Critical care specialist returns to head the pediatrics department

Dr. George Lister, a 1973 graduate of the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and a former member of its pediatrics faculty, will return to campus as chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the school.

Lister will also serve as chief of the Department of Pediatrics at Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) and physician-in-chief at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital.

Lister completed his pediatric residency at YNHH, followed by a fellowship in pediatric cardiology and neonatology at the University of California-San Francisco, where he began research that led to his specialization in critical care medicine, a field in its formative stages at the time. He returned to YSM and YNHH in 1978, where he rose to professor of pediatrics and anesthesiology, founded the Section of Critical Care and Applied Physiology, and was its chief for more than 20 years. He also founded the Pediatric Critical Care Fellowship Program, training generations of pediatric critical care physicians.

In 2003 he was recruited to be chair of pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, and is currently the Robert L. Moore Professor of Pediatrics and associate dean for education there.

He has served as president of the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society, as trustee and officer of the International Research Foundation, and as editor-in-chief of the journal Pediatric Research. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2006. Last year, in recognition of his longstanding contributions to American pediatrics, he received the 2011 Joseph W. St. Geme Jr. Leadership Award from the Federation of Pediatric Organizations.

“Dr. Lister is fondly known by pediatricians throughout Connecticut and brings an outstanding record of accomplishment as a physician, scientist, administrator, and mentor to several generations of academic pediatricians and pediatric researchers,” wrote YSM dean Dr. Robert J. Alpern and YNHH president and CEO Marna P. Borgstrom in a letter to the medical school community.

Lister succeeds Dr. Clifford W. Bogue, who has served as interim chair of the pediatrics department since September 2010.