It is our great pleasure to announce that Dr. Constance (Connie) Monitto has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Monitto has been a faculty member in ACCM since 1994.

Dr. Monitto is a graduate of Harvard Medical School where she was a member of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). She completed a pediatrics residency at The Boston Children’s Hospital and followed this with residency in anesthesiology at The Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Monitto went on to a fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). In 1994, the Division of Pediatric Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins recruited Dr. Monitto to join our faculty.

Dr. Monitto has a career that spans clinical care, education, research, and administration. Her contributions in each of these areas has been of major importance to our Department and the field of pediatric anesthesia and pain management. Dr. Monitto has served as the Associate Clinical Director of the Division of Pediatric Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine since 2005. Between 2016 – 2021, she served as the Director of the Pediatric Acute Pain Service in the Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center. In that position she led and developed a clinical service that provides care to hospitalized children experiencing pain 24/7. Under her direction the Service has evolved substantially and supported establishment of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols for postoperative pediatric pain management, and the creation of a palliative sedation order set.

Dr. Monitto also has an impactful research career that includes robust and clinically relevant studies examining mechanisms of cancer cachexia and how opioids and cocaine affect the brain. Her opioid studies were key to understanding the effects of synthetic opioids and in utero drug exposure on blood flow in the developing brain. She led the first prospective study characterizing parent or nurse-controlled analgesia in pediatric patients and has spearheaded efforts to improve pediatric pain management practice across the United States through her clinical research.
On the national level, Dr. Monitto has made significant contributions to clinical initiatives in national societies. She is a member of the SPA, the SPPM, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the America Society of Anesthesiologists. Dr. Monitto has also served as a representative to “Wake Up Safe”, an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) certified Patient Safety Organization, and was the Hopkins coordinator for the Pediatric Perioperative Cardiac Arrest Registry. She has mentored numerous current faculty and ACCM faculty and trainee alumni who have gone on to establish highly successful careers in pediatric anesthesiology and pain medicine.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Monitto on this well-deserved promotion.