BBCH Scholars Academy Leadership Team

Alexa Craig, MD, MSc, MS is a Neonatal and Pediatric Neurologist at Maine Medical Center and Maine Medical Partners, a clinical researcher, and the Director of the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital Scholarship Academy. A New England native, she attended the University of Vermont College of Medicine for her medical degree followed by two years of pediatric residency at Maine Medical Center and a residency in Child Neurology at Washington University and Seattle Children’s Hospital. Dr. Craig did an additional year of fellowship in Neonatal Neurology at the University of Washington and St. Louis Children’s Hospital. In 2012, Dr. Craig returned home to Maine Medical Center to start her Neonatal Neurology Program and academic career. Following her return to MMC, she was the recipient of a KL2 career development award through the Tufts University College of Medicine and obtained a Master’s degree in Clinical and Translational Research.

In 2021, Dr. Craig, MD was funded as the lead scientist on Project 4 of the COBRE in Acute Care Research & Rural Disparities supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health. This project aims to assess use of telemedicine for the assessment of neonatal encephalopathy in tertiary care centers in Maine and Vermont as well as community hospitals in Maine and New Hampshire.

Dr. Craig’s clinical interest are in the areas of Neonatal Neurocritical Care, specifically neuroprotective treatments such as therapeutic hypothermia and employing telemedicine to eliminate outcome disparities for rural-born newborns. In the outpatient setting, Dr. Craig started the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital Cerebral Palsy Program and is working to improve neurodevelopmental follow up for neonates cared for in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Scholarship Areas of Interest: Neuroprotective treatments including therapeutic hypothermia, the use of telemedicine to eliminate outcome disparities for rural-born newborns

Project Name: The effect of antenatal opioid exposure on newborn head circumference

Laura Faherty, MD, MPH, MSHP is the Associate Director of the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital Scholarship Academy and an attending physician in the MMP Pediatric Clinic at Maine Medical Center. Outside of her work at Maine Medical Center, Dr. Faherty is a physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine, and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Dr. Faherty attended Emory University for both her MD and MPH in global epidemiology. She then completed her residency and chief residency in pediatrics at Boston Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital. She also received her MS in health policy research from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Faherty’s clinical interests include caring for families affected by substance use and families who have come to Maine from all over the world. She enjoys thinking about systemic solutions to challenges her patients are facing that affect their health and wellbeing. Her research focuses on maternal-child health and public health emergency preparedness and response, both in U.S. and non-U.S. settings. Her current work addresses COVID-19 testing in K-12 schools; equitable COVID-19 vaccine delivery; policy responses to opioid use in pregnancy; and behavioral health surveillance in the disaster context. Her research has been funded by NIH, CDC, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.

Dr. Faherty lives in the Portland area with her husband and two young daughters.

Scholarship Areas of Interest: maternal-child health, pandemic preparedness and response

Leah Mallory, MD is a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine in 2003, and a graduate of Stanford University in 1997. Prior to beginning medical school, Dr. Mallory worked as an Emergency Medical Technician and Firefighter. Dr. Mallory completed her residency in Pediatrics, in the Boston Combined Residency Program (a collaborative program between Children’s Hospital Boston/ Harvard University and Boston Medical Center/ Boston University), staying an extra year to serve as Chief Resident. Dr. Mallory is currently a Pediatric Hospitalist at The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center. She is a member of the TUSM Maine/Track admissions committee and director of the pediatric simulation program. Dr. Mallory’s teaching responsibilities encompass both undergraduate and graduate medical education as well as pediatric simulation-based interprofessional team training in the hospital setting. Other academic interests include simulation-based assessment of trainees and quality improvement issues in pediatric hospitalist medicine, specifically hospital-to-home transitions.

Dr. Mallory’s interests outside of the hospital include surfing, triathlon training, and ocean kayaking, as well as enjoying a busy family life. Her husband is a Pediatric Surgeon at The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital. They have 3 spirited children ages 7, 9 and 11, a dog, 2 cats, 2 lizards, and 1 bird. 

Special Interest Group Leadership Area: Simulation Research

Leah Marie Seften, BS is a Children’s Health Research Navigator at Maine Medical Center. In her role she supports various scholarship projects for members of the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital Scholarship Academy. Additionally, she supports Dr. Alexa Craig’s Acute Care Research & Rural Disparities COBRE project on telemedicine for assessment of neonatal encephalopathy and Drs. Melendi and Zanno on their Acute Care COBRE Pilot Project. Prior to joining the Department of Pediatrics at Maine Medical Center, Leah Marie worked for the MaineHealth Institute for Research Clinical Trials Office supporting studies related to neurology and Covid-19.

Leah Marie received her Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience from Saint Michael’s College where she was awarded a national fellowship for positive engagement, “Dialoguing Across Differences”. Leah subsequently worked at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Neurosurgery and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute Department of Neuro-oncology as a Clinical Research Coordinator coordinating clinical trials for the neuro-oncology, stroke, and spine divisions.

Outside of work, Leah volunteers as a Bereavement Facilitator for the Center for Grieving Children and loves to run, bike, and paddleboard with her dog.

Scholarship Areas of Interest: Clinical trials, oncolytic viruses, neuroplasticity, and grief

Sarah Gabrielson, MPH, BSN RN is a Children’s Health Research Navigator at the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital and MaineHealth Children’s Health Service Line. In this role she creates educational resources for the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital Scholarship Academy; coordinates groups including the Children’s Health Service Line Access and Equity Special Interest Group; manages the selection process for BBCH SA membership and Faculty Resident Scholarship Program awards; and provides direct support for half of the BBCH SA members’ scholarship projects.

In previous clinical roles, Ms. Gabrielson has worked as a registered nurse with pediatric patients and their families along the continuum of care from inpatient to home health and school-based settings. Inspired to learn more about the social determinants of health she observed through her work as a pediatric home health nurse, Ms. Gabrielson earned a Master’s of Public Health degree from the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service in 2019. Her other recent work experience includes participation in the tracking and evaluation team of the Northern New England Clinical and Translational Research Network and as a researcher on a statewide epidemiological study of maternal opioid use disorder. Her recent qualitative research study of rural primary care clinician engagement in research has also given her insight into the factors that may support clinician-led research in Children’s Health at MMC and MaineHealth.

Sarah is an active member of some of the scholarship projects that she supports. She has been a team member in retrospective research on the association of neonatal head circumference with opioid exposure; neonatal resuscitation simulation and telesimulation-related educational research projects; and retrospective research and quality improvement projects on the identification and response to Adverse Childhood Experiences and associated clinical conditions.

Scholarship Areas of Interest: Ms. Gabrielson is passionate about contributing to scholarship to improve care team well-being, patient outcomes, health equity, and population health. Sarah especially enjoys supporting study design; teaching about data collection options and tools; and editing abstracts, posters and manuscripts. She finds something of interest to her in almost all scholarship ideas that you share with her – that is why she loves her job!

Anya Cutler, MS, MPH is a Research Analyst III at MaineHealth Institute for Research Center for Interdisciplinary and Population Health Research (CIPHR). She holds an MS in Plant and Soil Science from the University of Vermont and an MPH in Global Epidemiology with a certificate in Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology from Emory University.

Prior to starting at CIPHR, Anya’s varied interests carried her through research in allergy & immunology, soil science, environmental health, reproductive health, and bee biology labs. She spent several years as a bench scientist and transitioned to statistics and data science upon completing her MPH. She joined CIPHR in 2020 as a data scientist, working with clinicians across the MaineHealth system in study design, data analysis, and data communication. She loves the variety in patient-centered research topics and the statistical and data visualization challenges she works on with Barbara Bush Scholars Academy members. She is also a lover of DAGs and R programming.

Scholarship Areas of Interest: Social determinants of health, causal inference modeling, rural/urban health disparities, colorful data visualization.

Aaron Weiss, DO is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist the Maine Children’s Cancer Program at Maine Medical Center and a member of the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital Scholarship Academy steering committee.

Dr. Weiss graduated from the University of Rochester in 1994 and subsequently earned his medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1999. He completed a pediatric emphasis internship at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine/Albert Einstein Medical Center in 2000 followed by a pediatric residency at the AI duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, DE in 2003. He then went on to complete a pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN in 2006. He subsequently spent six years as an attending pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey/University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Jersey Shore University Medical Center.

Dr. Weiss has particular interest in sarcomas, particularly improving outcomes for patients with these disease types. He has co-authored a number of publications on this subject and is currently involved in conducting clinical trials both locally and nationally in the fields of desmoid tumor and soft tissue sarcoma. He is the Vice-Chair of the Soft Tissue Sarcoma Committee and Associate Vice-Chair of the Adolescent and Young Adult Committee of the Children’s Oncology Group.

Scholarship Areas of Interest: desmoid tumor and soft tissue sarcoma, clinical trials

Abby Fleisch, MD, MPH is an environmental health researcher at CORE, a pediatric endocrinologist at Maine Medical Center, and a member of the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital Scholarship Academy steering committee. She is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Fleisch received her undergraduate and medical degrees from Northwestern University. She completed residency in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital/Boston Medical Center and fellowship in endocrinology at Boston Children’s Hospital. She participated in the Harvard-wide pediatric health services research fellowship and received a Masters of Public Health from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. After serving on faculty at Boston Children’s Hospital for 3 years, she joined MMC in 2016.

Dr. Fleisch’s research is focused on the extent to which early life exposures to environmental toxicants such as air pollution and household chemicals are associated with childhood obesity and bone health. Dr. Fleisch is the principal investigator of an Outstanding New Environmental Scientist R01 award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She received the Academic Pediatric Association Michael Shannon Research Award in 2012 and an Endocrine Society Early Career Investigator Award in 2016.

Dr. Fleisch is a peer mentor for the Harvard Medical School-Harvard Catalyst Grant Review and Support Program and an affiliated faculty member and advisor to the New England Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. She sees endocrinology patients at the Pediatric Subspecialty Clinic at MMC.

Scholarship Areas of Interest: childhood obesity, bone health, early life environmental exposures

Bio Coming Soon

Thomas Miller, DO is a pediatric cardiologist at Maine Medical Center and the Division Director of Pediatric Cardiology. He received his medical degree from the University of New England, completed his residency in Pediatrics at Maine Medical Center, and completed his fellowship in Pediatric Cardiology at the University of Utah. He underwent an additional year of subspecialty training in Advanced Imaging, focusing on fetal cardiology as well as research. He previously developed and directed the Heart Center Neurodevelopmental Program at the University of Utah and Primary Children’s Hospital. Dr. Miller continues to be Adjunct Faculty at the University of Utah, collaborating on research initiatives regarding cardiac neurodevelopment and neonatal neurobehavior. He has been a co-investigator in NHLBI-sponsored Pediatric Cardiac Genomics Consortium (PCGC) and Pediatric Heart Network (PHN) research activity. He is active in the Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Outcome Collaborative (CNOC) serving on both the Research Committee and Steering Committee. Dr. Miller’s clinical interests include fetal cardiology, echocardiography and general pediatric cardiology.

Scholarship Areas of Interest: cardiac neurodevelopment, the application of concepts of developmental programming to explain and provide novel mechanisms to treat the heterogeneity in outcomes that affects much of pediatric cardiovascular care

Project Name: Development and Implementation of a Neurodevelopmental Screening Program for Congenital Heart Disease Utilizing Telehealth and In-Person Evaluations

Special Interest Group Leadership Area: Children’s Health Service Line Regional Access and Equity in Utilization