Rachel Thienprayoon Earns Schmidlapp Scholar Award for Research

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Rachel Thienprayoon, MD, an anesthesiologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, has been selected to receive a Schmidlapp Scholar Award from the Fifth Third Bank/Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Women Scholars Program.

Thienprayoon will be the 25th scholar to receive the award, which is given annually to a female faculty member at Cincinnati Children’s. The award is designed to support the academic career development of junior women faculty who have demonstrated academic potential and leadership skills.

Thienprayoon’s career goal is to decrease suffering in children who pass away in hospice care. She has been medical director of StarShine Hospice & Palliative Care since 2015.

“Children and their families need and deserve special care when they die,” said Thienprayoon. “My goal is to establish quality metrics in pediatric hospice care, to allow all hospices to benchmark the care they provide, and ultimately to increase the quality of hospice care provided to children nationally.”

Support will also continue for the 2017 Schmidlapp Scholar, Theodosia Kalfa, MD, PhD, a pediatric hematologist with the Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute. The award supports her research in developing new therapies for treating serious blood disorders in children.

Cincinnati Children’s established the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Women Scholars Program with a $500,000 grant from the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund, Fifth Third Bank, Trustee. The program is believed to be the first of its kind in the United States.

The Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund was created in 1907 by a gift from former Fifth Third president Jacob G. Schmidlapp in memory of his daughter, Charlotte, who died at the age of 19. Schmidlapp directed that grants be restricted to helping women establish themselves in life. The tradition and history of the fund has been to assist women by helping them gain an education and access to services.

The Cincinnati Children’s committee members congratulate the Schmidlapp Scholars and recognize the outstanding research careers of these women faculty.