Heidi M. Feldman, MD, PhD
Heidi M. Feldman MD PhD holds the Ballinger-Swindells Endowed Professorship in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine and serves as the Medical Director of the Mary L Johnson Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics Clinical Programs at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. She earned a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in Developmental Psychology in 1975 and an MD at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine in 1979. She completed residency training at the University of California Medical Center between 1979 and 1982 and then did fellowship training at the Children’s Hospital Boston in 1983-1984 under the direction of Drs. Melvin D. Levine and Dr. T. Berry Brazelton. She was on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh and worked at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh from 1984 to 2006.
Dr. Feldman has had long-standing research interests in child language. Her fascination with began as a graduate student. Her dissertation described the development of language in deaf children of hearing parents, whose severe hearing loss precluded their access to verbal language and whose exclusively oral education precluded exposure in sign language. She and her colleague, Dr. Susan Goldin-Meadow described the development of a spontaneous manual communication system in these children. After completing her MD, she has conducted several studies on children developing typically and children with a variety of clinical conditions that put language learning at risk, including neurological injuries and persistent otitis media with effusion. The resilience of language is apparent, but important differences in some clinical populations have also been described.
Dr. Feldman served as the Project Director of a Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Project for 11 years at the University of Pittsburgh. This federally funded project trained advanced professionals from 11 different disciplines that serve children with disabilities, including medicine, nursing, social work, public health, audiology, dentistry, and rehabilitation specialties. As important part of the role was collaboration with community agencies and services to improve care of children with disabilities. Dr. Feldman has also held several leadership positions nationally in the American Academy of Pediatrics and Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.
