Faculty
Spotlight: Dr. Steven Abrams
A self-proclaimed perpetual MIT nerd, Dr. Abrams
claims that his mediocrity in chemical engineering
and a collapse in oil prices led him to switch to a
career in medicine. That was the first of many events
to shape his career path. Eventually, he melded engineering
with me dicine and entered the field of international
medicine.
Preferring to work with babies, Dr. Abrams chose
well before graduating medical school to specialize
in neonatology. During a fellowship interview at Baylor
College of Medicine, he met scientists working on new
bone density equipment that they wanted to adapt for
babies to study calcium nutrition—a combination
of engineering and medicine. So after his Baylor fellowship
in neonatal-prenatal medicine, he completed two more
fellowships, in nutrition and use of stable isotopes
to assess mineral status, at the National Institutes
of Health (NIH).
Back at Baylor in 1991, Dr. Abrams began to study
calcium needs in adolescents. That had nothing to do
with neonatology, but NIH research grants were more
readily available to study calcium intake and absorption
in adolescents, and he was interested in the physiology
by which bone is formed throughout childhood.
Then in 1993, 10 years after graduating medical
school, he became involved in U.S. public health policy
and began research using stable isotopes of iron and
zinc. Soon, colleagues at Johns Hopkins and UC-Davis
recruited Dr. Abrams to collaborate on nutrient fortification
studies in Peru. Thus, he began his journey in international
health.
“I got the travel bug, joined up with space
traveler Dr. David Hilmers, and for most of the last
4 years have crossed the globe doing research studies
in nutrition,” said Dr. Abrams. “We’ve
had many scientists from other countries train with
us in Houston. We’re currently working in over
a dozen countries and the list keeps expanding. I continue
to do the calcium research in teens in the U.S., but
I enjoy the international work quite a bit. Philosophically,
we recognize that it is impossible for any one group
of Americans or any one approach to completely change
the nutritional status or infant care in a country.
But by working closely with a few physicians and scientists
in developing countries, we hope to develop a model
for such interactions that can be applied more widely.”
Editor's Note: For more information
about Dr. Abram's international research programs,
see his research team website: http://www.kidsnutrition.org/faculty/abrams_lab/ |
