UB and Kaleida name new pediatric surgery director and division chief

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo and Kaleida Health have announced the joint appointment of Carroll McWilliams (Mac) Harmon, MD, PhD, as chief of the division of pediatric surgery and director of the pediatric surgery fellowship at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and pediatric surgeon-in chief (Chief of Surgery, Pediatric Surgery) at Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo. His faculty appointment will be professor in the UB Department of Surgery.

Harmon, currently professor and director of pediatric surgical research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine, will begin his new positions at UB and Women & Children’s Hospital on January 1, 2014.

"Dr. Harmon is an outstanding physician-scientist who has all of the leadership, administrative, clinical, research and educational qualities required to transform our division of pediatric surgery into one of the nation's best," said Michael E. Cain, MD, vice president for health sciences at UB and dean of the medical school.

Harmon has an international reputation for his groundbreaking work in pediatric minimally-invasive surgery and surgical intervention in childhood obesity. He is currently one of the principal investigators on a $10 million National Institutes of Health grant that runs until 2018 titled “Teen Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery.” The purpose of the study is to assess the short and longer-term safety and efficacy of bariatric surgery in adolescents compared to adults.

Harmon chairs the Childhood Obesity Committee of the American Pediatric Surgical Association and serves on the Humanitarian Task Force of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons.

“Dr. Harmon is a nationally recognized educator and researcher whose presence here will strengthen patient care and the training of our pediatric surgery fellows and general surgery residents,” said Roseanne Berger, MD, senior associate dean for graduate medical education at UB. 

Harmon is currently associate program director of the pediatric surgery fellowship at UAB and Children’s.

“Dr. Harmon’s impressive background brings his unique capability to lead our regional center for pediatric surgery and one of the original training programs of its kind in the United States,” said Cheryl Klass, president, Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo and senior vice president of operations, Buffalo General Medical Center and Kaleida Health.  “His leadership will also serve Western New York well as we further develop plans for the new John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.”

Harmon is general surgery clinic director at Children’s of Alabama as well as surgical director of the Children's Center for Weight Management and the Georgeson Center for Advanced Intestinal Rehab. He also is a scientist at UAB’s Center for Surgical Research and the Clinical Nutrition Research Center.

A past president of the International Pediatric Endosurgery Group, Harmon is author of approximately 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Laparoendoscopic and Advanced Surgical Techniques and Pediatric Surgical International.

Before coming to the University of Alabama, Harmon was an instructor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and assistant professor of surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School.

He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and his MD at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He also earned a PhD in molecular physiology and biophysics at Vanderbilt. Harmon did surgical residencies at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a pediatric surgery residency and fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, a Kaleida Health facility and teaching hospital for the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, is the regional center for state-of-the-art pediatric, neonatal, perinatal and obstetrical services in Western New York and beyond.  For more information, please go online at www.wchob.org. The Department of Pediatric Surgery was established in 1957 and specializes in surgical care of infants, toddlers, children, adolescents and young adults up to 22 years of age as a fully accredited fellowship program. This training program in pediatric surgery is one of the original nine such programs in the United States.