What Parents Need to Know Today, Wisdom from Expert Pediatrician Dr. Robert Harrison, MPH

Choosing the right doctor for your child is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a parent, but how do you actually know who to trust?

In this episode of Take Care, Melody Mulaik sits down with Dr. Robert Harrison, a board-certified pediatrician and infectious disease specialist, to break down how to choose a pediatrician and what parents should really look for beyond just convenience or referrals.

From experience and hospital affiliations to ongoing medical education and access to specialists, Dr. Harrison shares what separates a good pediatrician from a great one, and why it matters more than you think.

The conversation also dives into one of the most talked-about (and often confusing) topics today: vaccines. You’ll learn where to find reliable, science-based information, why misinformation spreads, and what parents need to understand to make informed decisions that protect not only their child but the entire community.

If you’re expecting, a new parent, or simply want to feel more confident about your child’s healthcare, this episode will give you clarity, reassurance, and practical guidance you can use right away.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to choose a pediatrician you can trust
• What makes a good pediatrician (experience, education, affiliation)
• Why group practices can improve your child’s care
• What questions to ask when interviewing a pediatrician
• Where to find reliable vaccine information
• The truth about vaccines and common misconceptions
• Why routine checkups can catch serious health issues early
• How to build trust and communication with your child’s doctor

Timestamps:

• [01:00] Why choosing the right pediatrician matters and how it impacts your child’s health
• [02:00] What to do if access to pediatric care is limited and how to find the best option
• [02:40] Key qualities of a good pediatrician: experience, hospital affiliation, and continuous learning
• [05:40] Vaccine myths vs facts: where to get reliable information and why it matters
• [12:30] What parents should prioritize including trust, communication, and access to specialists
• [17:00] Why routine checkups, early diagnosis, and proactive care can change a child’s life

Resources Mentioned:

• American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) – Trusted source for pediatric and vaccine guidelines: https://www.aap.org/ 

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Transcript

Grace 0:12

Today, we’re truly honored to introduce a very special guest, someone who has had an extraordinary career in medicine and has made a lasting impact on the families and children he’s cared for over the years. Dr. Robert Harrison grew up in Great Neck, New York, and began his academic journey at Yale University, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, graduating magna cum laude. From there, he was awarded the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, which took him to Oxford University, where he completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Physical Chemistry, specializing in crystallography under the mentorship of a Nobel Laureate. He then went on to earn his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, followed by rigorous training in pediatrics, infectious diseases, and epidemiology through his internship, residency, and fellowship at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the University of Washington. During this time, he also earned his Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Washington School of Public Health. We also see his commitment to both research and teaching through his time as faculty in Pediatrics at the University of Arizona, where he spent seven years and rose to the rank of Associate Professor. He later held a joint position with Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, serving as a Clinical Investigator at the CDC, a Clinical Associate Professor at Emory, and a research grant reviewer for the NIH. After an accomplished academic and research career, he spent 25 years in clinical practice as a General Pediatrician and Infectious Diseases Specialist. He served as a consultant at Scottish Rite and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and also as President of the Medical Staff at Scottish Rite. But beyond all of these achievements, what stands out most is the care, wisdom, and dedication he has brought to generations of families. We’re so glad to have him with us today. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Robert Harrison.

Melody 2:08

Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of Take Care. It is my privilege and pleasure to have our pediatrician, my kid's pediatrician on is our special guest today. Dr. Bob Harrison, took care of both of my kids from birth all the way to the point that they graduated out of going to a pediatrician, which was amazing. He and the group with his practice. And again, I'm very excited to have him here with us today. I'll tout a little bit for him'cause he gave me his CV and all the great expansive experience that he has, double board certified in pediatrics and infectious disease. That was one of the reasons that I chose to go to Dr. Bob and have him take care of my kids. And quite a big pedigree with your experiences at Yale and at Harvard and time with National Institute of Health and CDC and just a lot of phenomenal experience. So, thank you for being on the episode today and sharing your expertise and knowledge with our population.

Dr. Robert 3:04

You're welcome. It's my pleasure to be here with you.

Melody 3:07

Alright. Yes, absolutely. And I'm excited'cause we still get to stay connected on Facebook and I get to see what you're doing when you do posts. And you get to see, keep up with me and the kids and everything, which is fun. I know you keep up with a lot of your old patients and it must be neat to kind of see how they mature and go through life.

Dr. Robert 3:25

It really is wonderful. Thanks.

Melody 3:27

Let's go ahead and jump on in and let's talk about how do people pick a good pediatrician. Again, I feel I was very fortunate to find you and I got you because my next door neighbor, who was an anesthesiologist and she was pregnant right before me. And I asked her opinion of who to go to, and she said she had done her research and she had friends that used you. And so I was able to find you that way. But how do people determine who is a good pediatrician and who to go to?

Dr. Robert 3:54

Well, it's a real problem'cause a lot of the country is rural and a lot of those people don't have a lot of access to medical care. So, I think we need to start there. If you're really rural, you need to think about whether you can drive somewhere, whether you have the access to get somewhere a little larger where there is a pediatrician. If there isn't, then you have to start with a health department, community health department, a clinic, like a volunteer clinic. That's a great start. A community health department or a volunteer clinic or a family practitioner who has some experience with children. And you start there, if you don't have access. If you have a access, you want to try and get to a community where there is a pediatrician. The pediatrician if possible, have a good exposure to kids, lots of experience. And be connected in some way with the American Academy of Pediatrics and with continuing medical education because medicine changes as everything changes. So, you want to ask a guy or the women, if they read, do they get journals, do they have subscriptions? Are they affiliated with the children's hospital? Do they have admitting PIP privileges at the children's hospital? Which means they can admit their own patients if the patients are sick. And do they go to rounds? Does the hospital have grand rounds? Do they attend grand rounds? What do they do for continuing medical education? The affiliation with the hospital gives them some exposure to sicker patients.

Melody 5:30

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Robert 5:31

Not their own patients. And learning from other doctors in other specialties around pediatrics like I had. So that you pick up stuff along the way that stays in your mind'cause it may be new or unusual. And then, that helps you when you're taking care of people or kids because you may pick up stuff that somebody not continuing to be exposed to new stuff wouldn't pick up. So, that's very important. They really need to have a strong connection with an American Academy of Pediatrics and an affiliation, if at all possible with a children's hospital. And knowledge, methods of doing continuing medical education.

Melody 6:15

Okay. That's a good breakdown with it. I mean, some places may have a website and there may be information on the doctor's background on the website, but other places don't. And so, to your point, I guess getting information from that practice or that organization is really important as people are determining where their kids are going to get care.

Dr. Robert 6:31

Right. It's also have a practice where there are multiple doctors because each of us has trained a little bit differently. And one of us, may recognize something that another one doesn't recognize you. Always see your partner's patients when they're not there or they're backed up or behind. So, we've all seen each other's patients. Many times, I know, in my practice, that was really good to have the other guys around.

Melody 6:59

Absolutely. It is interesting you bring that up, is that something that physicians do and talk about the patients when there are interesting cases or things that are different for that very point of providing education?

Dr. Robert 7:11

Absolutely. Absolutely. One of my partners once apologized to me'cause he had seen my patient the day before and missed the diagnosis. And I made the diagnosis the next day when they were still sick and they came back. And he at lunch said, you know, I'm really sorry about yesterday. I missed it. Please forgive me.

Melody 7:32

Wow.

Dr. Robert 7:33

That takes some testosterone.

Melody 7:36

Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. And that's important and admitting that. As people are navigating things now and for parents with kids and yeah, I think one of the big topics on people's minds is vaccines. And there's so much information out there, or in some cases, misinformation out there. And people really sometimes are asking, where do you go get good information and where should they look? So, from your standpoint as a pediatrician, where would you tell parents to go look to make sure they're getting the most accurate and up-to-date information?

Dr. Robert 8:08

Okay. So, I have two things to say about that. One is we're not to look. The real reason for this controversy is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The permission for him to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Robert F. Kennedy was went to Harvard College. So, he is really smart. He majored in American History and Literature. Okay. He went to law school at the University of Virginia. And then he got a degree, a master's degree in environmental law I think from PACE University, which I don't know where that is. But my apologies are to those who went to Pace University. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has absolutely no experience or training in medicine, epidemiology, or public health. He does have a lot of interest in conspiracy theories. And he's promoting a ton of misinformation. There are really, really good methods of evaluating medicine and vaccines in clinical studies, randomized controlled clinical trials. All kinds of stuff in real medicine and epidemiology that's time honored and used. And none of it has been used by Mr. Kennedy. It's just all conspiracy theories. So, whatever you do, don't listen to what he's saying because it's all wrong. There are no associations between vaccines and autism. And all the childhood diseases that we eradicated in the last 50 years are now beginning to recur because people are opting to not get vaccinated. It's not a parental choice to vaccinate your kid. It's a society's choice to protect everyone in the community from disease. And in not vaccinating your children, you put other children at risk from the diseases that were eradicated. So, we need to get away from that. The place that you need to go to get your vaccine information is the recommendations to the American Academy of Pediatrics. It's all doctors. We all know how to do research. We all know how to evaluate research and we all read. And we follow guidelines because we're interested in protecting our patients. And that's where you need to go. There's no bull in any of that stuff. They don't advertise. There's nothing in it other than content. And so, you go to the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations for vaccines, and you do that. The threshold for protecting a community which the community against disease, like for measles, which is the criteria where somebody comes into the community with measles, it won't transmit to others, is 95%. That means 95% of the kids in the community need to be immunized for the disease, not to spread. There are a number of communities now in the country where that threshold isn't even close to being met for measles. And it's a problem. The same kind of problem for a bunch of other diseases in childhood that we had eliminated. So, please follow recommendations and for the good of others in the community. If not for yourself, for the good of your friends, and your relatives, and your neighbors, and their kids, please get vaccinated.

Melody 11:54

That's really good information and good advice with that. I'm probably saying this off of hearsay, so I want to be careful what I say with it is occasionally, you'll see somebody pop up with something and it'll be a pediatrician that's saying something that's contrary to what the American Academy of Pediatrics is saying. And I guess it's baffling to me that there would be individuals that would be taking some of those positions that aren't proven by science and aren't proven by the data that's out there that seems very dangerous.

Dr. Robert 12:21

Well, it is very dangerous. And there are outliers, there are docs with fringe theories. You know, there are guys with fringe beliefs and fringe theories. I, for the life of me. It's important to me, don't understand. I can't understand why Kennedy takes the positions that he does. I can't understand what the motivations are because they're so contrary to everything that's science and that's normal, that's standard. And I don't know where they come from'cause they certainly don't come from education and experience.

Melody 12:57

Oh, absolutely. So, you know, one of the things that I've heard, and again, I'm raising this, definitely not saying this. But I've heard some people say, well, you know, do pediatricians push vaccines sometimes because they're making money from the pharmaceutical companies and those types of things. Can you talk a little bit about pediatricians are one of the lowest paid specialties of any medical specialty out there? So, clearly, I would argue. It's clearly not about the money. When you think about all the specialties, the pediatricians I know go into it because of their love of children. It's not making money on the vaccine piece of that. But what would you say as a response to, if somebody raised that as a point to you?

Dr. Robert 13:37

Pediatricians make no money off vaccines other than we purchase vaccines. We purchase them from the manufacturer or a distributor. And there is a small markup for our costs of storage. There's not a huge markup. And the vaccines are given out. We get back. The managed care companies, which control medicine now really determine what we get paid for a vaccine. So, we want to make sure that we're not losing money on the vaccine. But as long as what the managed care company pays, what we pay to get the vaccine. And plus maybe 5% at the most. And that's included in the reimbursement then we're whole. Then we're not losing money every month on vaccines because we have to buy and store all the vaccines. They are detailed by either representatives of distributors or representatives of drug companies to us. And the companies are strictly regulated in terms of bribes and graft and everything else. There is none of that in medicine. There's no profiteering off vaccines. Absolutely.

Melody 14:51

Okay. That's good to know. When you think about as a parent navigating the current environment as it were for healthcare, and we talked about vaccines being a challenge and getting access to care. What are other things that you as a pediatrician would say to parents that they need to be thinking about or focused on to ensure that their children are getting the best resources and the best care?

Dr. Robert 15:14

This may be repetitive, but it's worth emphasizing. You want someone who has some experience with children, ideally, somebody who's not a completely fresh graduate. Somebody who's been experienced for a few years. Somebody if possible, who's in practice with others. Someone who has connections with a hospital that is familiar with children with emergency rooms. Someone at importantly now who has access for you as a patient to good specialists. If a specialist is needed for an issue that's identified. And someone who's absolutely in step with the American Academy of Pediatrics. And someone who reads.

Melody 15:58

Yeah. I know that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.

Dr. Robert 16:01

Somebody who's reasonably good with kids.

Melody 16:03

Yeah.

Dr. Robert 16:04

You want to make'em laugh. You want to make your patients and your families laugh. That helps an awful lot in getting really good exams. Getting good care. You want someone who your kids can feel comfortable with. If you feel comfortable with the doctor that you're interviewing, chances are your kids are going to feel comfortable. If that doctor can make you laugh, they can make your kids laugh.

Melody 16:29

I know that's true. And you brought up a really good point because talking about interviewing, I mean, pediatricians are the one specialty, at least from what I've seen, of where when somebody is pregnant and they're going to be having their baby, they go and they interview potential pediatricians. Talk a little bit about that. How often did that happen for you and what was that experience like? How much time did you guys as a group set aside for that type of activity?

Dr. Robert 16:54

I guess it varied depending on what, how busy you were at the time of the day, how many patients were waiting, how much time you had, what kinds of questions were being asked. But mostly we would leave 15 or 20 minutes to interview someone. I usually had a patient interview probably once a week. You have to realize as a doc that not everyone's going to like you, and you have to be okay with that. And you have to realize that not everyone's going to join the practice, and be okay with that. You have to be open and honest and present yourself. And I think in interviewing is important. It's OB and peds tend to be the ones'cause they bring out. Obviously, there are a lot of women involved. It's particularly an OB and this is a very emotional time of life, giving birth, and being pregnant. And pediatrics brings out all the fear and anxiety in people when their kids are, you know. It's a lot harder than, interviewing an internist'cause internist can have the personality of a brick if he's a good internist. If he knows his stuff and he manages well and can refer patients and recognize illnesses, you're not going to an internist to have dinner with them. People tend to really identify closely with their pediatricians. Look how much we've been in touch with each other over the years. I mean, I could easily have been a family member because of the way that we all interact. So, that's important. You have to have that rapport because oftentimes you're not going to get information that you need without that kind of rapport.

Melody 18:34

I know that's very true. And I like how you talked about the interview piece. I think for a lot of other specialties, specialists don't really do that. It's kind of like, well, I'm a specialist. There's not really the interview, but for the pediatricians and OBGYNs, I think a lot of patients don't realize that's an option, or caregivers don't realize it's an option to be able to go get that level of comfort. I mean, being In an area, a larger city. You know, there were definitely a lot of options that I had to consider where a lot of people really don't. And I think that's sometimes challenging, especially as you mentioned at the beginning in rural areas where people don't have a lot of choices. So, they may need to make that decision that they're going to drive a little bit further away to get the care that they need, at least for, you know, routine care and things like that.

Dr. Robert 19:14

How much routine care doesn't seem. It doesn't seem real important, you know, it's like routine care. And so, people tend to gloss over that. The problem is that you never quite know when something serious is going to be there. And even if they're rare, it doesn't mean they don't exist. So, they've gotta be picked up.

Melody 19:37

I know that's a good point. I mean, I know for us in our family, it was doing routine checks that you identified things that my kids need to have further looked at. And that was, you know, going through that checklist for the different ages and all that becomes really important. When you look back on, on your career and I think you and I were doing the math once of how many kids and now adults, did you interact with or did you treat and we determined it was probably over a hundred thousand people or children that you've interacted with. When you think about the number of kids under care, it's a big number. I mean, you did a lot obviously in the hospital side with infectious disease in addition to the practice with that. When you look back on your career, what's the most rewarding piece of that for you? And it's probably not one thing I know that, but what do you look back on the most and feel the best about?

Dr. Robert 20:23

Well, medically, I feel the best about making some diagnoses that actually literally changed some kids' lives that a 2-year-old is now an adult because of me. Because I made a diagnosis that was not made by others and did some things that other people wouldn't do. And so, I feel good about that'cause I'm reminded all the time when I see in Facebook or something else by a patient who's now 45 or 50 years old. So, it feels really good. The best part of the career was actually the challenge. The challenge of taking care of people, of actually managing them correctly. That was the best part. The other parts that were really good were really the interactions with all the people. And I mean all the people, I mean the nurses and everybody in the hospital and in the office. Because you're just interacting with everyone every day. And there's a lot of enjoyment in that. A lot of enjoyment doing of your work all day, no matter how routine some of the things are.

Melody 21:26

Yeah. Your staff didn't have a lot of turnover. I know many of the nurses

Dr. Robert 21:30

No.

Melody 21:30

Were there the whole time that I was there as well.

Dr. Robert 21:34

There are a lot of us in the practice that were pretty funny actually. Moran was very funny. And I made a lot of people laugh and laughing is really helpful, especially during times of stress. You're backed up with families and patients and you want to do things right. It's very helpful to be laughing in the practice.

Melody 21:53

I know. Absolutely. I still remember coming in at different times and being concerned with the kids, I remember you'd look me in the eye and you'd say, it's going to be okay. Let's work through the process, but it's going to be okay. And all that's important. And I also remember the jokes of looking for frogs in the ears and all those other things with the kids as well, so that balance is important.

Dr. Robert 22:12

They laugh.

Melody 22:14

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Robert 22:15

It was good. Good for both of us.

Melody 22:17

Well, I very much appreciate your time today and your sharing your expertise. Anything else that you want to share with parents out there?

Dr. Robert 22:26

Yeah. I really want to share with people to be proactive and not be oppositional. The fact is that for a lot of medical stuff, no matter how good a parent you are, there's a lot you don't know. If you knew everything, there wouldn't be four years in medical school, and internship, and residency, and fellowship, and all the other things that we do to get trained in, to take care of your kids. So, you're not winning anything by being oppositional. No points with anyone for deciding that you're going to pick and choose what parts of good care you need. So, all of you, please be receptive to what peds docs are telling you and trying to give you. And please get your immunizations. They're the most important thing that we've done in 50 years of medical practice in terms of preventing disease. Ask your grandparents how much fun it was to have all the diseases that we had as kids. And you'll see some of the importance of it.

Melody 23:37

Oh, that's great advice. Thank you again for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Robert 23:41

Good. Good work.