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Peds psychologist, NP, global health expert join UMMC faculty

Medical Center leadership is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.

 

Hannah Ford, Ph.D.

Dr. Hannah Ford, recently a pediatric psychologist at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of pediatrics.

After receiving her B.A. in psychology from Clark University in 2009, Ford earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 2016 at the University of Maine. She completed her pre-doctoral internship at the Indiana University School of Medicine from 2015-16, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh from 2016-17.

Ford joined the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh staff in 2017 as a pediatric psychologist in the Child Neurology and Sleep Medicine Divisions. She served as principal investigator of a study assessing the mental health needs in a Duchenne/Becker Muscular Dystrophy Clinic and co-investigator of a study of targeted approaches to promoting adolescent sleep.

The author or coauthor of three articles in peer-reviewed professional publications, she has given six invited presentations and 29 conference presentations nationally. She is an active member of the American Psychological Association and the National Register of Health Service Psychologists, among other professional organizations.

 

Michelle B. Goreth, D.N.P.

Dr. Michelle B. Goreth, lead nurse practitioner in the Department of Surgery, Division of Pediatric Surgery, at UMMC, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of nursing.

After receiving her B.S.N. magna cum laude from UMMC in 1999, Goreth served as a staff nurse at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee, and at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg, and as a travel nurse at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., at Le Bonheur, and at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before coming to UMMC as a travel nurse in 2003. She became a staff nurse in UMMC’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit the following year and served as senior staff nurse in the unit from 2006-07.

Goreth earned her M.S.N. with honors at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2009 while concurrently serving as trauma performance improvement coordinator at Forrest General Hospital from 2007-10. She then served as a pediatric critical care nurse practitioner at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, in 2010, with additional prn appointments in trauma surgery and emergency services starting in 2011 at the Dallas campus and the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Plano campus. In 2014, she returned to UMMC as a pediatric acute care nurse practitioner in the Department of Surgery, Division of Pediatric Surgery, and became lead nurse practitioner in the department in 2015. She earned her D.N.P. at UMMC in 2018.

A member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and the Golden Key International Honour Society, Goreth is an active participant in the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, the Emergency Nurses Association, the Society of Trauma Nurses and the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, among other professional organizations. She has authored, coauthored or given more than 20 professional articles and presentations in scientific publications and meetings nationally and received multiple grants funding community-based pediatric concussion education and injury prevention.

A member of the Mississippi Department of Health’s Burn and Burn Performance Improvement Committees and the Pediatric Trauma Society’s Research and Advanced Practice Committees, Goreth’s research interests include pediatric trauma, with emphasis in mild traumatic brain injury; advanced practice role transition; and health care quality improvement.

 

Jorge E. Vidal, Ph.D.

Dr. Jorge E. Vidal, an associate professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health and director of the Research Unit on Bacterial Respiratory Pathogens at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of microbiology.

After receiving his B.Sc. in chemistry pharmacology and biology with honors from the Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico, in 1999 and his MSc. in microbiology with honors from the National School of Biological Sciences, Mexico City, in 2001, Dr. Vidal earned his Ph.D. in cellular microbiology at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Mexico City (the Mexican equivalent to the U.S. MIT) in 2006. He then conducted postdoctoral training in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania, from 2006-09.

Vidal joined the Emory University faculty in 2009 as an assistant professor in the Rollins School of Public Health and was promoted to associate professor there in 2018.

He is an active member of the American Society for Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America and serves on the ASM Committee on Minority Education and the ASM Committee of Microbiological issues Impacting Minorities. Vidal is the author, coauthor or senior author on more than 75 articles in peer-reviewed professional journals, more than 80 peer-reviewed abstracts and two book chapters, and has participated in 35 oral presentations at scientific meetings internationally. He has given 18 invited lectures; is an editorial board member for many prestigious journals, including Infection and Immunity and Pneumonia; and served as an editor for Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.

His current research interests include studies of the molecular pathogenesis of Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) and molecular epidemiology of pneumococcal disease. He is also focused on dissecting the mechanism of acquisition of antibiotic resistance in pneumococcal strains. His research programs and academic activities have been generously funded by grants from the NIH, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pfizer, Cempra Pharmaceuticals, Melinta Therapeutics, Nabriva Therapeutics, NIH-sponsored ACTSI, and others.