Elaine Kamil, MD

Dr. Elaine Kamil is the former Director of Pediatric Nephrology and Program Director of the Pediatric Nephrology Fellowship Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, now Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai where she serves as the principal investigator on several glomerular diseases clinical trials. She is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and serves on the Medical School Admissions Committee at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Kamil is a long-standing member of the workforce committee and was on the Council of the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology. She is also an active member of the American Society of Nephrology where she served on the Post-Graduate Education Committee for six years. She is a reviewer for several Pediatric, Pediatric Nephrology, and Pediatric Transplantation journals. She joined the board of the Nephcure Foundation shortly after it was founded, supporting multiple patient education conferences in the US and Canada . Her research interests include glomerulonephritis, nephrotic syndrome and kidney transplantation.

She received her Bachelor’s and medical degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and was a medical student in an era where patients had to show their “social worth” to be offered chronic dialysis, and transplantation was in its infancy. She stayed on at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh for her pediatric training where the pediatric nephrologist’s brilliance, red beard, and black eye patch inspired her to pursue a career in pediatric nephrology. She completed a clinical fellowship in pediatric nephrology at UCLA medical center before completing a research fellowship in renal immunopathology at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. One of the problems that we explored then - the mechanisms of glomerular injury, scarring and loss of function, continues to be an important area of investigation today. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has been her medical home since 1990 when she joined the pediatric nephrology division. She is grateful to have been a part of a medical center that has enthusiastically supported the scientific and humanistic practice of medicine.

A special word of thanks to the children and families that we work with every day. There is almost nothing more difficult than having a seriously ill child. The strength, resilience, wisdom, hope, and good humor that our patients and their families possess is a constant inspiration and fuels the efforts of our team to provide the best medical care and to keep looking for better solutions to the problems of the pediatric kidney patient.

Los Angeles, California