn’t studied anthropology because so much of health is behaviors, so much of health is choices.”
Also important to consider, Chamberlain added, is that people don’t all have the same choices.
“We don’t all live right by a grocery store with healthy options,” she said. “We don’t all have the same disposable income to spend on food. We don’t all have a car. Yes, ultimately you are responsible and have to make choices, but we have to acknowledge different people have different choices.”
During her tenure at Stanford, Chamberlain came back to Tucson for a few reunions. It’s no surprise to her that around campus these days it’s mostly new, unfamiliar faces. And that’s fine.
“You can’t make a friend overnight, and you can’t build a partnership overnight,” Chamberlain said. “I know this.”
Chamberlain knows exactly how to grow those relationships. While interviewing for the U of A post, Chamberlain recalls asking what was desirable in a candidate. The answer: Someone who, in these post-COVID times, could cultivate community by bringing people together.
It’s a job tailor-made for Chamberlain.
“I love to entertain,” she said. “People are hungry for connection.”
And, no doubt, some home-baked chocolate chip cookies.