Q&A: Joseph R. Hageman, MD, emphasizes review, evolution of specialty in Pediatric Annals

Last year was a year of great change for Pediatric Annals. The physician-reviewed, MEDLINE-indexed publication, in print for 45 years, went online only at www.healio.com/pedannals, and a new editor was appointed when Stanford T. Shulman, MD, now Editor Emeritus, retired.

Reaction from readers has been positive. Online traffic to the Journal doubled in the first 6 months since the change and continues to grow. The Editorial Board, now led by Editor Joseph R. Hageman, MD, renewed its commitment to developing review articles for practitioners, and placed an increased emphasis on how Pediatric Annals’ readers want to receive information on treatment in the age of the Internet.

According to Hageman, who is Director of Quality Improvement in Neonatology at Comer Children’s Hospital, senior clinician at The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and emeritus attending pediatrician at NorthShore University HealthSystem, ultimately the goal is “to bring readers into the clinic from home,” offering them quantifiable, evidence-based pearls for practice that they can read online one day and put into practice the next.

Hageman has been an Editorial Board Member and consultant for Pediatric Annals for more than 30 years, and has frequently offered his expert opinion in developing content pertaining to neonatology, rheumatology, behavior/development, critical care and quality improvement. Dedication to excellent pediatric health care extends to Hageman’s wife, Sally, who has been a nurse at Lurie Children’s for 38 years and was recently awarded the Daisy Award for outstanding clinical care.

Infectious Diseases in Children recently interviewed Hageman, who discusses what motivated him to take on the position of Editor, how journals need to change their presentation for Millennials, and his vision for the future, not just for Pediatric Annals, but for the field of pediatrics overall.

What attracted you to the role of editor for Pediatric Annals?

Dr. Hageman: I had been an editor and on the editorial board for the past 30 years. One of my role models and mentors, [Pediatric Annals Editor Emeritus] Stanford T. Shulman, MD, inspired me when I had the opportunity to do some guest editor issues and come up with some ideas. The more I became involved, the more enthusiastic I was; I have always enjoyed editing and writing. I have a diverse background; I have taken care of a lot of sick neonates, patients in the PICU, medically complex kids, and have continued to teach and work with residents and fellows and have kept in touch with my colleagues who are in practice. I feel like I have a good idea of what was going on in general pediatrics.

With so many medical journals in this space, what unique value does Pediatric Annals bring to the field?

Dr. Hageman: As an online-only review publication, I think we’re uniquely positioned to offer clinical advice to medical students, residents, and fellows who have come of age in the Internet era. I’ll give you an example: when I give talks now to medical students, I have a PowerPoint version of just general pediatric topics and a verbal, 10-minute, I’ll-give-it-to-you-that-way version. Millennials choose the 10-minute version as they want information in a short, practical, realistic way. I see Pediatric Annals like that. It is meant to be clinical, it is meant to be relevant, it is meant to be practical. And that is what I have tried to do in organizing issues.

The other part that is helpful is that whatever you do as a clinician, whether you are a pediatrician, a family physician, in child life, a social service [practitioner], a physical therapist, you tend to remember abstract facts better when you have a clinical case to relate it to. You have some clinical cases or practical information to go along with those facts that you must learn and memorize. That’s kind of what the review format is; it’s a starting point to the discussion. It’s meant to be clinical, practical and brief, similar to a millennial-era approach [to learning].

What do you think will have the greatest influence on your field in the next 10 years?

Dr. Hageman: What general pediatricians have done and what the AAP has done to educate and help people is to understand the value and safety of vaccines as well as the whole approach to prevention and health. Certainly, we are going to have to work harder to help parents and physicians and all the other people in politics understand how important prevention and safety are for children and their families. I come from an era when a lot of these vaccines 40 years ago didn’t exist, and I took care of sick kids with infectious diseases [that are now preventable by vaccination] and saw all the kinds of effects that they can have on life, [on] neurodevelopmental outcomes, and on the quality of their lives when they get these diseases, let alone if they die.

As a group, pediatricians have worked to prove that these vaccines [not only] are helpful in prevention and attenuation of illness, but also for quality of life. That today is probably the biggest influence on what we are doing. What we have done in the past has been reactionary when a child becomes sick and trying to do something to help him or her. What we are trying to get into more now is prevention and health. And that is the approach whether someone is a child or an adult or a fetus or a newborn. That is not the way I was educated, but it is the way we are educating pediatric and family caregivers nowadays. – by Kate Sherrer, with additional reporting by Stephanie Arasim Portnoy