Women’s History Month – Celebrating Brittani Seynnaeve, MD, MS

As we continue to recognize Women’s History Month, please join us in celebrating our 2021 MRF Career Development Award Grant Recipient, Brittani Seynnaeve, MD, MS.

Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics; Director, Pediatric Melanoma Program

“I am grateful for the opportunity to care for children and their families as a pediatric oncologist and am humbled by the incredible resiliency and strength these fierce children display in the most challenging of times. Facing a cancer diagnosis is difficult in all circumstances, though can be exceedingly difficult in situations when a family is told that their child has a cancer that for decades has been understudied and overlooked. My passion is to fill this void and work to understand the unknowns in pediatric melanoma and related atypical melanocytic tumors.

I am also grateful for the opportunity to have a platform in medicine to be able to study pediatric melanoma, and for organizations such as the Melanoma Research Foundation to support this work. Without this support, our goals toward understanding the disease and improving the outcomes for children facing a diagnosis of melanoma would be impossible.

As we mark Women’s History Month, I reflect on the progress we have made to allow women such as myself to have a role in medicine and to do the work I have the honor to do today. In 1910, women accounted for only 6% of US physicians, which remained the same for 50 years. Today, women account for almost half of US physicians, yet lack of support for women participating in research contributes to slower progress in research and into leadership positions. I promise to strive to close this gap and will be able to due to the continued support from the melanoma community, a community which I am proud to be a part of and serve through continued research and patient care.”