Q&A: Amy S. Paller, MD, MS, Reflects on Receiving the Prestigious Alvin H. Jacobs Award

Few individuals have shaped the field of pediatric dermatology as profoundly as Amy S. Paller. MS, MD, professor, clinical researcher, and former chair of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. This year at the Society for Pediatric Dermatology Annual Meeting, her decades of leadership, mentorship, and scientific contributions were recognized with the Alvin H. Jacobs Award, one of the highest honors presented by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section on Dermatology. 

In this exclusive Q&A with Dermatology Times, Paller reflects on the mentor who inspired her career in pediatric dermatology, the significance of receiving an award bearing his name, and the lasting impact of training generations of physician-scientists. She also discusses the field's greatest unmet needs—from workforce shortages and research funding to expanding therapeutic options for children with rare genetic and inflammatory skin diseases—and shares her vision for the future of pediatric dermatology.

Dermatology Times: Why is this award in particular so important to you?

Paller: This is particularly exciting for me because of my personal significance. Al Jacobs is the only reason I'm here, and I don't even know if the committee realizes that in choosing. But I went to Stanford Medical School, knowing that I wanted to study genetic disorders. I knew I was going into pediatrics because I thought that would be the way to fulfill my passion of seeing patients with genetic disorders. But I really didn't know what subspecialty within pediatrics...would I just be doing pediatric genetics? Would I be gravitating towards something in particular? And when I had the fortune of having my rotation in dermatology and spending time with him, I was able to see for the first time the wealth of genetic disorders that have skin manifestations, and it all clicked. 

At that time, pediatric dermatology was a very new and very small field. And even 6 years later, when I had completed both pediatrics and dermatology residencies, it was still a small enough field that I remember we would meet at the same place, the Given Center in Aspen, Colorado, which only held 150 people, and it's obviously grown quite a bit since. So, receiving an honor for the one person who got me interested in pediatric dermatology, and not only did that, but sent me to Chicago to work with the person he thought was the ideal person with whom I should work, Nancy B. Esterly, MD, who then trained me over a 5-year period and became my lifetime role model. No one else really had that kind of an impact, right? Because he led me in that direction.

The other thing that's meaningful is that this actually comes from the AAP section on dermatology, which I was instrumental in founding. So I was a very junior faculty member in the mid-1980s. When I was surprised that the American Academy of Dermatology had no section on pediatrics and thought that that needed to be remedied, I reached out to 2 more senior people. Initially, Mary Williams, MD, who was at the University of California, San Francisco, put in the paperwork to develop the section. It was established in 1986, and Sidney Hurwitz, MD, FAAP, became the first president of the section. And my role was recognized by making me the Secretary of Treasury, and that's how the section started. So this is incredibly meaningful for me in 2 ways, both because of the significance in honoring Dr. Jacobs, whose memory I tremendously honor every day by being a pediatric dermatologist, and because it comes from a section that was also very meaningful to me.

Dermatology Times: If you had to pick something from your career that you're most proud of, what would that be? 

Paller: The generations of people who have followed me. I sit here in this meeting, and so many people up on the podium who are now considered the leaders in the field, I've had the great fortune of working with and training. You know, as faculty, we learn more from our students, I'm sure, than they do from us. We're also able to establish lifelong relationships that, to me, are, in addition to helping to take care of patients, the most fulfilling aspect of this career. The field of pediatric dermatology, in particular, is one where we have the nicest, most generous, and just the most terrific people I think within our field, and I consider myself so lucky to be part of this. So just watching younger people get excited about whether it's pediatric dermatology or research or just leadership opportunities and blossom and help to support those who are coming after them…to me, that is the most important thing I can possibly do.

Dermatology Times: You've seen so much growth and change in pediatric dermatology. What's something you still want to see that's still missing from the field? 

Paller: I think we still have such a long way to go in terms of fulfilling the need for our patient community. There are far too few of us. It is absolutely the best possible career anybody could possibly have because of the impact that we make and the importance of our services. But I think we are tremendously still underserving because there aren't enough of us. To this day, I just don't understand why people aren't knocking on the doors of fellowships in pediatric dermatology and saying “This is what we want,” because it is the most fulfilling career. And so, we have fellowships that go unfilled. Every time there's a pediatric dermatologist available, that person is snapped up into a wonderful academic career. We have all of our patients wait a year to be seen. It's absolutely a huge unmet need in the field, and the other part of that is just research. We now have the Pediatric Dermatology Research Alliance (PeDRA), established in 2012, and that has been instrumental in increasing research and expanding collaborative activities with scientists. But I still see pediatric research as being more limited than other research in our field, and I'd like to see that continue to grow, and I'm sure it will.

Dermatology Times: Is there anything that you're working on currently that really excites you that you'd like to talk about? 

Paller: We're still keeping our fingers crossed for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. We applied for the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network of the NIH, and there hasn't been anything in dermatology, and certainly in pediatric dermatology, in the past for a new program for our patients with genetic epidermal differentiation disorders...ichthyoses, palmoplantar keratoderma, other epidermal differentiation disorders. We're keeping our fingers crossed. It's passed through a few hurdles, but funding is way too tight from the government for research. We're still waiting to find out. But that's something I'm very, very excited about because I'm planning to shift some of my time to being a leader in that. So I'm hoping it comes through. And then of course, just all of the work that we're doing to try to repurpose medications to support a broader group of children, and finding new treatments, whether we're talking about inflammatory skin diseases or rare genetic diseases.

[Transcript has been edited for clarity]

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