Shireen Atabaki, M.D., M.P.H., is a physician in Children's National Emergency Department. She is also Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Atabaki’s area of expertise is in concussion and knowledge translation.
Through her work, Dr. Atabaki has brought national and international recognition to pediatric concussion. She received the National Heroes Award for Research, awarded by the Maternal Child Health Bureau, for her leadership in research to reduce unnecessary CT scans and radiation in children with traumatic brain injury.
Dr. Atabaki leads the HITS for Kids Program (Health IT Solutions for Kids), a national initiative to improve concussion care for children by knowledge translation of evidence-based medicine harnessing health IT. The program brings the best medicine to the doctor and health team at the patient’s bedside, to provide the best medical care to children and engage healthcare providers in mindful medicine.
She has a love for teaching and has mentored over forty trainees who have gone on to productive careers in healthcare. Her emphasis in mentorship is helping her mentees retain the altruism and compassion that brought them to healthcare in the first place.
Dr. Atabaki is a member of the federally funded Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network Steering Committee and founded and chaired the Concussion Working Group for that network. She serves on the board of the Big Data Analytics in Health Conference, (Singapore, 2014), guiding the future in big data research. She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Society for Pediatric Research and Councilmember of the American Federation for Medical Research.
Dr. Atabaki lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and three children, where she engages in the practice of mindful medicine.