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Tamara D. Simon, MD, MSPH

Professor of Pediatrics (Clinical Scholar)
University of Southern California/ Children's Hospital of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA, United States

Tamara D. Simon, MD, MSPH, is a pediatric hospitalist with a research focus on improving the quality of evidence in inpatient health care provided to children with medical complexity. Since April 2020, Dr. Simon has held numerous positions including faculty in the Division of Hospital Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC; hospitalist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA); principal investigator at The Saban Research Institute (TSRI) of CHLA; faculty lead for the Office of Training, Education, Career Planning and Development at TSRI; Associate Director for Training and Education at TSRI; and Lead within the Workforce Development group at the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

Dr. Simon’s main clinical research focus is on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) shunt infections and re-infections in children with hydrocephalus. She has been an active investigator in the Hydrocephalus Clinical Research Network since 2007. In 2009 she obtained a K23 career development award from the NINDS to focus on conduct of multi-center studies to determine risk factors for CSF shunt infections. Funding from her career development award has allowed Dr. Simon to conduct rigorous observational multicenter studies through the HCRN.

One of Dr. Simon’s subsequent lines of inquiry has focused on surgical decision making in the prevention of CSF shunt infection, specifically looking at the effectiveness of intrathecal antibiotics and antibiotic-impregnated shunt catheters in the prevention of post-surgical CSF shunt infection. Dr. Simon’s investigation of this question using the PHIS+ database (PHIS+ Shunt Infection Prevention) is currently supported through a 3 ½-year R01 grant from the NINDS.

Another of Dr. Simon’s subsequent translational lines of inquiry has focused on the microbial environment of CSF shunt infections. Her lab has described wide bacterial and fungal diversity in the CSF of children with CSF shunt infections and is actively investigating the presence of biofilms on shunt apparatus. A grant to characterize the microbiota across the time course of shunted hydrocephalus (Cerebrospinal FLuId MicroBiota in Shunts Study or CLIMB) is currently being supported through a 5-year R01 grant from the NINDS.

I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.

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