Membership
APS Member Spotlight
Featured in the January 2012 Issue of ENews
Carlton Dampier, MD
Professor of Pediatrics
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, GA
What is your area of specialty?
I am board certified in pediatric hematology/oncology. My clinical practice and research has largely focused on children, adolescents, and young adults with sickle cell disease.
What initially sparked your interest in working in your field? Briefly describe your career path.
During my fellowship, I began to provide end-of-life care to pediatric oncology patients at a time when survival rates were much lower than they are now. Beginning to practice in an urban medical center with a large African-American community, it became clear that the sickle cell population also had a tremendous need for appropriate symptom management, especially for acute pain. After completing my fellowship, I had an opportunity to join a large NIH-funded multisite natural history study of sickle cell disease. This started me on a career path of clinical research in this disorder which I continue to this day.
What has been a highlight of your work? Perhaps you and your staff are proud of a certain project or accomplishment.
My research has focused on patient-reported outcomes, and was the first to describe validation of pain questionnaires in children with sickle cell pain, and to describe the much larger burden of pain cared for in the home setting rather than in the hospital as traditionally viewed.
Is there a particular challenge that you've either overcome or hope to address soon?
I hope to develop multisite collaborative studies to characterize chronic pain in this disorder, which has become a major clinical problem.
How has membership in APS been of value to you and your professional development?
I joined APS early in my research career and the information and networking from my involvement with APS has been instrumental in the conduct of my research. I see the recent creation of a Special Interest Group within APS for Sickle Cell Disease Pain that I will chair as the opportunity to bring our hematology and pain communities together to share their respective expertise and hopefully accelerate the pace of research and improve the treatment of pain in this complex disorder.
