Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Names New Chief of Adolescent Medicine

Jonathan D. Klein, MD, MPH
Photo credit: University of Illinois Health

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Stanford Medicine Children’s Health is pleased to announce that Jonathan D. Klein, MD, MPH, will serve as the new Chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine.

Dr. Klein specializes in adolescent medicine, and he has a focus on adolescent preventive health services, including smoking cessation, treatment of eating disorders, and public health programs. He is Scientific Director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence, a national center dedicated to preventing children’s exposure to tobacco and secondhand smoke.  

“Dr. Klein has distinguished himself as a leading expert, clinician, and researcher, with a lifelong passion and commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice, along with a long-standing dedication to education and mentorship,” says Mary Leonard, MD, MSCE, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Stanford School of Medicine and physician in chief at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. “Much of his research has had community-participatory leadership directly engaged in individual projects, addressing the needs of underserved populations, inclusion of traditionally underrepresented minority clinicians and staff, research programs, and developing the next generation of pediatric specialists.”

Most recently, Dr. Klein served as the Savithri and Samuel Raj Endowed Professor of Pediatrics, Executive Vice Head of the Department of Pediatrics, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Previous to UIC, he was at the University of Rochester as Associate Executive Director and was the founding Scientific Director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence, a national center dedicated to preventing children’s exposure to tobacco and secondhand smoke.

Dr. Klein has led and collaborated on development, testing, and dissemination of cancer prevention/tobacco control and secondhand smoke exposure prevention projects to decrease tobacco use and prevent tobacco smoke exposure in children and youth, funded by the National Cancer Institute and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. These studies examine primary care practice and community health interventions to prevent exposure of nonsmokers to tobacco smoke, prevent youth initiation, and promote cessation for adolescent and adult smokers in intervention trials in large national primary care practice–based research networks.

Dr. Klein follows Neville Golden, MD, who, in his 16 successful years of unwavering commitment to health equity as Division Chief, trained more than 35 fellows in Adolescent Medicine and developed clinical and research programs that address the needs of adolescents and young adults from diverse social and economic backgrounds, including a nationally recognized eating disorders program, the mobile Teen Van that serves homeless and uninsured youth, the Teen and Young Adult Clinic, the Adolescent Gynecology clinic, the Pediatric Weight Clinic, the Mission Neighborhood Health Center, and a program for incarcerated youth at the Santa Clara Juvenile Detention facility. Dr. Golden will remain as professor emeritus focusing on health care research for children at Stanford Medicine.  

Dr. Jonathan D. Klein will begin his new role on October 1, 2023.

Media Contact

Elizabeth Valente
EValente@StanfordChildrens.org
(650) 269-5401