Mary Allen Staat, MD, MPH

Director, International Adoption Center
Professor, UC Department of Pediatrics

mary.staat@cchmc.org
Board Certified

Burnet Campus
Liberty Campus

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About

Biography

I specialize in infectious diseases, international adoption and travel medicine. As a physician, I have a desire to help prevent, treat and cure infections in children. Dr. Arthur Frank, a preventive medicine specialist, inspired me to consider public health as a career. Drs. Larry Pickering and Ralph Feigin encouraged me to provide clinical care and pursue research in pediatrics.

My research involves the epidemiology of contagions in children. For instance, I am very interested in learning when children are infected with certain pathogens, how the infection impacts them, and how their immune system responds to it. To uncover answers to our questions, we perform surveillance and cohort studies in mothers and babies.

Our research goals are to better understand and identify the immune response to the flu in babies who were exposed to influenza for the first time either from a natural infection or from the flu vaccine. By understanding this response, we hope to develop a universal influenza vaccine.

I thought we only had part of the story with certain pathogens and that we only knew the typical presentation or researched the children with the most relentless symptoms. I was curious to answer these questions: Why do some children get an infection and have mild symptoms, while others may die from that same infection? Why do some children have a good response to a vaccine and others do not? I wanted to get the whole story via my research studies.

My colleagues and I are thankful for families who participate in our studies and help us learn how to prevent infections in the future. We are truly passionate about the research we are pursuing.

Our team has been awarded a large Cooperative Agreement grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to assess influenza in a maternal infant cohort in Cincinnati and Mexico City. Also, I was named Kulkarni Endowed Chair of Infectious Diseases at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

My research has been published in various respected journals, including American Journal of Infection Control, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Pediatrics International, and Pediatric Blood and Cancer.

MD: University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky., 1986.

MPH: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., 1991.

Residency: Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, 1986-1989; Preventive Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., 1990-1994.

Fellowship: Infectious Diseases, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, 1989-1990; Epidemiology, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Rockville, Md., 1990-1993.

Certification: Pediatrics, 1989; Preventive Medicine, 1996; Pediatric Infectious Diseases, 1999.

Interests

Helicobacter pylori; rotavirus epidemiology; travel medicine; infectious diseases of international adoptees

Services and Specialties

Infectious Diseases, International Adoption

Interests

Epidemiology of enteric infections; surveillance of infectious diseases

Research Areas

Infectious Diseases

Locations (2)

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Burnet Location

Burnet Campus

3333 Burnet Ave
Cincinnati, OH 45229

Liberty Campus

7777 Yankee Rd
Liberty Township, OH 45044

Insurance Information

Cincinnati Children's strives to accept a wide variety of health plans. Please contact your health insurance carrier to verify coverage for your specific benefit plan.

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Publications

Apnea After 2-Month Vaccinations in Hospitalized Preterm Infants: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Greenberg, RG; Rountree, W; Staat, MA; Schlaudecker, EP; Poindexter, B; Trembath, A; Laughon, M; Poniewierski, MS; Spreng, RL; Broder, KR; Randolph, EA; Aleem, S; Kilpatrick, R; Walter, EB. JAMA pediatrics. 2025; 179.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus Disease Burden and Nirsevimab Effectiveness in Young Children From 2023-2024. Moline, HL; Toepfer, AP; Tannis, A; Weinberg, GA; Staat, MA; Halasa, NB; Boom, JA; Klein, EJ; Williams, JV; Schuster, JE; Derado, G; McMorrow, ML; Dawood, FS; New Vaccine Surveillance Network Collaborators, . JAMA pediatrics. 2025; 179:179-187.

Pediatric Clinical Influenza Disease by Type and Subtype 2015-2020: A Multicenter, Prospective Study. Grioni, HM; Sullivan, E; Strelitz, B; Lacombe, K; Klein, EJ; Boom, JA; Sahni, LC; Michaels, MG; Williams, JV; Halasa, NB; Moline, HL; Campbell, AP; Olson, SM; Englund, JA. Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. 2025; 14:piae108.

Temporal Association Between Respiratory Viruses and Invasive Streptococcal Disease. Teoh, Z; Fenchel, M; Griffin, C; Ankrum, A; Prasanpanich, N; Toepfer, AP; Moline, H; Staat, MA; Scaggs Huang, F. 2025.

Infectious Disease Considerations in International Adoptees and Refugees. Staat, MA. Feigin and Cherry's Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, 9th Edition: 2-Volume Set. 2025.

Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in Children Identified by Preprocedural Testing at 5 US Children's Hospital Systems. Wang-Erickson, AF; Zhang, X; Dauer, K; Zerr, DM; Adler, A; Englund, JA; Lee, B; Schuster, JE; Selvarangan, R; Rohlfs, C; Boom, JA; Balasubramani, GK; Williams, JV; Michaels, MG. The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. 2025; 44:47-53.

Estimated Vaccine Effectiveness for Pediatric Patients With Severe Influenza, 2015-2020. Sumner, KM; Sahni, LC; Boom, JA; Halasa, NB; Stewart, LS; Englund, JA; Klein, EJ; Staat, MA; Schlaudecker, EP; Selvarangan, R; Noble, EK; Williams, JV; Michaels, MG; Olson, SM. JAMA network open. 2024; 7:e2452512.

Coupling antigens from multiple subtypes of influenza can broaden antibody and T cell responses. Mallajosyula, V; Chakraborty, S; Sola, E; Fong, RF; Shankar, V; Gao, F; Burrell, AR; Gupta, N; Wagar, LE; Mischel, PS; Chien, YH; Dekker, CL; Wang, TT; Davis, MM. Science. 2024; 386:1389-1395.

Prospective, multi-site evaluation of the Cepheid Xpert Xpress CoV-2 plus test on nasal and nasopharyngeal swabs. Greninger, AL; Larcena, A; Patel, A; Webster, B; Ulen, C; Green, DF; King, D; Patel, DR; McElvania, E; Harnett, G; Amador, YM; Rao, D; Liu, X; Raman, A. Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 2024; 62:e0121924.

On-time childhood vaccination before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in seven communities: Findings from the New Vaccine Surveillance Network. Hofstetter, AM; Klein, EJ; Strelitz, B; Selvarangan, R; Schuster, JE; Boom, JA; Sahni, LC; Halasa, NB; Stewart, LS; Staat, MA; Moline, H; Mirza, SA; Harrison, CJ; Englund, JA. Vaccine. 2024; 42:126455.