Featured Researcher — Leena Nahata, MD

Clinical research by Dr. Nahata, who is also an associate professor of Clinical Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, aims to further improve fertility counseling practices to help achieve better reproductive and psychosocial outcomes for these patients. Her published findings contribute to reproductive health practices and fertility guidelines through multiple national and international organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, Pediatric Initiative Network of the Oncofertility Consortium, Children’s Oncology Group, PanCareLIFE and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

Read on to learn more about Dr. Nahata and her research journey.

How did you decide to pursue a career in research?

Growing up, I loved working with children and spent my high school years volunteering at “Columbus Children’s Hospital” (when it was a smaller entity than it is today!), which solidified my decision to begin medical training to become a pediatrician.

I enjoyed many of my rotations while completing my pediatrics residency at Lurie Children’s Hospital, which made it difficult to choose a subspecialty, but I decided to pursue endocrinology. It was satisfying that most endocrine conditions could be diagnosed and treated successfully.

While I completed my pediatric endocrinology fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital, I met the family of a cancer survivor who was very concerned about fertility impairment — a problem that affects approximately 50% of male childhood cancer survivors and 15% of female survivors. This was the first time I’d been exposed to this issue.

Most children and adolescents aren’t actively thinking about their future parenthood goals, especially when their world is turned upside down by a life-altering medical condition. Yet most of these youth will survive, and they can face fertility impairment, which can impact them greatly as adults.

In the past five years, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about writing grants, designing and implementing various clinical research studies including randomized controlled trials, and running a lab. I continue to learn more every day!

What do you hope to accomplish next?

I hope to optimize fertility counseling practices across at-risk pediatric populations and develop and distribute family-centered fertility preservation decision tools for these youth. Currently, our research is primarily targeting adolescent boys with cancer. I hope to take what we learn and apply it to other pediatric cancer populations as well as those with a variety of other conditions like sickle cell disease, lupus and Turner syndrome.

I feel fortunate that I was able to take an area that I became passionate about during my training and make it the foundation of my academic career. I hope to invest more time and energy in leadership development and take on roles where I can work with students, residents, fellows and faculty who are starting their own academic careers to help them do the same.