Pediatric Infectious Diseases
Whether your child is battling an acute infection or a chronic disease, our team can offer timely solutions so that infections no longer threaten your child's development and well being.
Our doctors offer expert inpatient care and consultations for children with a wide range of infectious diseases and immunologic disorders including:
- Blood infections
- HIV/AIDS
- Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C)
- Respiratory infections, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)
- Pneumonia
- Skin and soft tissue infections
- Other illnesses, such as cancer, transplantation or heart disease, complicated by acute infections
Our knowledgeable, caring staff also provides a variety of outpatient services to meet your child's needs. An outpatient clinic provides support for families of children on outpatient IV antibiotics. These children may suffer from infections, such as bone and joint infections, which require long-term monitoring.
Your Child's Own Team of Experts
Each day, our nurse practitioners and doctors work collaboratively with other pediatric experts to solve complicated illnesses and conditions — many of which were once considered difficult to diagnose and treat.
Our infectious disease specialists are available to support your child's pediatrician and the other members of your child's health care team. In addition, our patients and families benefit from the support of the hospital's superior pediatric intensive care specialists, child life specialists, nurses, nutrition experts and volunteers.
Besides providing the highest level of clinical care, our experts are committed to furthering the knowledge of infectious disease through education and clinical research. Our section is home to a nationally accredited infectious disease fellowship, considered one of the foremost in the country.
Part of your child's treatment may involve anti-infective medicines. Our team is particularly skilled at managing antibiotic-resistant infections, a growing issue in the medical community. Using treatment plans that involve newer antibiotics, we can treat many of these conditions safely and effectively.
Why Choose UChicago Medicine Comer Children's for Pediatric Infectious Diseases Care?
At the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital, we understand that successful prevention and treatment of HIV goes beyond clinical care and strives to address the social factors that keep many youths from engaging in medical care.
Care2Prevent (C2P) is the University of Chicago's Pediatric and Adolescent HIV Program. C2P empowers individuals of all ages who are living with HIV or who want to stay HIV negative to live bold, rich, meaningful lives. Our welcoming, supportive, interdisciplinary team provides trauma-informed, integrated healthcare, social service connections, and advocacy for communities on the South Side. C2P offers services in a variety of locations, including:
- UChicago Medicine - Hyde Park (Wyler Pavilion)
- Friend Health - Hyde Park
- Comer Children’s Pediatric Mobile Medical Unit, which visits various South Side community sites
From homelessness to food insecurity to issues surrounding sexual and gender identity, our C2P team is specially trained in case management, outreach/prevention, and behavioral health. We work actively with youth to achieve mind-body wellness, engagement in care, and viral suppression or retaining an HIV-seronegative status through the ideal of client empowerment.
Research and Clinical Trials
The International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) Network is a global collaboration of investigators, institutions, community representatives, and other partners organized for the purpose of evaluating prevention and treatment interventions for HIV and HIV-associated complications and co-morbidities in infants, children, and adolescents, and during pregnancy and postpartum through the conduct of high-quality clinical trials. IMPAACT was formed in 2006 through a merger of investigators from the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group (PACTG) and the Perinatal Scientific Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN). IMPAACT’s vision and overall goal is to end the worldwide HIV epidemic among these populations. To achieve this goal, the IMPAACT Network evaluates novel and durable treatments for both HIV and TB, strategies for antiretroviral treatment (ART)-free remission, and strategies to address the complications and co-morbidities affecting these populations of interest with or at risk of HIV.
The Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS) is a longitudinal cohort study investigating the long-term effects of HIV and antiretroviral (ARV) medications in children and young adults who were born with HIV or born exposed to HIV. The study follows newborns, young children, adolescents, and young adults. PHACS was developed in 2005 and is funded by multiple Institutes within the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Our doctors have a strong history of actively preventing the spread of communicable diseases in the community. In 1993, UChicago Medicine developed the Pediatric Immunization Program to provide door-to-door education and outreach to families in Chicago's public housing to increase immunization rates and childhood wellness. That program ended, but we now have ECHO-Chicago program. Created in 2010, ECHO-Chicago is a leader in the use of the Extension for Community Health Outcomes (ECHO) model, an innovative healthcare workforce development model that aims to strengthen the delivery of community-based primary care by “moving knowledge, not patients.” ECHO-Chicago is the third oldest ECHO program in the world and the first to focus on an urban environment. Through telementoring and case-based learning, ECHO-Chicago has trained thousands of primary care providers to implement evidence-based best practices for managing common, chronic physical and mental health conditions, including those that are infectious disease related and other areas of medicine.
Our specialists are involved in other outreach programs. Care2Prevent (C2P) is a leader in Pediatric and Adolescent HIV Care and provides HIV education to schools, youth groups, parents and community organizations. The program also focuses on preventing the spread of HIV in adolescents and youth on the South and West Sides of Chicago, including offering PreP (preexposure prophylaxis) services. C2P not only sees patients on-site at Comer Children's Hospital, but also at Friend Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center near Hyde Park.
If your family is traveling abroad, our doctors can provide advice on foreign travel precautions as well as vaccinations for your child in our Pediatric Family Travel Medicine Clinic.