2025 Annual Report

I am delighted and honored to present the 2025 Annual Report of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. I began as chair of the department midway through the academic year. Many programs and initiatives in this report were well underway when I arrived, and I credit my predecessors with building and growing a robust department.

I watched many of the highlights you will read about in the following pages unfold in real time. Seeing them compiled into this publication leaves me proud of the accomplishments of my new colleagues and enthusiastic about our department’s future.

Clinically, we increased the number of our primary care and specialty visits by 9% over the previous year. The recent addition of the UW Health Kids Beaver Dam Clinic, located about 40 miles north of Madison, expanded our pediatric primary care services by about 4,000 new patients. The number of children cared for at American Family Children’s Hospital continues to increase.

In a time when some pediatric training programs struggle to fill positions, our educational mission is thriving. The Pediatrics Residency Program saw an application rate 23% higher than the national average and filled all positions. Across our 11 fellowship specialties, we received 418 applications, conducted 161 interviews, and welcomed 15 new fellows. Undergraduate medical education efforts play an essential role in developing a pathway for new pediatricians. Last year, we formally advised 17 medical students applying for pediatric or pediatric-adjacent specialties, representing about 10% of the 2025 UW School of Medicine and Public Health graduating class.

Our research program has maintained momentum despite uncertainty at the national level: total research funding from all sources increased by more than $1.6 million since last year. In the last decade, our department has received nearly a
quarter of a billion dollars in research awards from the National Institutes of Health, placing us in the top 20 Pediatrics departments nationally.

I like to say that while children are only 20% of the population, they are 100% of the future. The members of our Department of Pediatrics are invested in that future through every aspect of our work. I hope you find this report as inspiring as I do. Thank you for reading, and on, Wisconsin!

John Williams, MD
Professor and Department Chair