Medical Director
UC Health Milk Bank

Lisa Stellwagen MD, is a general academic pediatrician who has specialized in newborn medicine for over 35 years; working in the community clinic, private practice, and academic hospital settings.  Her work in hospital-based quality improvement for human milk feeding of well and sick newborns at UC San Diego led to the concept of starting a milk bank.  A generous philanthropic gift from Hannah and Zachary Johnson in 2016 made this possible. The UC Health Milk Bank opened in 2020 and was the first milk bank led by a physician, the first non-profit milk bank in Southern California and the first to be linked with a Human Milk Institute. Dr. Stellwagen is President Elect of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, and serves as a member of HMBANA Standards Committee.  She is medical director of the UC Health Milk Bank, and co-director of the UCSD Human Milk Institute.

Chief of the Division of Environmental Science and Health
UC San Diego

Dr. Christina Chambers is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine at UC San Diego. She is Chief of the Division of Environmental Science and Health, and Co-Director of the Center for Better Beginnings. She is the principal investigator of MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies, and the UC San Diego Human Milk Research Biorepository, two nation-wide longitudinal cohort studies focused on the safety of medications, vaccines, substances, infectious agents, and other environmental exposures in pregnancy and lactation. Dr. Chambers co-directs the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study (HBCD), a nationwide research initiative focused on developmental trajectories of children in various environments from prenatal life through 10 years of age. In addition, Dr. Chambers leads research and educational initiatives in the U.S. and internationally on the prevention and treatment of children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.  She co-directs the Center for Population Science and Community Engagement in the Clinical and Translational Research Institute at UC San Diego which supports clinical research development in diverse populations.

Chief Medical Officer and Chief Digital Officer
UC San Diego Health

Christopher Longhurst, is the chief medical officer (CMO) and chief digital officer (CDO) at UC San Diego Health. This unique dual and complementary role provides leadership to medical staff, ensuring that standards and protocols are in place to provide the highest quality of care to patients, and positions digital transformation as a key tool in these efforts. As the executive Director for the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation, Dr. Longhurst also has responsibility for the artificial intelligence (AI) portfolio across the health system, managed through the development and hire of the inaugural Chief AI Officer for UC San Diego Health. Within the UC San Diego School of Medicine, Dr. Longhurst serves as an associate dean to help align education and research missions within the clinical environment and lead the journey to become a highly reliable, learning health system. As a faculty member in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics and Pediatrics, Dr. Longhurst also maintains an active clinical practice as a newborn hospitalist and vigorously pursues scholarship in care quality, patient safety, and informatics, especially healthcare AI.

Board of Director

Dr. Christine Bixby is CHOC’s Medical Director of Lactation Services. Dr. Bixby completed her fellowship in neonatology at Harbor UCLA Medical Center as well as her residency and internship training in pediatrics. She completed a fellowship in neonatology in a joint program between CHOC and Harbor UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Bixby specializes in caring for premature infants and is involved in research studies focusing on issues related to breastmilk, establishing a milk supply and using breastmilk for premature babies.

Dr. Bixby’s philosophy of care is to bring in the parents and family as part of the healthcare team and making sure they are educated and comfortable with the care we are giving their children.

Affiliate Clinical Professor of Pharmacy
UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences

Dr. Anderson has lectured and published extensively on drug use during breastfeeding including in professional journals and textbooks, and original research on drug excretion into breastmilk. Dr. Anderson founded LactMed®, a National Library of Medicine Bookshelf database. He continues to write LactMed® records and to expand the database. He has written the chapter Medications and breastfeeding in the Breastfeeding handbook for physicians, published by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists & the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Anderson is a member of the Editorial Board and the Pharmacology Editor of Breastfeeding Medicine, and writes a column on medication use during breastfeeding for the journal. He has also been a consultant to the US Food and Drug Administration on the topic of drug labeling. He is also on the Medication Subcommittee of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America.

Founding Director
Mother-Milk-Infant Center of Research Excellence (MOMI CORE)
Human Milk Institute (HMI) at the University of California, San Diego

Dr. Bode received both his Master of Science and PhD degree in Nutritional Sciences from the Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany and completed a pre-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Child Health, University College London, United Kingdom in 2003. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, California, Dr. Bode joined the University of California, San Diego, in 2009.

Currently, Dr. Bode is leading a research program dedicated to research on breastfeeding and human milk in general and Human Milk Oligosaccharides in particular. Dr. Bode’s main research objectives are to elucidate (i) how milk components are synthesized in the mother’s mammary gland, (ii) how milk composition is affected by external factors such as nutrition, pathogens, or medications, (iii) how milk components affect immediate as well as long-term health and development of infants and mothers, and (iv) how they can serve as natural templates for the development of preventatives, therapeutics, and diagnostics for people of all ages.

Dr. Bode has published over 170 peer-reviewed articles on human milk oligosaccharides and in 2022, he ranked in the top 0.1% of most highly cited scientists in the world.

Associate Professor
UC San Diego Health/Rady’s Children’s Hospital

Dr. Katherine Weiss is a neonatologist and an associate professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego/Rady Children’s NICUs. After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2006, Dr. Weiss completed her residency and chief residency in pediatrics as well as her neonatal fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Her areas of interest are in quality improvement, extremely low birth weight infants, breast milk, and international health. She serves as quality director at UCSD NICU and Rady Rancho Springs NICU.

Co-Director of the Perinatal Institute and Division Director of Neonatology
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

Dr. Kim has devoted curiosity and discovery to the areas of neonatal nutrition, neonatal bowel injury, point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS), resuscitation and patient centered research. He oversees clinical and translational research in the Perinatal Institute with a large core neonatal research team. He has participated in a wide array of clinical and translational activities including investigator initiated, multicenter, quality, and sponsored work. He is an alternate PI for the NICHD Neonatal Research Network site in Cincinnati. He is a past member of the AAP Committee on Nutrition and is the co-author of the book Human Milk: Best Medicine in the NICU. He co-created the nationally recognized Supporting Premature Infant Nutrition (SPIN) Program and  co-founded the UC Health Milk Bank in San Diego.

Clinical Director of UCSD Neonatology 
Medical Director of the UCSD Jacobs Medical Center NICU

Dr. Henry Lee is. Prior to joining the division of neonatology at UCSD / Rady, he was faculty in neonatology at UCSF from 2008 to 2012 and Stanford from 2013 to 2022.

Since 2008, he has been a volunteer member of several committees of the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative, which seeks to advance quality improvement across California NICUs.

One of his clinical and research interests is in neonatal resuscitation, and he currently serves as co-chair of the American Heart Association neonatal guidelines group.

Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, Pediatric Infectious Disease specialist
UCSD School of Medicine and Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego

Dr. Sawyer is a. Dr. Sawyer’s area of expertise is in immunization policy and public health.  He is an ex officio member of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Infectious Diseases and an Associate Editor of the AAP Red Book. He is a past member of the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). For the COVID pandemic, he was recalled to VRBPAC to work on the FDA recommendations for Sars-CoV-2 vaccines.

Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases at UCSF and UC San Diego
Emeritus Executive Vice President for University of California Health

Dr. Byington, is a Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases at UCSF and UC San Diego. She is the emeritus Executive Vice President for University of California Health, the largest academic health system in the US, with 12 hospitals, six academic health centers, 20 health professional schools, and more than 100,000 employees across California. In the EVP role, she was responsible for both the UC COVID-19 response and advancing the public service mission of UCH. She currently serves as the Special Advisor for Health Security to the University of California President. Dr. Byington has expertise in addressing threats to health security including pandemics and health disparities and believe equitable access to human milk can help mitigate both. She is a faculty member of the UCSD Pandemic Response to Emerging Pathogens, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Equity (PREPARE) Institute and the Human Milk Institute.

UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital

Maria Hetherton is a Board Certified Pediatric and Pediatric Critical Care dietitian specializing in neonatal nutrition with over 30 years of clinical experience at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in San Francisco. She has been dedicated to improving the growth and nutrition for the tiniest patients since the mid-1990s and has been the driving force in developing and updating the standards of care in the Intensive Care Nursery (Level IV NICU). The evidenced-based guidelines and practical tools have been shared throughout Northern California and she has helped train many dietitians, residents, Fellows and nurse practitioners in the nutrition care of these infants. Maria served on the Expert Panel for the CPQCC Grow Baby Grow and GAIN Collaboratives, providing guidance and encouragement to multiple centers to improve their practices. She also works with the multi-disciplinary Northern California Neonatal Consortium developing nutrition care guidelines for the low birth weight and late preterm infant.

Board of Director

Hannah Kohlberg Johnson is a champion for equity in access to information for infant and maternal health. As a co-founder of the UC Health Milk Bank, she has dedicated herself to ensuring that every baby gets the gift of good health through access to human milk. Her work has transformed the landscape of infant nutrition, making life-saving breast milk available to vulnerable populations.

Hannah's impact goes beyond the milk bank. She also co-founded the Human Milk Institute, a groundbreaking organization that brings together researchers, educators, clinicians, and communities to collaborate on improving infant health outcomes. Through the institute, Hannah is driving a paradigm shift in how we approach infant care, emphasizing the power of human milk and the importance of equitable access to this vital resource.

Hannah's vision is a world where every baby has the opportunity to thrive, and access to human milk is not a privilege reserved for the wealthy or the connected. She is a tireless advocate for equity in health care, and her work has inspired a generation of professionals to join the fight for health justice.

Deputy Director
PHFE WIC

Cindy Clapp, MS, RDN, IBCLC earned her BS in Nutritional Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.  She attended Cal State Long Beach where she participated in the Dietetic Internship program and earned her MS in Community Nutrition. After working as a Public Health Dietitian for 10 years, Cindy became a Lactation Consultant. She is employed with the PHFE WIC program where she has worked for over 30 years, of which she has been the Deputy Director for the last 3 years. She loves the WIC Program and is passionate about helping moms and babies. 

CHOC NICU

Gina O'Toole received her B.S. from Seattle Pacific University in Exercise Science and Physical Education and went on to receive her Master's in Public Health and Nutrition from Loma Linda University. Gina is a Board Certified Pediatric Critical Care dietician and has been working in a Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at CHOC Children's Hospital in Orange, California for almost 15 years. She has been instrumental in the institutional development of care guidelines and human milk advocacy for preterm infants, infants with short bowel syndrome/intestinal failure and those with complex surgical diagnoses. Gina has presented on the local and national platform and has participated in multiple quality improvement initiatives through the Vermont Oxford Network, the Children's Hospital Neonatal Consortium, and the California Perinatal Quality Collaborative. At CHOC Children's, she acts as a preceptor for the RD, RN and medical residency and fellowship programs.