Illinois Medicine

D Illinois Medicine | 33 Dr. Raj credits her parents—and the influences of her childhood in India—for her lifelong pledge to serve those most in need as a physician-scientist and philanthropist. "My father obtained degrees in mathematics and physics and was a gold medalist in both subjects at his university. My mother was a gold medalist in English literature and chemistry at the university she attended," says Dr. Raj, who remembers a childhood enriched by her parents' erudition. "We had wonderful intellectual discussions at the dinner table. I still remember my mother reciting Milton's Paradise Lost out loud to us and teaching us about literature, poetry and, of course, the Bible." Although the family was rich in knowledge, they were not well off when Dr. Raj was young. "My parents had three kids in three years," she says. "My father was working as a research scientist in physics, and his ac- ademic salary didn't amount to much. We lived in a single room with a community bathroom and no running water." Eventually, Dr. Raj's father was forced to abandon his academic pursuits for a better-paying job in business—a move that improved the family's financial status but left him feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. "My father would have done very original research in the- oretical physics if he hadn't given it up to provide for his family and send his children to the best schools," says Dr. Raj. "My mother—a highly educated woman from an affluent family— spent her days cooking, cleaning and caring for us." Her parents' untapped potential profoundly affected Dr. Raj, who vowed to break free from the cultural restrictions that had limited her mother's options and pursue work that she found challenging and meaningful. While earning her medical degree and completing a resi- dency in pediatrics in Mumbai, she had another epiphany. "My mother—a devout Christian—taught me to live by the credo, 'To whom much is given, much will be required.' While I cared for poor patients as a medical student and pediatric resident in India, I decided that the best way to achieve my goals while giving back was to become a physician-scientist and find a way to continue to care for poor children." Building a Career—and a Children's Hospital From then on, Dr. Raj forged her own path, leaving India and the prospect of an arranged marriage to start a fellowship in clinical neonatology at the Tulane University School of Medicine. Almost immediately, she made good on her pledge to ad- dress health inequities in underserved populations. "I started my training in 1978 at Charity Hospital in New Orleans—a giant hospital with about 20,000 deliveries a year and many low- income patients," she notes. As Dr. Raj followed established protocols to provide life- saving treatments for Charity Hospital's youngest patients in the neonatal intensive care unit, she made another decision that would alter the trajectory of her life's work. "I wanted to be the person who wrote the source materials for the care recommen- dations in neonatology. That meant being a researcher, making discoveries about the human body in order to treat disease, so I applied to the top academic research institutions in the U.S." In 1980, she was awarded a coveted research fellowship in neonatology and developmental vascular biology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The next four years were career-defining ones. "The UCSF neonatal intensive care unit was a mecca for cutting-edge re- search, and my mentors there were giants in neonatology," says Dr. Raj, who joined the UCSF faculty in 1982. She became the first woman to serve as an attending physician in the elite UCSF neonatal intensive care unit. By 1984, Dr. Raj's research on pulmonary microcirculation in developing lungs had opened doors to other opportunities up and down the West Coast. She accepted an offer to join the fac- ulty at the UCLA School of Medicine and continue her research at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor- UCLA Medical Center (now The Lundquist Institute). "Harbor-UCLA was a unique place with a huge research pro- gram and brilliant scientists, attached to a county hospital," says Dr. Raj. "It was an opportunity to serve the poor while working in a rich research environment." After 24 years at UCLA, Dr. Raj was ready for a new challenge. She found it at the University of Illinois College of Medicine—an institution with a mission that mirrored her own commitment to serving the underserved. At the invitation of Joseph Flaherty '68, MD '71, then dean of the College of Medicine, she relocated to Chicago in 2008 to head the Department of Pediatrics. Over the next seven years, she recruited more than 50 dis- tinguished faculty members from around the country—including current department head Benjamin Van Voorhees, MD, MPH, and many subspecialty division chiefs in pediatrics—and cre- ated three pediatric fellowship programs. She also worked with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to improve the well-being of children with chronic conditions such as diabetes and depression by bringing health and behavioral health services into their homes and communities. As she worked to advance medical education and improve community health outreach, she spearheaded the establishment and accreditation of the Children's Hospital University of Illinois, which opened in 2012 with a mission to prioritize the care of underserved children. Although Dr. Raj stepped down as physician-in-chief of the specialty pediatric hospital in 2015, she continues to raise funds to support its mission and regards the children's hospital as her most important legacy. "My research has brought a lot of acco-

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