Meet the PAAD's executive council members
Myron Yaster MD
We have approximately 25 members on the PAAD’s executive council who serve as our writers, reviewers, and editors. I thought it was high time that I introduce them to you and have asked them to submit a head shot photo and short bio. I will introduce all of them to you over the next few weeks.
During his distinguished career, Dr. Myron Yaster has changed the practice of anesthesiology, pediatrics, pediatric pain medicine and pediatric critical care medicine locally, nationally, and internationally. He has mentored more than 200 faculty and fellows who have gone on to establish independent, distinguished careers in academic and private practice medicine.
Dr. Yaster is board-certified in Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Pediatric Anesthesia, and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. After completing residencies in Pediatrics (Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh) and Anesthesiology (University of Pennsylvania) and fellowships in Pediatric Anesthesia and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania) he joined the Hopkins faculty in 1982. He retired from Hopkins in 2016 and from the University of Colorado in 2021. In retirement he edits the daily Ron Litman’s Pediatric Anesthesia Article of the Day which reaches a daily audience of over 6,400 readers in 99 countries.
In an ongoing series of clinical and laboratory experiments that started shortly after his arrival at Hopkins, Dr. Yaster has been at the forefront of studies that demonstrated that the newborn infant responds to pain. More importantly, he and his colleagues have proven that this pain can be prevented by the appropriate use of anesthetics (general and regional) and analgesic drugs. Clearly pain, anxiety, and discomfort (both physical and psychological) are not limited to the newborn and do not begin and end with the induction and conclusion of surgery and anesthesia. Dr. Yaster started the Pediatric Pain Service at Johns Hopkins and was until 2005 its clinical director. This program treats approximately 3,000 in- and out-patients a year and is considered by many to be among the best programs in the world. It sets the standard for practice nationally and internationally and has served as the source of extensive clinical and translational research as well as practice policy. He and his colleagues have published extensively in this area. He has authored more than 300 original papers and book chapters as both the first author and as the senior author. In the later capacity he has been the mentor of many individuals who have gone on to become leaders in the areas of Pediatric Anesthesiology, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, and Pediatric Pain Management.
Finally, Dr. Yaster founded and was the first President of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia. This is the largest subspecialty organization of its kind in this field. It currently has over 4,000 members. In recognition of his many contributions to the Society, the Society founded the Myron Yaster, MD Lifetime Achievement Award which is awarded annually to leaders in the field of Pediatric Anesthesiology.
Lynne Maxwell, MD, FAAP was a pediatric anesthesiologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is Emeritus Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Maxwell retired from clinical work in 2021 but continues to care for pediatric patients during surgical missions in Guatemala. Dr. Maxwell completed pediatric and anesthesiology residencies at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she was a member of the pediatric anesthesia faculty for 27 years before moving to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 2002. Dr. Maxwell served six years both as a member of the executive committee of the AAP Section on Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, six years as an elected member of the AAP Committee on Drugs (COD) and six years as a member of the executive committee of the AAP Section on Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Dr. Maxwell participated in the FDA NICHD neonatal drug initiative, pain subgroup, which identified barriers to drug safety and efficacy studies in the neonatal population and drug categories with specific needs for study in newborns. Her research has included efficacy and pharmacokinetic studies of analgesics in infants and children as well as issues of neonatal pain assessment and management. She is a recipient of the Robert M. Smith Award for outstanding contributions to the field of Pediatric Anesthesiology by the AAP Section on Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. She was a consultant to the Pediatric Section editor of Anesthesia and Analgesia, and a associate editor for Pediatric Anesthesia. She is currently a member of the editorial board of Pediatric Anesthesia Article of the Day.
Justin L. Lockman, MD, MSEd is Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and clinically practices as attending physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in both Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and Pediatric Anesthesiology. He serves as the Education Leader for his Department. Justin has always been passionate about education, and in addition to serving on the PAAD Executive Council he is a past president of the Pediatric Anesthesiology Program Directors’ Association. Justin is also a husband, father, triathlete, and jazz pianist (with several albums).
Dr. Melissa Brooks Peterson is a pediatric anesthesiologist in Denver, Colorado who practices full time at Children's Hospital Colorado. She completed medical school at Michigan Medical School (Go Blue!), residency at Brigham & Women's Hospital / Harvard Medical School and a pediatric anesthesia fellowship at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Her clinical interests include complex airway management, Aerodigestive multidisciplinary care, longitudinal care of complex airway malformations, laryngotracheal reconstruction, cricothyroid resection, bronchoscopy and interventional techniques, high throughput ENT surgery in healthy kids, caring for kids with Epidermolysis Bullosa, and management of patients with mucopolysaccharidosis diseases. From an academic perspective, Melissa has published and spoken on outcomes of pediatric patients with Covid-19, comprehensive management of children with EB, multidisciplinary Aerodigestive care, anesthesia and standardization for kids having ENT surgery, with the PEDI-R / PEDI-Collaborative, and extensively for the Pediatric Anesthesia Article of the Day.
When not doing the clinical and academic work that she truly loves, Melissa can be found working for the Colorado Society of Anesthesiologists on the Board of Directors, the American Society of Anesthesiologists as a Delegate and on committees, the Aerodigestive Society on the strategic committee, the Pediatric Anesthesia Article of the Day Executive Council and -- her favorite job of all -- working on behalf of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia. In her beginning years on the SPA Board of Directors, Melissa helped to pave the way for establishing an Advocacy arm of the SPA to improve children's health and our society's visibility in the Advocacy space. She continues to be an active leader in the educational missions of the SPA, the Pediatric Difficult Intubation REgistry (PEDI-R) on the Executive Committee. As she will proudly announce to anyone who will listen, "The SPA Meeting is the best time of the year!" For the future of the SPA, Melissa envisions continued educational excellence, child's health and SPA member advocacy efforts, SPA camaraderie at and between meetings, collaboration of the SPA's many committees and interest groups, and securing the financial growth and future for the SPA and its members.
Outside of medicine, Melissa is a happy Denverite with a busy, full, active life with her husband Mark and 3 children, Grant, Owen and Whitney. With her family and friends, Melissa enjoys being a lacrosse mom, skiing, golfing (poorly), riding peloton, running, eating out with friends, food and wine pairing, being an uber driver for her kids and reading fiction.
Francis Veyckemans MD Born in Brussels, Belgium in 1952, he graduated the Catholic University of Louvain Medical School (Belgium) in 1977 and, after specializing in Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, spent one year as sole doctor in the rural hospital of Jenda (Burundi) in 1978-9.
He specialized in anesthesiology after returning from Africa. He trained during 3 years at the Cliniques universitaires St Luc in Brussels and one year at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He graduated as specialist in Anesthesiology in 1984. He was responsible for pediatric anesthesia in the Department of Anesthesia from 1984 to 2016. His main domains of interest were regional anesthesia, pain management, solid organ transplantation and rare diseases. He was appointed as Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology in 2000 and the chairman of Department of Acute Medicine from 2005 to 2010. He kept doing humanitarian missions (Africa, Asia, South America) mainly for plastic and major digestive surgery.
He published textbooks on pediatric anesthesia in French with Bernard J. Dalens. He was a founder member of the European Society for Paediatric Anaesthesiology (ESPA) and served as its President in 2017-9. He also acted as a section editor for Paediatric Anaesthesia and the European Journal of Anaesthesiology. He is running a free access website on anesthesia and rare diseases in children with his colleague J-L Scholtes (http://tinyurl.com/PED-RARE) that can a be easily reached via the ESPA and SPA websites.
He worked as consultant pediatric anesthesist at the Hopital Jeanne de Flandre in Lille (France) from 2016 to 2022. He is now retired from active practice but remains active in mentoring young researchers and doing a few humanitarian missions.
Jayant (Jay) Deshpande, MD, MPH, is the executive director of WakeUp Safe, the safety and quality initiative of the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia (SPA). He is a pediatrician, pediatric intensivist and anesthesiologist. Jay has served numerous leadership roles in the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia and the AAP Section on Anesthesiology and Pain Management. He is a former president of the SPA and was involved in the creation of Wake up Safe. Jay has held several institutional leadership roles, including chief medical officer and chief quality officer at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (Little Rock), and anesthesiologist-in-chief and executive physician for quality and safety at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital, Vanderbilt University. Jay recently retired as chief of quality, patient safety and clinical analytics at Nemours Children’s Health Florida. He serves as a member of the children’s surgery verification program committee of the American College of Surgeons, and professor of pediatrics (emeritus), Nemours Children’s Florida/University of Central Florida.