Primary Children's Hospital
Newborn Intensive Care Unit
100 N Mario Capecchi Drive
Salt Lake City, UT 84113

Camille Fung, M.D. is an Associate Professor in the Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, at the University of Utah School of Medicine. In addition to caring for sick newborns in 3 level III & IV NICUs in the Salt Lake valley as a neonatologist, she has a basic science research interest in determining the effects of intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) on hippocampal neuronal development. This is important because IUGR infants are at increased risk for cognitive delays particularly affecting learning and memory, functions that are performed by the hippocampus, but the underlying mechanisms leading to such delays remain elusive. Due to inaccessibility of fetal/neonatal brain tissue, she uses a mouse model of IUGR that she developed in 2010, which mimics human pregnancy-induced hypertension, to study embryonic and postnatal hippocampal neurogenesis and synaptic development. In addition to understanding IUGR's effects on the central nervous system (CNS), she has collaborations both within and outside of the University of Utah investigating the mechanisms of IUGR-induced retinopathy, necrotizing enterocolitis, and chronic lung disease/pulmonary hypertension. She holds a NIH-sponsored co-Investigator R01 grant on the last complication. Relating to her basic science interest on CNS function, she has quality improvement and clinical research interests on neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS). The incidence of NOWS has skyrocketed across the U.S., attributed to prescription opioid use and misuse. She has worked closely with interdisciplinary teams both at Intermountain and University Healthcare systems to implement a care process model on NOWS management.

No conflicts of interest (08/25/2022)