by Christina Echegaray

Kris Rehm, MD, MMHC, professor of Clinical Pediatrics and vice chair in the Department of Pediatrics, has been elected president-elect of the Society of Hospital Medicine and will be the first pediatrician to hold the post for the organization.

She will serve a three-year term as president-elect, president and past president, with her presidency beginning March 2023. Rehm has been a member of SHM since 2009, and in 2017 was elected to serve a three-year term on the organization’s board.

The post adds to her list of past service on several national pediatric hospital medicine committees, including the Pediatric Hospital Medicine planning committee, the Pediatrics Committee Chair at SHM, the SHM representative to the Joint Council on Pediatric Hospital Medicine.

“I am incredibly honored to have been elected as the next president of the Society of Hospital Medicine. I have found my professional home here at SHM, an organization run by hospitalists, for hospitalists,” said Rehm, who is also director of Outreach Medicine for the Department of Pediatrics and associate Chief Medical Officer for Children’s Services for Vanderbilt Medical Group. “As the first pediatrician to serve as president, I hope to work to encourage all members to engage with the society. I have been able to pursue leadership training, develop friends in hospital medicine across the country, and collaborate on multisite projects, which are so important to advancing care for our patients.”

Rehm joined Vanderbilt as an assistant professor of General Pediatrics in 2005. In 2009, after serving as a hospitalist at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, she became the first director of the Division of Hospital Medicine for the Department of Pediatrics. She held that role until 2018, when she became the vice chair for Outreach Medicine.

She received her undergraduate degree from the Ohio University in Athens and earned her medical degree at Northwestern University in Chicago. She completed a residency at the Boston Combined Residency Program, where she was chief resident. She earned a Master of Management in Health Care at Vanderbilt University in 2019.