The Incubator
A weekly discussion about new evidence in neonatal care and the fascinating individuals who make this progress possible. Hosted by Dr. Ben Courchia and Dr. Daphna Yasova Barbeau.
Episodes
879 episodes
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - What Goes Into Planning the Biggest Pediatric Conference in the World?
Dr. Daniel Rauch, PAS 2026 program chair, joins Ben for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to pull off a conference of this scale — and what he's learned from this year's record-breaking attendance in Boston. He reflects on the sessions ...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Is the Neonatology Job Market About to Shift Dramatically in Fellows' Favor?
Dr. Benny Rossner, PGY-2 pediatrics resident and veteran physician recruiter with 15 years of experience building clinical teams across the country, joins Ben and Rupa for a candid look at the neonatology workforce from a side of the conversati...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Are We Ready for Gentle Hemodynamics the Way We Embraced Gentle Ventilation?
Dr. Gabriel Altit and Daniela Villegas from the NeoCardioLab at Montreal join Ben and Rupa to reflect on a packed PAS filled with hemodynamics science — from pulmonary hypertension phenotyping to heart-brain interactions in the golden hour. Dr....
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - When Is the Right Time to Talk to a Family About a Tracheostomy for BPD?
Dr. Kristen Leeman and Dr. Jonathan Levin join Ben to debrief a packed interactive session on tracheostomy timing and counseling for babies with severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Using iterative cases and live audience polling, they mapp...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - What Does It Take to Build a World-Class NICU From the Ground Up?
Dr. Rangasamy Ramanathan, division chief at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children's Hospital and one of neonatology's most prolific investigators, joins Ben to share what's keeping him busy — 14 active clinical trials including studies on IGF-1 for lung...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - How Did One NICU Take 22-Weeker Survival From 12% to 72%?
Dr. Thais Queliz, neonatologist at Winnie Palmer Hospital in Orlando, presents ten years of data from one of the country's highest-volume programs caring exclusively for babies born at 22 to 24 weeks. She shares how survival rates for 22 and 23...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Do We Even Know What a Healthy Preterm Gut Looks Like on Ultrasound?
Dr. Indrani Bhattacharjee, neonatologist and POCUS program director at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, joins Ben to discuss a fascinating and largely unexplored frontier — intestinal ultrasound in healthy preterm infants. Rather than waiting fo...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Is LISA the Future of Surfactant Delivery for Premature Babies?
Dr. Surabhi Aggarwal, neonatologist at Stony Brook University, joins Ben and Rupa to share five years of experience building a LISA — Less Invasive Surfactant Administration — program from the ground up at her institution. She walks through the...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Could Donor Milk Cream Replace Dextrose Gel for Newborn Hypoglycemia?
Dr. Arpitha Chiruvolu, neonatologist and infant nutrition researcher, joins Ben to share three posters from this year's PAS covering two of her core research interests. She presents pilot data on using Prolacta human milk cream as an alternativ...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Could a Quarterly Injection Replace a Liver Transplant for This Rare Kidney Disease?
Dr. David Sas, pediatric nephrologist at Mayo Clinic, joins Ben to discuss primary hyperoxaluria type 1 — a rare but devastating genetic disease where the liver overproduces oxalate, flooding the kidneys with crystals and leading to end-stage k...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - What Does It Take to Build a Pediatric Transport Team From Scratch?
Dr. Kyle Willsey, pediatric critical care transport director at Cedars-Sinai, joins Daphna to discuss one of the least standardized corners of pediatric and neonatal medicine — critical care transport. With children's hospitals closing across t...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Is Gaming Addiction in Kids With ADHD About the Games or the Parenting?
Dr. Emily Wassmer, researcher at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, presents findings from one of the first studies to examine gaming addiction in young children ages 5 to 12 with ADHD diagnoses. Using a newly developed caregiver-report scree...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Are We Studying the Right Things the Right Way in Neonatology?
Dr. Lily Lou joins Daphna and Rupa to reflect on this year's Silverman Lecture at PAS — the annual honorary lecture of the AAP Section on Neonatal Perinatal Medicine — delivered by Dr. John Ioannidis of Boston, who turned the lens of research m...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Is the Real Fix to Neonatology Training Shorter Residency, Not Shorter Fellowship?
Dr. Satyan Lakshminrusimha, pediatric chair and neonatologist, joins Ben hot off the ONTPD meeting to share his perspective on the ABP fellowship reform debate — and it's more nuanced than a simple yes or no to a two-year fellowship. He argues ...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Are We Actually Delivering Good Bag Mask Ventilation in the Delivery Room?
Dr. Nathan Sundgren, neonatologist and NRP educator at Texas Children's Hospital, joins Ben to discuss one of the most deceptively difficult skills in neonatal resuscitation — effective bag mask ventilation. He shares findings from a fellowship...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - What If a Conference Actually Told You Both Sides of Every Controversy?
Dr. Matthew Saxonhouse, neonatologist at Atrium Health, joins Ben to discuss two initiatives designed to fill the gaps that traditional conferences often leave behind. The first is Neonatal Insights, a biennial meeting returning January 29-31, ...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Is There a Journal That Actually Lets Everyone in Neonatology Publish?
Dr. Mitchell Goldstein, neonatologist at Loma Linda University and editor-in-chief of Neonatology Today, joins Ben to share the story behind one of neonatology's most accessible and wide-reaching publications — a peer-reviewed, open-access jour...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - What Do We Actually Know About Epinephrine in Neonatal Resuscitation?
Dr. Jayasree Nair, neonatal resuscitation expert, joins Ben to reflect on one of the most humbling realities in neonatology — nearly everything we know about epinephrine use in extensive neonatal resuscitation comes from animal studies, adult d...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Why Are We Still Losing 3,700 Babies a Year to Sudden Infant Death?
Christie Lawrence, clinical nurse specialist at Rush University Medical Center, joins Ben to discuss sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) — the updated term that encompasses all sleep-related infant deaths, including what was formerly called S...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Are Children's Hospitals Running Out of Room to Care?
Dr. Elisabeth Kuhn, researcher focused on hospital operations, presents findings from a mixed-methods study examining how US children's hospitals measure and respond to capacity strain — the point at which demand for care outpaces the ability t...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - What Happens When Hospitals Stop Assuming and Start Listening?
Kimberly Novod, community health advocate, founder of Sol's Light, and fierce voice for health equity, joins Ben for a conversation about what it actually means to build trust between hospitals and the communities they serve. Drawing on her exp...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - What Does It Take to Build a Neonatology Fellowship From Scratch in Rwanda?
Dr. Brandon Hadfield and Dr. Debora Abimana join Ben for a conversation that brings the incubator's global neonatology work full circle — from the founding of Rwanda's first neonatology fellowship program to seeing its first trainee present sch...
#440 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Can Cord Milking Save Non-Vigorous Babies Who Can't Wait for Delayed Clamping?
Dr. Zubair Aghai, neonatologist at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, presents results from one of the largest neonatal trials ever conducted — enrolling 3,448 late preterm and term infants across India to test whether umbilical cord ...
#439 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Is AI Finally Ready for the NICU?
Dr. Ryan McAdams guest hosts alongside the NeoMind AI team — Dr. Ameena Husain, Dr. Kristyn Beam, Dr. Brynne Sullivan, and Dr. Zach Vesoulis — to recap their third annual pre-conference AI workshop at PAS, including a live predictive modeling b...
#439 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Are Babies on Dialysis at Much Higher Risk for Brain Injury Than We Thought?
Dr. Melissa Zhou, researcher at the Developing Brain Institute at Children's National, joins Daphna to discuss functional MRI and what it reveals about how preterm brains are building connections during the NICU stay. Using functional connectiv...