Trained at Edinburgh University in the United Kingdom, Dr. Mhairi G. MacDonald was a pediatrician and professor of pediatrics who retired from clinical practice in 2010. After teaching for a further six years as a tenured professor of pediatrics at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, she became an emeritus professor of pediatrics in 2016.
Specializing in pediatrics, pediatric pharmacology, neonatology and neonatal intensive care, Dr. MacDonald spent two decades with the Children’s National Medical Center (now Children’s National Hospital), beginning as a neonatologist and division director of research in 1978 and later serving as the director of the perinatal outreach education program, an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) physician, the director of the neonatal medicine fellowship training program, and the director of the neonatal intensive care unit until 1997. She also held administrative roles at the Children’s National Medical Center, including as the vice chair of the division of neonatology and the interim chair in the division of neonatology. Earlier, Dr. MacDonald was a neonatologist at the Capital Regional Perinatal Center in Albany, New York, from 1976 to 1978. She also taught pediatrics at Albany Medical College between 1975 and 1976 and at Johns Hopkins University from 1974 to 1975. Earlier in her career, she provided medical care to children at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s free clinic and volunteered in the hematology department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Passionate about caring for pediatric patients, especially newborns in the intensive care unit, Dr. MacDonald is well-known for her medical expertise and recognized for her strong sense of integrity, compassion and honesty when communicating with her patients’ families. Moreover, she is passionate about medical ethics and advocates that every child should be entitled to quality medical care regardless of their family’s financial status.
Dr. MacDonald has authored 14 textbooks, contributed to approximately 120 scholarly articles, and co-founded the journal Pediatric AIDS and HIV Infection: Fetus to Adolescent. During her writing career, she also worked with Princess Diana’s team to prepare and publish the “Program for the International Conference on Pediatric HIV Infection” in 1993. Besides her writings, Dr. MacDonald has presented before numerous professional groups in her field. She is a senior fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health (UK), and the American Academy of Pediatrics and an emeritus member of the Society of Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society.