USA Health neonatologist selected for state quality improvement role
Alabama’s Perinatal Quality Collaborative is a network of stakeholders that aims to improve pregnancy and infant outcomes through identifying and quickly improving problems through implementation of research-based best practices.
By Casandra Andrews
candrews@health.southalabama.edu
USA Health Children’s & Women’s Hospital neonatologist Kelechi Ikeri, MBBS, has been selected as the new neonatal physician lead for the Alabama Perinatal Quality Collaborative (ALPQC).
The ALPQC is a state perinatal program initiated by the Alabama Department of Public Health and funded by the state and federal government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In this position, Ikeri will work with the Alabama Department of Health to implement, coordinate, and oversee perinatal quality improvement initiatives and address health equity across the state at 24 member hospitals.
“We are proud that Dr. Ikeri’s work for the infants in our community is being recognized,” said Maran Ramani, M.D., who leads the neonatology division at Children’s & Women’s Hospital. “In this new role, he will help the state to set newborn care standards.”
Developed in 2018, Alabama’s Perinatal Quality Collaborative is a network of stakeholders that aims to improve pregnancy and infant outcomes through identifying and quickly improving problems through implementation of research-based best practices.
Ikeri, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Whiddon College of Medicine, said he was drawn to USA Health because of the patient population’s wide range of complexity and cases. He is the author or co-author of 11 research papers.
Ikeri was born in Nigeria and earned a bachelor of medicine and surgery degree from the University of Lagos College of Medicine in Idi-Araba, in Lagos, Nigeria. An interest in critical care medicine, he said, attracted him to neonatology.
He worked in hospitals in Nigeria and the island of Tobago before moving to the United States in 2015. Ikeri completed a pediatrics residency at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Centre in Brooklyn, New York, in 2018 and completed a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia in June 2021.
Ikeri is certified in general pediatrics and neonatology by the American Board of Pediatrics and is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and American College of Medical Quality.
