Environmental Health
Track Leadership
Benjamin Gitterman, MD
Track Co-Director
Benjamin Gitterman, MD is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at George Washington University and Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C. His major activities include Children’s Environmental Health, Child Advocacy and Community health focused training and program development. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from City College of New York, and his M.D. degree from SUNY at Buffalo. He completed his Pediatrics residency and chief residency at the Residency Program in Social Medicine at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in New York. Prior to coming to Washington DC, he was the director of Ambulatory Pediatric Services for Denver Health and Hospitals and was on the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Medicine. In Washington D.C. he has been the Chair of General and Community Pediatrics at Children’s National Medical Center.
Dr. Gitterman is Co-Director of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, one of 10 federally funded Pediatric Environmental Health Centers in the United States. He is a member of the Governor’s Council on Children’s Health and the Environment for the State of Maryland, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency for Children’s Environmental Health and a liaison member to the Advisory Committee on Children’s Lead Poisoning and Prevention for the CDC. He has been a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Children’s Environmental Health, and has written and spoken nationally and internationally in this area, particularly in regard to advocacy and education.
Dr. Gitterman is the Medical Director of the Health Access Program, a medical-legal collaborative linking the Children’s National Medical Center and the Children’s Law Center of Washington, D.C. He is also a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the National Center for Medical Legal Partnership, and is the co-chair of the systemic advocacy committee. He is also the Medical Director of Project Health D.C., a collaboration between George Washington University and Children’s National Medical Center, linking college undergraduates, pediatric mentors and community health programs. He has also volunteered annually overseas with Operation Smile.
Dr. Gitterman has been the director of fellowship training in General Academic Pediatrics/Community Oriented Primary Care at Children’s National Medical Center. He is the immediate Past-President of the District of Columbia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a member of the Executive Committee of the AAP Council on Community Pediatrics and the American Academy of Pediatrics Chapter Forum Management Committee.
He continues to practice clinical pediatrics, both as a clinical preceptor and as a direct care provider, primarily with underserved children and their families.
Jerome Paulson, MD
Track Co-Director
Jerome A. Paulson, MD is associate professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences and Associate Professor of Prevention & Community Health and Research Associate Professor of Environmental & Occupational Health at the GW School of Public Health & Health Services. He is the Medical Director for National & Global Affairs of the Children’s Health Advocacy Institute at the Children’s National Medical Center. Dr. Paulson is one of the co-directors of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, one of ten pediatric environmental health specialty units in the US. He serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Environmental Health and the Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee for the US Environmental Protection Agency. In October 2004 he was a Dozor Visiting Professor at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel. He lectured there and throughout Israel on children’s environmental health. He was a recipient of a Soros Advocacy Fellowship for Physicians from the Open Society Institute and worked with the Children’s Environmental Health Network, and has also served as a special assistant to the director of the National Center on Environmental Health of the CDC working on children’s environmental health issues. He has developed several new courses for the GW School of Public Health about Children’s Health and the Environment. He is the editor of the October, 2001 and the February and April 2007 editions of Pediatric Clinics of North America on children’s environmental health. He has served on numerous boards and committees related to children’s environmental health.