Internal Medicine Doctors near Paramus, NJ

Biography: I became a pediatrician because I treasure the growth and changes that children go through from birth to adulthood. Being part of making those years healthier and safer is a privilege that I value every day. I am a general pediatrician at Columbia West Side Pediatrics on West 86th Street. During my time there, I have nurtured it from a small, single-physician office to a thriving seven-physician practice that forms the core of Columbia's general pediatrics presence outside of the main hospital. My colleagues and I provide high-quality, seamlessly integrated care to children from birth through 20 years, whether they need routine care and vaccinations or have complex medical conditions. Because we are an experienced group with a strong history of collaboration with our specialist colleagues, we can help you with all of your child's needs, from management of therapy for congenital heart disease or rare genetic anomalies, to optimizing your child's asthma medications, or just choosing the right multivitamin. My mission as a pediatrician is to provide care for the whole child: no matter what diagnosis a child may have been assigned, she is still a child, whose parents may need advice about sleep training, solid foods, school success, or sibling rivalry. My goal is to ensure that families get exceptional medical care while still recognizing each child's unique characteristics and needs. In addition to my clinical work, I am the associate chief medical information officer (CMIO) for ColumbiaDoctors. In this capacity, I work on the design and implementation of electronic health records for the medical system. Most recently, this work culminated in the February 2020 launch of Epic, the electronic health record that has unified all clinical systems, both inpatient and outpatient, at Columbia University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital network. Epic makes our medical system capable of efficient and highly integrated care coordination, enables robust communication across specialties, and ensures excellent continuity of care for patients at all levels of care. My area of focus is the optimization of clinician EHR use, with the goals of improving quality of care, increasing physician and patient satisfaction with the EHR, and facilitating communication between providers sharing responsibility for patients.

Biography: I began my academic career following cardiology fellowship as junior faculty at Columbia University Medical Center where I helped start the Nuclear Cardiology laboratory which was one of the first laboratories to perform perfusion imaging and gated blood pool scintigraphy in NYC. I remained at CU for 18 years doing clinical research, involved in phase II and phase III trials of perfusion imaging agents such as sestamibi as well as early radiolabeled antibody clinical trials targeting myocardial necrosis in patients with acute MI. I also helped develop radiotracers using relevant animal models of ischemic heart disease, atherosclerosis, and cardiac transplantation. I left CU to go to University of Alabama at Birmingham as Director of Nuclear Cardiology and stayed for 2 years where I also did some work with the cardiac MRI program. From UAB I moved to Brown University/Rhode Island Hospital as Director of Nuclear Cardiology where I stayed for 10 years having the opportunity to also direct their preclinical imaging laboratory. In 2005 I returned to a faculty position at CU. I have had a long interest to develop and apply novel imaging probes targeting sites in vasculature and myocardium that are important in clinical disease. I have performed preclinical experimental studies imaging myocardial tissue hypoxia, apoptosis, angiogenesis and RAGE expression. I have had a particular interest in imaging the vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque using radionuclide labeled probes in mouse and pig models of atherosclerosis, investigating uptake of tracers targeting apoptosis, metalloproteinase activation, expression of Receptor for Advanced Glycated Endproducts (RAGE), and selective VEGF receptor expression. With institutional support from the Department of Medicine and Division of Cardiology I set up a preclinical molecular imaging core laboratory that offers micro-CT, micro-SPECT/CT, and optical imaging resources for investigators with animals outside the barrier at Columbia University Health Sciences. I have had continuous NIH funding for about 20 years. I am currently PI (or co-PI) on two R01s: to using imaging to detect therapeutic effect of a novel antibody blocking RAGE to improve hind limb blood flow in a diabetic pig model of PAD, and in collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Jeanine D'Armiento, to perform a phase II clinical trial of 99mTc rhAnnexin-128 (Advanced Accelerator Applications, France) to image lung apoptosis in patients with COPD under an individual IND (L Johnson). I have published over 100 papers.

Biography: Dr. Sirota completed her undergraduate degree in psychology at Wesleyan University (2002). She graduated from Mount Sinai Medical School in 2006 and completed her residency in Pediatrics there in 2009. She holds a Masters in Public Health from the Mailman School (2011).

Biography: Dr. Fojo received his MD and PhD from the University of Miami and completed internal medicine training at Washington University School of Medicine / Barnes Hospital. He joined the National Cancer Institute in 1982 as a Clinical Associate in the Medicine Branch and after training with Drs. Ira Pastan and Michael Gottesman, became a Principal Investigator in the Medicine Branch of the National Cancer Institute. As a Principal Investigator he went on to establish a highly successful translational clinical program that began by exploring agents to reverse drug resistance, continued with work on the optimal use of Taxol®, and the development of novel microtubule-targeting agents and has focused on the development of therapies for endocrine and neuroendocrine cancers. Dr. Fojo has expertise in the management of patients with adrenocortical cancer, malignant pheochromocytoma and other neuroendocrine malignancies, and thyroid cancer. These cancers also comprise areas of very active basic science interest given their unique properties and the possibilities to target such cancers more precisely. The ultimate goal is to develop novel therapies for these often very refractory cancers so that there will be additional options available for treatment for patients with these cancers. Ongoing laboratory efforts are focused on developing such novel therapies to treat patients with adrenal cancer, pheochromocytoma and a spectrum of neuroendocrine tumors. In the laboratory Dr. Fojo has also worked to understand the molecular basis of drug resistance, and was involved in the original work relating to several ABC transporters. Additionally, his laboratory originally identified rearrangements involving the MDR-1 gene as a novel mechanism of drug resistance in several cancers, a molecular event recently demonstrated as very important in ovarian cancer. He has also been very involved in research on microtubule-targeting agents, helping to establish as a novel paradigm the interference with microtubule trafficking, rather than mitosis, for the mechanism of action for these important drugs. In addition to his clinical expertise Dr. Fojo has been very interested in the design, conduct and interpretation of oncology clinical trials and in collaboration with Wilfred Stein, PhD and Susan Bates, MD has helped to pioneer a novel method of analysis that dissects rates of tumor growth and regression as concurrent events. Related to this he has also written extensively about the cost of cancer therapeutics, the magnitude of the problem and how this might be addressed. Dr. Fojo served as Program Director for the Medical Oncology Fellowship Program at the National Cancer Institute, the largest fellowship program in the NIH and one of the largest medical oncology programs in the United States. Over the years Dr. Fojo has helped to train more than 350 medical oncologists.

Biography: Dr. Stoopler received his Bachelor of Science degree from Tulane University in 1971 and his medical degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1975. He completed his residency at North Shore University Hospital/Memorial Hospital and his oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City before joining the Columbia faculty in 1980. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, the International Society of Gastrointestinal Oncology, the American Federation for Clinical Research and the Southwest Oncology Group. Dr. Stoopler is involved in patient care, clinical research and teaching on the medical oncology service.

Biography: Marcus Pereira, MD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at CUMC and the Director of Clinical Services in the Division of Infectious Diseases. In addition, he is the Medical Director of the Transplant Infectious Diseases Program, where he oversees the development of infection prophylaxis and treatment protocols for immunocompromised patients. His areas of interest include the management of multi-drug resistant bacterial and fungal infections, as well as drug resistant CMV infections and more recently the impact of COVID-19 in transplant recipients. He has also collaborated in important multi-center studies as well as the 2025 International CMV Guidelines, sponsored by the Transplantation Society. Dr. Pereira is an active member in national societies such as the American Society of Transplantation and Infectious Disease Society of America, and is an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation.

Biography: Allan Schwartz, MD is a Cardiologist, Chief, Division of Cardiology, Vice Chair, Department of Medicine and Seymour Milstein and Harold Ames Hatch Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center/Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He graduated magna cum laude in physics and mathematics from the City College of New York in 1967. He received an MA in physics in 1968 from Harvard University and an MD from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1974, where he was awarded the Robert Loeb and Janeway Prizes. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Presbyterian Hospital and he received a fellowship in clinical and research cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Schwartz returned to the College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1978 as an academic clinical cardiologist. Dr. Schwartz has been vigorously involved in patient care, education of medical students, medical housestaff and cardiology fellows, as well as clinical research with a current focus on valvular heart disease. He has progressively assumed various leadership and administrative roles serving as Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Associate Director of the Division of Cardiology and the Seymour Milstein and Harold Ames Hatch Professor of Clinical Medicine. Dr. Schwartz has also played an important administrative role within the Department of Medicine, serving as Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine. Dr. Schwartz has been the driving force behind the development of the NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center Cardiovascular Service Line and the development of the new Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center. Under Dr. Schwartz's leadership, there has been a major increase in the breadth of cardiology clinical and research activities, resulting in the Division of Cardiology's attaining international prominence and emerging as one of the leading cardiology training centers in the United States.

Biography: Dr. Raza is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the MDS Center at Columbia University in New York, NY. She started her research in Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) in 1982 and moved to Rush University, Chicago, Illinois in 1992, where she was the Charles Arthur Weaver Professor in Oncology and Director, Division of Myeloid Diseases. The MDS Program, along with a Tissue Repository containing more than 50,000 samples from MDS and acute leukemia patients was successfully relocated to the University of Massachusetts in 2004 and to Columbia University in 2010. Before moving to New York, Dr. Raza was the Chief of Hematology Oncology and the Gladys Smith Martin Professor of Oncology at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester. She has published the results of her laboratory research and clinical trials in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Blood, Cancer, Cancer Research, the British Journal of Hematology, Leukemia, and Leukemia Research. Dr. Raza serves on numerous national and international panels as a reviewer, consultant, and advisor and is the recipient of a number of awards.