New Director Appointed to Lead Pediatric Asthma Center
June 25, 2021
UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Division of Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine is pleased to announce that faculty member Erick Forno, MD, MPH, ATSF, has been appointed as the new director of the Pediatric Asthma Center.
The Pediatric Asthma Center at UPMC Children’s aims to improve the lives of children with asthma in western Pennsylvania and beyond through cutting-edge research, state-of-the-art clinical care, excellence in education and training, and active community involvement. In his new role as center director, Dr. Forno will collaborate closely with leadership at the Department of Pediatrics and UPMC to coordinate, oversee, and strengthen asthma research and clinical care at UPMC Children’s.
Together with Allyson Larkin, MD, from the Division Pediatric of Allergy and Immunology, Dr. Forno co-directs the Severe Asthma Program at UPMC Children’s. He also leads the UPMC Children’s Asthma Registry and has been instrumental in leading the Data Committee for the hospital-wide pediatric asthma stakeholder group.
Dr. Forno has mentored or co-mentored fellows, residents, and trainees interested in clinical research and quality-improvement projects related to asthma. At a national level, he is working to establish the Severe Pediatric Asthma Consortium, which includes multidisciplinary severe asthma programs from top pediatric academic centers in the United States.
More About Dr. Forno
Erick Forno, MD, MPH, ATSF, is an associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine. After obtaining his medical degree from Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Perú, he completed his residency in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Colorado, followed by a fellowship in pulmonary medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. During his time in Boston, he also earned a Master’s of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health while simultaneously completing a research fellowship at the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Dr. Forno joined UPMC Children’s and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2012.
Dr. Forno’s main research interests are the epidemiology and genomics of childhood asthma, and the effects of obesity on asthma severity. His work has been supported by a departmental K12 grant, a K08 award from the National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and an R01 grant from the NHLBI to study the role of adipose tissue in obesity-related asthma. Dr. Forno has authored or co-authored more than 150 publications. In recognition of his work, he has received the Robert Mellins Award from the Pediatrics Assembly of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and the international Klosterfrau Award for his asthma research.
