Congratulations to Lee Beers, MD, FAAP, medical director of community health and advocacy at the Child Health Advocacy Institute at Children’s National Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences, who was elected to be president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) starting in January 2020.
The AAP is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists, and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety, and well-being of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.
“I am humbled and honored to have the support of my peers in taking on this newest leadership role,” said Beers in a Children’s National Announcements. “AAP has been a part of my life since I first became a pediatrician, and my leadership roles in the D.C. chapter and national AAP have given me a glimpse of the collective good we pediatricians can accomplish by working together toward common strategic goals.”
Beers is a tireless advocate for children’s health needs. She has held multiple leadership positions at the AAP, where she has advocated and shaped policies affecting hundreds of thousands of U.S. families. She recently worked on an AAP steering committee for the ZERO TO THREE “Think Babies” campaign, which focuses on shaping policy around quality, affordable childcare, time for parents to bond with their babies, healthy emotional development, and strong physical health and nutrition.
As president of the AAP, Beers will focus on improving systems to make them work better for patients, families, and pediatricians. She hopes to improve systems and engage community partners so that families can access the care they need and pediatricians aren’t taken away from what’s most meaningful for them in medicine to spend hours on tasks like paperwork or charting, for example.
After graduating from the Emory University School of Medicine, she completed her residency training at the Naval Medical Center. Afterward, she was assigned to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station where she was the only pediatrician on base. During her 18-month assignment, she cared for every child on the base, ran the station’s immunization clinic, served on the child abuse committee, and worked on joint commission issues. After returning stateside, she was a staff pediatrician at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. After leaving the military, she joined Children’s National as a pediatrician and the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences as a faculty member.
To learn more, please read the full announcements at Children’s National
