Jane W. Newburger

Jane Wimpfheimer Newburger is an American pediatrician who is Commonwealth Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Associate Cardiologist-in-Chief at the Boston Children's Hospital. Her research has considered the fundamental mechanisms that underpin Kawasaki disease and the outcomes of children suffering from congenital heart defects. She was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.

Early life and education Newburger was born in New York City. She was raised in the Bronx and moved to Yonkers, New York at the age of six. She decided that she wanted to become a doctor at a young age. She was an undergraduate student at Bryn Mawr College, where she majored in chemistry. At the time there was no established therapy. Intravenous immune globulin therapy emerged as a treatment in Japan, which resulted in the formation of a multi-centre research group in the United States. The members include David Bellinger, Annette Baker and Mary Beth Son.

Newburger secured funding from the National Institutes of Health to run a trial of IVIG, showing that it was a highly effective therapy for most children who suffer from the disease. Such defects occur in around 8 of every 1,000 live births. To treat these defects, the heart is temporarily stopped during surgery, which results in restricted blood supply to the brain. She was made the Commonwealth Professor of Paediatrics in 2008.

Selected publications