Cliff O’Callahan has been at Middlesex hospital since 2012 and is the Chair, Department of Pediatrics, Director of Nurseries, and the Pediatric Program Director at Middlesex Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program, Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UCONN, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Quinnipiac University. He leads the residency’s Global & Community Health Track. His academic interest is community health related and includes behavioral, oral, and nutrition wellness in young children through the community collaborative Opportunity Knocks, for which he is the Medical Advisor. His nursery and Baby Friendly work led to research in ankyloglossia, an area in which he has published and lectured internationally. Through his guidance the Infant Care Service – Middlesex’s neonatal hospitalist group – has been a leader among Connecticut’s community birthing hospitals, especially in our innovative care for children withdrawing from opiates.

O’Callahan spent three years after pediatric residency in Seattle working in refugee camps and then creating a community health system in the northern jungle area of Guatemala. This was followed by five years serving the Puyallup Tribe of Indians in Tacoma, Washington where he concurrently acted as the Indian Health Service Maternal Child Health consultant for the NW states.

He created and leads the Middlesex-Sayaxche Partnership (linking Middlesex with a Guatemalan rural district hospital), was a member of the inaugural group of US educators in the Rwandan Human Resources for Health project, spending the 2012-13 year helping to build the pediatric residency in Rwanda. This led to the new Middlesex-University of Rwanda partnership where he brings family medicine and pediatric residents to Kigali for a clinical rotation month each January.

He serves on the AAP’s CT state chapter’s Board and is a past Chair of the Section on International Child Health and the AAP’s Section Forum Management Committee. Dr. O’Callahan was an invited advisor on the American Board of Pediatrics Global Health Task Force and an AAP  Survive & Thrive ambassador. He has published extensively on global health and the ethics of working in resource limited settings. Publications also include local clinical studies on ankyloglossia and circumcision.