5th Annual Symposium – Centre for Paediatrics and Child Health (PaeCH)

Louise Fleming is a Professor of Practice in Paediatric Respiratory Medicine. She is a Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician at the Royal Brompton hospital, where she leads the Severe Asthma Service and at Imperial College Healthcare Trust, where she leads the Paediatric Respiratory and Sleep Service for West London Children’s Healthcare

Dr Fleming is a member of the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) Science Committee, Secretary of the Paediatric Asthma and Allergy group of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and Academic representative of the British Paediatric Respiratory Society (BPRS) Executive Committee. She is an Associate Editor (respiratory) for Archives of Disease in Childhood. She is a strong advocate for children with asthma and improving care to deliver better outcomes. In order to achieve this, she is a member of a number of networks including: NHSE Children and Young People Asthma Oversight Group (chair of the severe asthma workstream); London Asthma Leadership and Implementation Group (LALIG); London Paediatric Severe Asthma Group (Chair); and North West London Paediatric asthma network. She has previously served on the BTS Specialist Advisory Group for Severe Asthma, the RSM Paediatrics and Child Health Council (past president), the British Thoracic Society (BTS) Science Committee and the BTS/SIGN clinical guidelines group.

Her main research focus is on asthma and pre-school wheeze. She runs several applied clinical research studies and collaborates with colleagues in molecular biology and data science. Her key research themes are: novel approaches to treatment and assessment of treatment response; harnessing digital technologies to improve asthma management; child and family factors; charactering asthma and pre school wheeze. She is the Chief Investigator of an NIHR HTA funded study of anti-inflammatory relievers in children (aged 6 to 11 years) with asthma: CARE-UK. Other current work includes novel adherence monitoring devices; use of biologics in children (TREAT trial); digital innovations to predict asthma attacks (CHAMP study), understanding determinants of poor adherence in the individual and targeting interventions accordingly.

Clinically she looks after children with a wide range of respiratory problems. Interests include the systematic multi-disciplinary assessment of children with problematic severe asthma and dysfunctional breathing.

Louise completed her undergraduate degree in medicine at the University of Manchester before moving to London for postgraduate training in Paediatrics. This included an 18-month VSO/RCPCH Fellowship in The Gambia. She undertook postgraduate research at NHLI and the Royal Brompton Hospital, funded by the British Lung Foundation, under the supervision of Professor Andrew Bush and Dr Nicola Wilson. She carried out a randomised controlled trial investigating the use of inflammatory markers to guide management in children with severe asthma.

Bob Klaber is a Consultant General Paediatrician & Director of Strategy, Research & Innovation at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Bob trained as an educationalist alongside his postgraduate paediatric training in London and has a strong interest in individual and systems learning, quality improvement, digital innovation, behavioural insights work, leadership development and kindness. He has completed a mixed methods MD researching leadership approaches in healthcare.

In 2015 Bob set up a team who continue to drive an ambitious project to create a culture of continuous quality improvement across Imperial, has worked as Deputy Medical Director and has led work on the development and implementation of the Trust’s new organisational strategy. In his current director role he is responsible for strategy, research, innovation and improvement across Imperial College Healthcare, and within this role works closely with the senior leadership team with the Faculty of Medicine and Imperial College.

Bob is also a strong advocate for child health and co-leads the Connecting Care for Children (CC4C) integrated child health programme in North West London www.cc4c.imperial.nhs.uk , which is focused on developing whole population integrated care models of care and learning within paediatrics and child health.

Dr Sabita Uthaya is Professor of Practice (Neonatal Medicine) in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London and Consultant in Neonatal Medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Foundation NHS Trust.  Dr Uthaya’s research interests include neonatal nutrition, body composition (amount and distribution of fat and muscle) and long-term health outcomes of preterm infants.

“Through doing research you help change clinical practice in the future, even if in a small way; that for me is the biggest reward.” 

Her first research project done as part of her MD compared preterm babies with healthy term babies to see whether they deposited fat differently to healthy full-term babies. This study used MRI scans to evaluate body composition for the first time in very preterm infants.

At the time there was increasing evidence that premature babies were at high risk of suffering from conditions such as coronary arteries disease, diabetes and obesity in adulthood.

Sabita’s research showed, for the first time, that very premature babies deposit more fat in the abdomen compared to healthy term babies.  This type of body fat distribution in adults is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular complications showing that risk factors for later health problems in preterm infants may be present as early as their due date.

“Doing a clinical job is very satisfying.  You get gratification from helping save babies’ lives and seeing them years later, doing well, is amazing.  However, through doing research you help change clinical practice in the future, even if in a small way; that for me is the biggest reward.”

Mando Watson is a General Paediatric Consultant, working clinically at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington (Imperial College Healthcare) and Professor of Practice in Integrated Child Health at Imperial College.

Through the Connecting Care for Children programme in North West London she has developed holistic care and increased emphasis on prevention and the patient perspective.

She is clinical lead for the Children and Young People Programme of NW London’s Integrated Care Board (ICB) and was Training Programme Director for the London School of Paediatrics for 10 years, ‘teaching’ integrated care.  Mando co-founded the Programme for Integrated Child Health (PICH) the first such programme in the UK; the impact of which has been transformational for participating trainees.

Liz Whittaker is Professor of Practice (paediatric infectious diseases and immunology). She divides her time between Imperial College London and the Department of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology, St. Marys Hospital, London where she is a Consultant.

Dr. Whittaker is the Director of Research for West London Children’s Healthcare (WLCH), working closely with the Board of WLCH and Imperial College’s Centre of Paediatrics and Child Health (PaeCH) to ensure research is embedded in every patient’s journey.

Dr Whittaker is the Clinical Lead for Paediatric Infectious Diseases and the co-lead for HCID (high consequence infectious diseases) at St Marys, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

She is the National Clinical Lead for High Consequence Infectious Diseases in children (NHSE) nationally.

She is on the steering committee of the British Association of Paediatric Tuberculosis (BAPT) and works closely with international colleagues in Europe and beyond to improve diagnosis and outcomes in children with TB, through the PTBNET group amongst others.
She was the Convenor of the British Paediatric Allergy Infection and Immunity Group (BPAIIG) from 2019-2025

Her main research interests are the ontogeny of infant immune responses to a variety of pathogens.

Her PhD students work on the impact of viral co-infection on tuberculosis (TB) susceptibility as well as factors that lead to increased susceptibility to TB disease and infection in adolescents. She also co-supervises research on vaccine hesitancy and genetic pre-disposition to severe infection.

Liz completed her Wellcome Trust funded PhD project “Immune responses to mycobacteria; the role of age and disease severity” in 2014. The project was supervised by Professor Beate Kampmann at Imperial College and Professors Mark Nicol and Heather Zar at the University of Cape Town, where all of the children were recruited at Red Cross Memorial Children’s Hospital. She was fortunate to complete her lab work in the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine in Cape Town, working closely with both Clinical Infectious Diseases Research Initiative (CIDRI) and the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI).

She completed her undergraduate training in medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, including an HRB (Health Research Board) funded BSc in Biochemistry, when she won the Bruno Orsi Medal for best research project. Following this she trained as a paediatrician in London and was successfully awarded an Academic Clinical Fellowship in Paediatric Infectious Diseases in 2006. The 9 month research period associated with this fellowship allowed her to develop her interest in paediatric infectious diseases in particular TB immunology. During this time she was also involved in the setting up of a paediatric TB Europe Network to facilitate collaboration between Paediatricians caring for children with TB and improved care for children with TB in Europe. She completed the Gorgas Diploma Course in Clinical Tropical Medicine in Peru and was awarded a DTM&H in 2009.

She is a member of IMPRINT and INVAR networks.