In 1750 and living in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” These words likely resonate with each of us. As we think back across our careers, we marvel at our good fortune to have touched lives with gifted educators who inspired us by doing exactly this – teaching, involving, motivating us to realize our full potentials. For so many of us in pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases, the name that is synonymous with gifted teacher is another Philadelphian—a woman who has blazed a path across decades and lit fires in our minds and our hearts. In recognition of her lifetime of commitment to children and those of us who take care of them, the 2024 Red Book is dedicated to Dr. Sarah Long.
Dr. Long’s infectious energy and high expectations are best understood through the lens of her origin. Born in Alaska 15 years before statehood, she has had a frontier spirit throughout all the journeys of her life. When Alaska became a state in 1959, she moved with her family to Washington, DC, where her father was Chief of Staff to Alaska’s first US Senator. From there, she moved to Pennsylvania and attended St. Francis College in the 1960s before entering Jefferson Medical College (now Sidney Kimmel Medical College) as one of only 10 women in a class of almost 200, graduating in 1970. She stayed in Philadelphia for her pediatric residency training at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Always inquisitive, she spent her summers in medical school working at the National Institutes of Health, with a subsequent research fellowship as an NIH trainee at Temple University. She began her first faculty position in 1975 as Chief of Infectious Diseases at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, Temple University School of Medicine, and Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, a position that she held for the next 44 years.
Dr. Long’s recognition for her gifts as an educator are innumerable. She received outstanding teaching awards across every decade beginning in 1977, including the Infectious Diseases Society of America National Clinical Teacher Award in 2012. She was selected by the National Institutes of Health Medical Research Scholars Program to give the 2021 Great Teacher’s Lecture. And across the decades, she has delivered over 90 named, memorial, and honorary society lectureships and visiting professorships across the globe, in addition to an average of more than 30 annual lectures nationally and internationally for more than 3 decades. She continues to serve in the IDWeek Clinical Educator Mentor Coaching Program.
In service to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Dr. Long served on the Committee on Infectious Diseases (COID, or the Red Book Committee) from 2002 through 2008. She was Associate Editor of the 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015, and 2018 editions of the Red Book. Across those 20 years, she established the doctrine (known by COID members and liaisons as the “Long Doctrine”) by which all current and future iterations of the Red Book are anchored, namely that the Red Book represents settled science upon which sound clinical decision making can be based. She received the AAP Section on Infectious Diseases Lifetime Contribution to Infectious Diseases Award in 2009, a full decade before she closed out her chapter of service to the Academy.
Dr. Long also served the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) across the 1990s and into the 2000s, as a member of the ABP Board of Directors, as Secretary-Treasurer, and ultimately as Board Chair. She was the inaugural Chair of the ABP Subspecialty Board of Infectious Diseases when pediatric infectious diseases was designated a subspecialty of pediatrics, where she literally wrote the first pediatric infectious diseases subspecialty examination (her Board Certificate is, appropriately, #01). For all of these activities and more, she received the ABP Board of Directors Proclamation of Distinguished Service in 2015.
Dr. Long also provided key leadership to the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), serving on PIDS Council (now called the PIDS Board of Directors) from 1989 through 1993 and as PIDS President from 1999 through 2001. She Co-Chaired the 48th ICAAC/46th IDSA joint meeting with incredible dexterity and has served as Director of the IDSA Foundation Board of Directors since 2019. She received the PIDS Distinguished Service Award in 2003 and the PIDS Distinguished Physician Award in 2016.
In the mid-1990s, Dr. Long developed the seminal textbook in the field, Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, literally creating it from scratch. Before stepping down in 2023, she served as the Chief Editor for each of its 6 editions published to date (1997, 2003, 2008, 2012, 2018, and 2023), and very appropriately, the 7th edition will now officially be known as Long’s Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Diseases (which is what we’ve all been calling it from the beginning!). She has served as Associate Editor of The Journal of Pediatrics since 1996 and has published over 320 peer-reviewed publications and close to 200 book chapters. Since 2020, Dr. Long has been a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), on which she adroitly helped guide COVID-19 vaccine recommendations across the course of the worst pandemic the world has seen in over a century, in addition to chairing the Maternal/Child RSV Work Group as it developed recommendations for use of the first licensed RSV vaccines.
Even with all of these accomplishments and more not listed, Dr. Long’s most meaningful contributions are really at the one-on-one level. Since 2013, she has served on the Program Committee for the Infectious Diseases in Children Symposium held in New York City each November. Even among the tremendously talented speakers featured at that meeting each year, Dr. Long’s lectures are head and shoulders above the rest. It is common to see her surrounded by literally scores of meeting attendees who are general pediatricians and nurse practitioners from around the country, hanging on each clinical insight or teaching point that she provides. Watching these interactions and others at large meetings across the country, I cannot help but think back to Mr. Franklin’s words. Sarah teaches them, and they remember. Sarah involves them, and they learn.
Sarah’s first fellow was Margaret (Meg) C. Fisher, MD, FAAP, who herself went on to be a tremendous pediatric infectious diseases physician, educator, and AAP Board of Directors member. In 2019, Sarah received the Margaret C. Fisher Eternal Spirit of St. Christopher’s Award, from the house staff of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, taking her contributions full circle. She started at St. Christopher’s, she reached out and changed the world, and her hometown family said thank you. Dr. Long, we join in that chorus. Thank you for teaching and involving us all.
PREVIOUS RED BOOK DEDICATION RECIPIENTS:
2021 Louis Z. Cooper, MD, FAAP
2018 Larry K. Pickering, MD, FAAP, and Carol J. Baker, MD, FAAP
2015 Stanley Plotkin, MD, FAAP
2012 Samuel L. Katz, MD, FAAP
2009 Ralph Feigin, MD, FAAP
2006 Caroline Breese Hall, MD, FAAP
2003 Georges Peter, MD, FAAP
2000 Edgar O. Ledbetter, MD, FAAP
1997 Georges Peter, MD, FAAP
1988 Jean D. Lockhart, MD, FAAP
