Tribute to Rebecca Rosenberg, MD, MPH

We were deeply saddened to learn the tragic news that our dear friend, colleague, and mentor Dr. Rebecca Rosenberg died in September 2023 after a long battle with cancer.

Becca was a visionary leader in improving the care of children. After completing medical school at Penn State University and obtaining an MPH at Johns Hopkins, she completed pediatric residency at Yale University. She worked briefly in Washington DC and then joined New York University (NYU) Langone Health as a pediatric hospitalist, where she stayed for the remainder of her career.

Years before surgeon-hospitalist comanagement was common or fashionable, Becca helped create and lead the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section on Hospital Medicine Surgical Care Subcommittee to improve the family-centeredness of the care and the experience of children undergoing surgery. A driving force behind the Subcommittee and its mission, Becca was nationally recognized as an expert in surgeon-hospitalist comanagement, contributing to numerous papers, book chapters, and national presentations on this topic. She was awarded the AAP 2016 Section Award for Communication and Collaboration for her work in this role. She was the first author of an AAP national policy statement about how surgeons and hospitalists can work together to improve the care of pediatric patients.¹  Even after stepping down from the cochair role, she remained an active and inspirational leader for the group. Becca’s legacy lives on via many institutions who have created programs to improve family-centered care for children undergoing surgery as well as the children and families who have benefited from them.

Becca was an accomplished academician in a multitude of other areas. Even though Becca would downplay her own research prowess (often saying that she “dabbled in” or “pretended” to do research), her work in surgical comanagement, patient safety, pain management, qualitative research, and quality improvement has had a lasting impact on our field. She was a sought-out mentor on the national level. She always had the most profound and insightful feedback on whatever abstract, presentation, manuscript, or grant her mentees were working on. She was a champion of the campaign to make Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) its own specialty. She was a key member of the New York City Regional PHM Collaborative. And of course, she was a dedicated member of our very own Hospital Pediatrics Editorial Board since 2017. We came to depend on her for critical, constructive, and insightful feedback on papers in our field, with particular insight and passion for any and all topics related to surgical care.

At her home institution, Becca was an inspiring leader, a brilliant clinician, an accomplished researcher, and a tireless advocate. She had expertise in a variety of clinical areas ranging from MRSA to botulism. Although many of the NYU hospitalists were not happy when night shifts became required, she grew to like them and took a more relaxed approach overnight, spending time hanging out and chatting out with nurses. Her talents extended beyond the realm of inpatient medicine – including her dedication to complex care and presurgical planning. When Becca was asked how she was doing when on service, she almost always responded “saving lives,” and she certainly was responsible for saving a number of lives. The children of New York City were lucky to have her care for them.

In addition to her clinical work at NYU, Becca’s role in departmental and hospital-wide initiatives also continue to have a lasting impact. She pioneered and personally oversaw many safety and quality improvement initiatives. Her work led to significant reductions in hospital acquired conditions, multidisciplinary and multimodal approaches to treatment of procedural pain, and standardization of family-centered rounds.

Becca was the first Section Chief of PHM at NYU, leading the group starting in 2017 before its becoming a Division in 2023. Becca oversaw the hospitalists as the group grew exponentially from having a single hospitalist on service at a given time in her early years at the institution to up to 5 hospitalists on during the daytime, along with having 24/7 on site coverage.

Becca treasured her time as a leader at NYU and truly loved her team. She seemed to have boundless energy, and her enthusiasm was contagious. She was extremely organized and dedicated to having updated protocols and a detailed PHM handbook. She even, on occasion, would read directly from the handbook during weekly hospitalist meetings. She cherished running these meetings, filling all 60 minutes with a hearty agenda on a weekly basis. Becca would often read through charts to provide feedback to the junior hospitalists in real-time. She was there for her fellow hospitalists, whether leading a busy inpatient service, while on vacation, and even when on medical leave.

Becca was loyal, fun to work with, and invested in her team. She celebrated every professional achievement of her team, no matter how big or small, making sure that everyone inside and outside of NYU was aware. She also commemorated each personal milestone like baby showers and birthdays, often celebrating with a spicy margarita. For 1 hospitalist section meeting during the pandemic, she set up a virtual petting zoo for 1 of the NYU hospitalist’s birthday celebration and to provide her team with some joy in midst of all the craziness and sadness. This led many on her team to crack up from how random this was, but Becca did it because of this person’s love of animals and to bring everyone a chuckle and some joy. She enjoyed participating in Secret Santa and gift giving, especially NYU swag like Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital socks and mugs. She appreciated being able to spend her time with her fellow hospitalists at conferences. Attending a honky-tonk while at the PHM meeting in Nashville was particularly memorable.

Becca provided mentorship to the junior members of her team and helped them carve out their own niche and become local leaders in research, quality improvement, administration, and clinical care. She helped her junior hospitalists learn what they needed to do to gain more of a regional and national reputation. Becca also had an amazing ability to make connections, leading her team to find mentors and collaborators on the national level.

Importantly, Becca was there when her team experienced failures, whether with research, quality improvement projects, or clinical work. When 1 hospitalist she worked with did not receive a Career Development Award after multiple submissions, Becca helped him persevere, which led to receipt of the grant on the fourth submission. In an e-mail exchange related to a successful presentation at the PHM meeting in the month before her passing, Becca responded, “I wish I could support you more, and I know you are doing great things. It seems like just yesterday we were discussing whether this research path was even the best choice but your persistence and smarts paid off.” Her support was truly felt at all times, even from afar.

There has been an outpouring of love and admiration by the PHM community and so many others since Becca’s passing, ranging from the multitude of emails on the PHM listserv and the touching speeches and tributes given locally at NYU. We hope that Becca knew how much she was adored and appreciated while she was still with us. Given how happy she seemed to be when attending the PHM meeting and other events and how her eyes would light up when her mentees would succeed, we believe that she knew how others felt about her. Conversations with Becca became a source of comfort through the inpatient floors of NYU and in our office spaces in Bellevue. Becca expressed a similar sentiment in an e-mail sent the month before her passing when she said, “I even miss our windowless offices and spaces. Not the smelliness, just the spaces.” Her colleagues at NYU and throughout the PHM community will certainly miss having her around as a part of our shared spaces. We could not have asked for a better friend, colleague, mentor, and cheerleader than Becca. In her last days, Becca loathed the very fact that she would not have any more time with her family and her colleagues. She would comment that she did not want the words “rest in peace” uttered at her service. She will forever stay in our memories like that - tireless Becca, always on the move and a boundless source of inspiration.

Becca is survived by her husband Adam, her children Laila and Jojo, her mother Ruthie, and her siblings Robin, Brian, Daniel, and Idra. Dr. Jen Lighter is collecting anecdotes about Becca to include in a book that she will give to Becca’s children about her work life. If you are interested in sharing any stories or memories, please e-mail them to [email protected]. To make a donation in Becca’s honor, consider the following organizations she supported:

https://www.keennewyork.org  https://www.cityharvest.org  https://www.rhicenter.org  https://www.teamimpact.org/