Jaffe Appointed First Chief of the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine

David M. Jaffe, MD, has been appointed as the first chief of the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) at UC San Francisco effective Feb. 1, 2015, the day the new  UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital at Mission Bay opens. Jaffe will also serve as the department’s vice chair for Pediatric Emergency Medicine.

"Dr. David Jaffe brings a rich history and wealth of expertise in pediatric emergency medicine that will take the UCSF program to new heights," said Peter Sokolove, MD, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine.

The new UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital at Mission Bay will offer specialized care for pediatric patients in a dedicated children's emergency department. Equipped with the latest medical technology and a staff dedicated to the treatment and healing of children, it will provide pediatric patients with the care they need, when they need it.

Jaffe is currently the Dana Brown Professor of Pediatrics and director of the Division of Emergency Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a founding member of both multi-institutional research networks in PEM, the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Collaborative Research Consortium (PEMCRC) and the federally funded Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN). His research interests include diagnosis and management of the febrile child, children with head and neck injuries, and management of procedure-associated pain and anxiety.

Jaffe has co-authored 69 original manuscripts and 115 abstracts. He is an associate editor of Annals of Emergency Medicine and a member of the Editorial Board of Pediatric Emergency Care. He is past chair of the Section on Emergency Medicine of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and past president of the Academic Pediatric Association.

Jaffe has held significant leadership roles on the American Board of Pediatrics, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Sub-board, Pediatric Residency Review Committee of the ACGME, and the planning committee of the annual PEM fellows conference. In 2006, he received the Jim Seidel Distinguished Service Award from the Section on Emergency Medicine of the AAP.

Jaffe received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and his MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed his pediatric residency training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he also trained as the first PEM fellow in the nation and as a Robert Wood Johnson fellow in Academic Pediatrics.

Prior to assuming his position at Washington University, Jaffe held academic positions at Northwestern University, Children’s Memorial Hospital, and was the PEM division head and ED director at the Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto. He will join UCSF after completing 24 years as the director of PEM at Washington University in St. Louis.

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