Dr. Kitko joined the Vanderbilt Pediatric Hematology/Oncology program as the Medical Director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant in June 2015. She had previously worked at the University of Michigan, initially as a clinical fellow in 2003, and then was appointed to a Lecturer position in 2006 and promoted to Assistant Professor in 2009. During her time at Michigan, she developed a clinical and translational research focus in graft-versus-host disease. She has been a key collaborator on GVHD biomarker studies conducted within the overarching GVHD research theme of the Michigan BMT Program, including a first-authored paper demonstrating that elevations of CXCL9 are associated with new onset de novo chronic GVHD. Following additional training in BMT clinical research design and practice through her participation in the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Research Training Course in 2007, she concentrated her research focus on chronic GVHD diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. She oversaw the development of a chronic GVHD clinical outcomes database and research sample repository as part of the BMT Program database. This project includes detailed chronic GVHD data as well as multiple clinical samples in more than 1000 patients and collection of standardized data using NIH consensus chronic GVHD staging, training of data managers, and supervision of research sample acquisition.  Dr. Kitko has served on the End Point Response Committee for the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network national randomized phase III clinical trial for treatment of chronic GVHD.  She served a 5 year term as Co-Chair of the Pediatric Cancer Working Committee of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR). In this role, she led international clinical outcomes research studies of pediatric recipients of BMT.  She was recently elected for a 5 year term for the CIBMTR GVHD Committee, as well as a member of the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network Clinical Trials Advisory Committee. She served first as Vice Chair of the GVHD Strategy Group for the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Consortium, and is now the chair of this committee.  Dr. Kitko serves as the lead Vanderbilt investigator for the Mount Sinai Acute GVHD Consortium (MAGIC).  Through MAGIC, our patients have access to innovated prevention and treatment trials for GVHD.

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Dr. Killen is a pediatric and fetal cardiologist with expertise in fetal arrhythmias and prenatal diagnosis of complex congenital disease. Her clinical and research efforts seek to improve the care of mothers and fetuses whose pregnancies are complicated by fetal arrhythmias, including supraventricular tachycardia, long QT syndrome, and SS-A antibody-mediated congenital heart block. Dr. Killen is currently participating in several multi-center studies, including studies sponsored by the Fetal Heart Society, that seek to improve treatment approaches and outcomes for patients with fetal arrhythmias and complex congenital heart disease.

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Dr. Kavanaugh-McHugh is Director of Fetal Cardiology at The Monroe Carell Childrens Hospital at Vanderbilt, Her research efforts have focused on the understanding and treatment of fetal congenital heart disease and fetal arrhythmias both in projects at Vanderbilt and as a collaborator in multicenter research projects. The Fetal Cardiology Team is an active participant in multicenter studies through the Fetal Heart Society and contributes fetal data to the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care consortium (PC4) In addition, Dr. Kavanaugh-McHugh has been involved in quality improvement efforts through the American College of Cardiology ACPC Non Invasive Imaging Quality Metric Team, and the National Pediatric Cardiology Quality improvement Collaborative which works to improve care and outcomes for babies with HLHS.

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