Education
Harvard Medical School, Doctorate of Medicine; Harvard University, Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Biology
Background
Christopher J. Russell, M.D. is a pediatric hospitalist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He completed his undergraduate degree in Psychology and Biology at Harvard University, his medical degree at Harvard Medical School, and his pediatric residency at the University of California, San Francisco campus. His research interests focus on developing evidence-based care for hospitalized children with medical complexity, particularly those with tracheostomies admitted for bacterial respiratory tract infections. Through the KL2 program, he hopes to: (1) determine risk factors for development of bacterial lower respiratory tract infections in patients after initial tracheostomy placement; (2) define the association between respiratory tract microbiome evolution and patient outcomes; and (3) document the evolution of the respiratory tract microbiome after treatment of lower respiratory tract infections in tracheostomized patients. Completion of this project will provide preliminary data to inform multicenter retrospective studies and prospective therapeutic trials for the prevention and treatment of respiratory infections in pediatric patients with tracheostomies.