CHI is presenting a series of blog articles on the speakers who will be addressing families attending the Fourth Congenital Hyperinsulinism Family Conference March 17 and 18, 2012, in Philadelphia, PA. In this article, we present Dr. Paul Thornton.
I first met Dr. Paul Thornton at the inaugural Congenital Hyperinsulinism Family Conference in Philadelphia in June of 2003. I was struck by how well he communicates with adults and children alike, and his ability to convey fairly complicated scientific information in terms that all can understand. For that reason he is an ideal speaker for our family conferences. Dr. Thornton has been a speaker at every program sponsored by Congenital Hyperinsulinism International in Philadelphia, San Diego, New York and Boston, and he has been a very active member of the Congenital Hyperinsulinism International Scientific Advisory Group.
Dr. Thornton has spent almost his entire medical career working on congenital hyperinsulinism (HI). His early professional years were spent in Dublin, Ireland where he went to medical school and trained as a resident. He then moved on to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) where he was initially a fellow and later on staff. At CHOP he had the opportunity to work with Dr. Lester Baker and Dr. Charles Stanley, two of the leading experts in HI.
With the knowledge and experience he gained at CHOP and in Dublin, Dr. Thornton moved on to Fort Worth, Texas where he has built an HI center. Dr. Thornton is currently Medical Director of Endocrinology and Diabetes as well as the Congenital Hyperinsulinism Center at Cook Children’s Hospital. In that role Dr. Thornton has overseen the care of many children with HI.
Dr. Thornton is a physician who understands the importance of collaboration. He truly believes that the different HI centers around the world have so much to learn from each other. This openness to working together is one of the reasons he plays a very important role as part of the Congenital Hyperinsulinism International Scientific Advisory Group.
In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Thornton has spent much of his professional career involved in scientific research and is the author of dozens of journal articles on HI. He has also lectured extensively.
We’re so thrilled that Dr. Thornton will be with us once again at the upcoming conference in March and his participation in the conference should not be missed.
