Kristin Burns, MD

Kristin Burns, M.D., joined the Children’s National Health System faculty in 2011. She received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Wellesley College and a medical degree from the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Burns’ clinical interest is general cardiology, and her research focuses on using administrative databases to examine outcomes for children with heart disease. She is a medical officer in the Heart Development and Structural Diseases Branch in the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the NIH. Dr. Burns is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

At Children’s, Dr. Burns sees patients in the outpatient setting and attends on inpatient and consult services. Before becoming a doctor, she was an educator for adolescents. The field of pediatric cardiology was a way to combine her interest in science with a passion for working with children and families. Dr. Burns has done clinical work on an Apache reservation, in Bolivia, Chile, Kenya, and Uganda, and she is fluent in Spanish. When she’s not practicing medicine, she plays soccer, flag football, and softball in addition to teaching English as a Second Language classes.