Dr. Uma Athale is a Professor for the Department of Pediatrics at McMaster University and a Consultant for McMaster Children’s Hospital and Hamilton Health sciences.

She completed her MBBS and then MD (pediatrics) from (then) University of Bombay. She then worked for 6 years at University teaching Hospital, Lusaka, Zambia. She completed her fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She joined McMaster University in 2001. Her clinical focus includes leukemia/lymphoma and hemoglobinopathy. She has initiated and developed the hemoglobinopathy program at MCH.

Her research interests include epidemiology and treatment of acute leukemia as well as outcome measures and supportive care in pediatric oncology, particularly thrombosis in children with cancer. In addition, her area of interest is international hematology/oncology. In Collaboration with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, she is a Consultant for Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Programs in Zambia and Zimbabwe with a focus on developing educational resources.

In this week's core session of Grand Rounds, Dr. Athale presents that making health system changes, whether small or large, is inevitable and often fraught with challenges. Amongst these challenges is failing to account for important impactful elements. She reviews Golden's Star Model of change as it pertains to health systems.