{"id":989,"date":"2016-02-22T21:35:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T21:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mc.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltmedicine\/?p=989"},"modified":"2021-08-11T19:41:09","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T19:41:09","slug":"putting-the-puzzle-pieces-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/putting-the-puzzle-pieces-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo by Daniel Dubois<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although not part of\u00a0the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, Jill Simmons, M.D., encounters medical mysteries that have the makings of a science fiction film or novel.<\/p>\n

As a pediatric endocrinologist with a special interest in metabolic bone disorders, she sees patients with rare, severe medical conditions. Included among those are a child who, as an infant, had no visibly detectable bone on an X-ray image due to a condition called hypophosphatasia and children who suffer from a fragile bone disorder, osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), that can leave them with dozens of bone fractures before elementary school.<\/p>\n

With her passion for people and desire for intellectual challenges, pediatric endocrinology was a perfect fit for Simmons, who takes pride in educating and supporting families while researching better therapies for patients.<\/p>\n

Patients like Janelly Amador Martinez, a little girl who was born with the most severe form of hypophosphatasia, are a reminder why she chose to practice medicine.<\/p>\n

Janelly, now 9, has been followed since infancy by a care team at Monroe Carell Jr. Children\u2019s Hospital at Vanderbilt that includes Simmons. Along with the loving care of her parents and an experimental drug therapy, Janelly has been able to develop bone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why we get into medicine\u2014to truly make a difference in the life of a child. To go from having no bone to bone, that\u2019s one of the most incredible things I have seen as a physician,\u201d\u2008Simmons said.<\/p>\n

Medicine wasn\u2019t her first career choice. Simmons, a Knoxville native, thought she would be a stockbroker, but quickly abandoned that path after one economics class, she says lightheartedly.<\/p>\n

As an undergraduate at University of Tennessee Knoxville, volunteer work at a local children\u2019s hospital whetted her appetite for pediatrics.<\/p>\n

\u201cEndocrinology allows me to use my brain, while building good, long-term relationships with children and their families,\u201d\u00a0said Simmons, an associate professor in the Ian M. Burr Division\u00a0of Endocrinology. \u201cIt\u2019s also like a puzzle. If I can figure out what\u2019s missing, generally I can replace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine and completed her pediatric residency and fellowship in Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes at the University of Colorado Children\u2019s Hospital and Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes.<\/p>\n

Simmons joined Children\u2019s Hospital in 2006.<\/p>\n

In research, Simmons splits her work in to two tracks: bone health and diabetes.<\/p>\n

As director of the Pediatric Program for Metabolic Bone Disease, she does a lot of research around bone disorders, including hypophosphatasia and OI.<\/p>\n

She is about to initiate a study of subcutaneous drug therapy injections every six months to treat OI, whereas current therapy requires a five-hour infusion therapy every two to four months.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overriding goal for me is to improve the health of children with metabolic bone disease or secondary bone abnormalities due to other disease processes or therapies for those diseases,\u201d Simmons said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although not part of\u00a0the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, Jill Simmons, M.D., encounters medical mysteries that have the makings of a science fiction film or novel. As a pediatric endocrinologist with a special interest in metabolic bone disorders, she sees patients with rare, severe medical conditions. Included among those are a child who, as an infant, had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-related-content","category-winter-2016"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcDnub-fX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3119,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions\/3119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}