An Introduction to the NICU

Welcome back to HUGS! In this episode, Dr. Kayla Karvonen will share an overview of the neonatal intensive care unit. Dr. Karvonen is a neonatal-perinatal fellow physician at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) where she also completed her pediatric residency. She grew up in Plymouth, Minnesota, majored in Biochemistry & Cell Biology and Psychology at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and attended medical school at the University of Virginia. Her research to date has focused on investigating structural racism and its contribution to local and population level racial inequities in adverse outcomes among infants who were born preterm. Her current research centers Black preterm infants and their caregivers, investigating strategies to promote the opportunity for families to thrive from the NICU to home. Outside of medicine she enjoys biking, snowboarding, hiking, and reading science fiction.