Miracles In Motion: Dr. Rivkees

“I’m a pediatric endocrinologist, which means I take care of kids with hormone problems. My area of expertise within that is thyroid. There’s one particular boy that I’ve cared for who has thyroid cancer, and his disease is very complicated. I really have been devoting a good part of my research efforts for the past three years to find a cure for this young fellow.

Children’s Miracle Network means hope. It’s the funds that everybody raises from around the state that go and support pediatric care. It helps our discoveries that we make here. It helps us make really tremendous new clinical programs that kids from not just all over Florida, but all over the United States come to us for care.

Funds raised by Children’s Miracle Network does so much. It’s not just my research—our entire department has about $2 Million in research support. So it’s gene therapy, ways we can work with diseases that can’t be cured now, heart disease, ways that we can develop new procedures for children who have congenital heart conditions. There’s so many other ways these funds really help support patients.” – Scott A. Rivkees, M.D., Nemours Eminent Scholar, Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics, UF College of Medicine

An internationally renowned expert on developmental biology and pediatric endocrinology, Dr. Rivkees leads a robust clinical and basic science research program. Key areas of study in his lab are the prevention of brain injury in premature infants, the effects of adenosine on the developing embryo, circadian biology and thyroid diseases. In 2009, he detected a safety problem with a common thyroid medication. One in 2,000 children who were on the medication were going into liver failure or dying each year, and his discovery led to global changes in medical practice.

Want to be like Dr. Rivkees and help kids at your local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital? Click here to learn more.

Miracles in Motion tells the inspiring stories of our pediatric patient families, clinicians and staff members in their everyday lives. These moments are what make UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital​ such a special place to the more than 150,000 patient families treated here each year. Follow along to learn more about these stories and how Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals​ makes even the most ordinary moments extraordinary.