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Harvey L. Levy, MD, is a leader in the implementation of newborn screening (NBS) and steadfast interest and activity in long-term follow-up and outcomes of patients who have been identified by NBS and treated
Dr. Levy qualified as MD at the Medical College of Georgia. After graduation he trained in pediatrics and subsequently, in metabolism. Following his metabolic training he joined the medical staff at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. At the MGH he engaged in clinical and basic research. Later he transferred his involvement in clinical research and care to the Children’s Hospital Boston where he currently serves fulltime as a Senior Physician and a Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Apart from his clinical appointments he has been well known for many years first as Director of the Massachusetts Metabolic Disorders Program and later as Chief of Biochemical Genetics in the New England Newborn Screening Program.
Dr. Levy has served on numerous local, regional and US national committees and task forces on newborn screening and metabolic disorders. He has been active in many professional societies, notably the Society for Inherited Metabolic Disorders as Director-at-Large and President. Dr. Levy’s scientific career has focused on the clinical follow-up of inborn errors identified in NBS as well as the evaluation of NBS methods. This has led him to concentrate on amino acid and carbohydrate disorders, in particular phenylketonuria, galactosemia, homocystinuria and methylmalonic acidemia. Dr. Levy’s studies concerning maternal PKU can be considered a milestone in the rethinking about the long term effects of newborn screening. In the more recent years Dr. Levy has been involved in the efforts to expand newborn screening by using modern technology of tandem mass spectrometry. He has been the (co-)author of over 200 scientific papers.
A strong advocate of the expansion of newborn screening, Levy was instrumental in Massachusetts becoming the first state to include 20 additional metabolic disorders in its NBS program. He is currently Chairman of the Standing Committee for the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) Newborn Screening Translational Research Network (NBSTRN). He also chairs the ACT Sheets Workgroup for ACMG. These invaluable sheets inform clinicians about the nature and treatment of the specific metabolic disorder identified.
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