Pediatric Infectious Diseases

Whether your child is battling an acute infection or a chronic disease, our team can offer timely solutions so that infections no longer threaten your child's development and well being.

Your Child's Own Team of Experts

Each day, our nurse practitioners and doctors work collaboratively with other pediatric experts to solve complicated illnesses and conditions — many of which were once considered difficult to diagnose and treat.

Our infectious disease specialists are available to support your child's pediatrician and the other members of your child's health care team. In addition, our patients and families benefit from the support of the hospital's superior pediatric intensive care specialists, child life specialists, nurses, nutrition experts and volunteers.

Besides providing the highest level of clinical care, our experts are committed to furthering the knowledge of infectious disease through education and clinical research. Our section is home to a nationally accredited infectious disease fellowship, considered one of the foremost in the country.

Part of your child's treatment may involve anti-infective medicines. Our team is particularly skilled at managing antibiotic-resistant infections, a growing issue in the medical community. Using treatment plans that involve newer antibiotics, we can treat many of these conditions safely and effectively.

Research and Clinical Trials

The International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) Network is a global collaboration of investigators, institutions, community representatives, and other partners organized for the purpose of evaluating prevention and treatment interventions for HIV and HIV-associated complications and co-morbidities in infants, children, and adolescents, and during pregnancy and postpartum through the conduct of high-quality clinical trials. IMPAACT was formed in 2006 through a merger of investigators from the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group (PACTG) and the Perinatal Scientific Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN). IMPAACT’s vision and overall goal is to end the worldwide HIV epidemic among these populations. To achieve this goal, the IMPAACT Network evaluates novel and durable treatments for both HIV and TB, strategies for antiretroviral treatment (ART)-free remission, and strategies to address the complications and co-morbidities affecting these populations of interest with or at risk of HIV.

The Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS) is a longitudinal cohort study investigating the long-term effects of HIV and antiretroviral (ARV) medications in children and young adults who were born with HIV or born exposed to HIV. The study follows newborns, young children, adolescents, and young adults. PHACS was developed in 2005 and is funded by multiple Institutes within the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A Commitment to the Community

Our doctors have a strong history of actively preventing the spread of communicable diseases in the community. In 1993, UChicago Medicine developed the Pediatric Immunization Program to provide door-to-door education and outreach to families in Chicago's public housing to increase immunization rates and childhood wellness. That program ended, but we now have Health4Chicago, a program focused on immunizing families for COVID-19, influenza and travel-related vaccines through recurring community and hospital based vaccine clinics. We focus on influenza and COVID-19 in the fall and have year round travel vaccine services.

We are also committed to addressing disparities in access to care across a wide range of adult and pediatric, medical and behavioral topics through our ECHO-Chicago program. Created in 2010, ECHO-Chicago is a leader in the use of the Extension for Community Health Outcomes (ECHO) model, an innovative healthcare workforce development model that aims to strengthen the delivery of community-based primary care by “moving knowledge, not patients.” ECHO-Chicago is the third oldest ECHO program in the world and the first to focus on an urban environment. Through telementoring and case-based learning, ECHO-Chicago has trained thousands of primary care providers to implement evidence-based best practices for managing common, chronic physical and mental health conditions, including those that are infectious disease related and other areas of medicine.

Our specialists are involved in other outreach programs. Care2Prevent (C2P) is a leader in Pediatric and Adolescent HIV Care and provides HIV education to schools, youth groups, parents and community organizations. The program also focuses on preventing the spread of HIV in adolescents and youth on the South and West Sides of Chicago, including offering PreP (preexposure prophylaxis) services. C2P not only sees patients on-site at Comer Children's Hospital, but also at Friend Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center near Hyde Park.