DOCTOR OF THE MONTH
Bamidele Kammen, MD Pediatric Radiologist
Bamidele Kammen, MD, was 5 when she and her physician parents moved from Nigeria to New York where she grew up in White Plains. Dr. Kammen attended Harvard University where she received her SB degree in Engineering Sciences. She decided on a medical career and attended Harvard Medical School where she also conducted an additional two years of research in electrophysiology as a Howard Hughes Medical Research Fellow.
Solving puzzles, which had originally drawn her to engineering, drew her to pediatric diagnostic imaging, which she finds challenging and fun. Dr. Kammen did her internship at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ, and a radiology residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
She also found time for a special trip back to Nigeria, to be married in Ifaki, her grandmother’s hometown. In addition to a celebration and a time for her American husband to get acquainted with Nigerian relatives, it was a chance to use her nearly fluent skill in Yoruba, one of the country’s major languages.
Back in the States, Dr. Kammen headed west for her fellowship, when her husband, Dan, accepted a professorship in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Kammen did a fellowship in Pediatric Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and then joined Children’s Hospital Oakland.
Pediatrics appealed to Dr. Kammen all along. For her, that appeal has found its highest expression at Children’s Hospital. “Here at Children’s Hospital, the focus is on the child,” said Dr. Kammen. “The subspecialists that I work with here are exceptional. This is where I would bring my child. I wouldn’t think twice about it.”
She enjoys working with the latest equipment and the emphasis that her group takes to modify imaging protocols for children. “Fluoroscopy at Children’s is state-of-the-art, a pulsed fluoro machine,” said Dr. Kammen. “That allows us to minimize the patient’s exposure to radiation. We also have a state-of-the-art 16-detector CT scanner and we obtain excellent images using the smallest doses possible.”
Dr. Kammen enjoys spending free time with her husband and two daughters. Recently, she took her 10-year-old to Nigeria to meet family and experience the culture. She also loves to get up early in the morning to run, swim or bike. She recently participated in her first triathlon.
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