This month, we had the pleasure of sitting down with one of our new board members, Dr. Kathryn Cheek. Her passion and commitment to leveraging technology and incorporating whole-person care practices into the world of pediatrics for the last 37+ years has inspired generations of providers. Learn more about her and what she will bring to GaHIN in our Q&A session below.
Q: Tell us about yourself and your background.
My name is Kathryn Cheek, and I’ve been in general pediatrics for almost 40 years! My husband and I live outside of Columbus, Georgia, on a farm, which we love. We have two children and seven wonderful grandchildren.
I completed my undergrad at the University of North Carolina and then moved to Augusta for a job as a medical technologist and worked in the lab at the Talmadge Hospital. I did that for three years before starting medical school in Augusta. I got my Master’s degree and taught there.
My husband is an OB/GYN. We actually graduated medical school one weekend, got married the next weekend, and then moved to Atlanta to start our internship at Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta.
I did my pediatric residency at what is now Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and I served as chief resident there from 1985-1986. Shortly after that, we moved to Columbus and have lived here ever since.
I served as president of the Georgia American Academy of Pediatrics and have been very active in the GaAAP my entire career. I’m also the former chairperson of the Pediatric Healthcare Improvement Coalition of Georgia.
Q: How did you originally connect with GaHIN?
I learned of GaHIN through the Pediatric Healthcare Improvement Coalition, which includes all five children's hospitals in Georgia. We’ve been working together for over 10 years to improve technological advancements in Georgia to make children's lives better, and it has really been a wonderful thing. During my tenure as president there, I went to a meeting at The Morehouse School of Medicine and met Dr. Mac, who was the board chair for GaHIN at that time.
Q: What is your general perception of technology, and why do you think you are always at the forefront of it in your practice?
I’ve just always seen the benefits of technology and how it can make life easier — all the way back to keyboards and typing in school. Our practice was one of the first to adopt EHRs in the area. The first EHR we used had templates and workflows for both sick and well-child visits built in, and that was big at the time. But eventually, we had more data to add and outgrew those capabilities. We wanted immunization data and recent advancements in medical knowledge in the system, and that's how it’s always been for me. I see the benefits and want it all.
Unfortunately, no one system is perfect, but the newer generations of doctors have grown up with technology. They demand user-friendliness that we haven’t always had. I’m excited to see where we go from here, especially when you think about the inroads made with AI capabilities and cloud-based technologies.
Q: What do you think holds us back as an industry when it comes to technology adoption and advancement?
Standards! Well, there are a lot of reasons, but the lack of national standards is a big one. The other challenge is a lot of doctors who didn’t grow up with the technology have been slower to adopt and leverage new capabilities. Many my age used a transcription service instead of the EHR at the point of care. The newer generation has grown up with phones and computers, so they don't think twice. It’s exciting to see where we are going as an industry.
Q: What excited you about the opportunity to join the GaHIN board of directors?
Many things, but specifically, the potential impact we can have on kids in the foster care system with the incorporation of social data and whole-person records. Children in the foster care system have always had a special place in my heart.
In my practice, we served a variety of populations, including Medicaid patients. One particular instance serves as a reminder to me of how the system failed and the opportunities we now have within the GaHIN.
I had a set of twins come in around nine months old. One had a shunt from his brain to his stomach. His sister had a feeding tube in her stomach. No one had any data on these babies. No one knew the medications they were on, what food should go in the tube, what the underlying conditions and potential risks to these children…nothing.
These stories and situations were unfortunately, much more common than not, and that is ultimately what drove me back to GaHIN.
Q: Digging into that concept a bit more…How important is the ability to share social data as well as clinical data?
If you don't have the complete picture of a patient, you can’t provide the highest quality of medical care. It’s just that simple. It would be like saying to a child, ‘here’s a hotdog,’ and it’s actually just the bun. You cannot see the whole picture without considering the social aspect.
During COVID, we switched to telemedicine for some of our visits, and it made me realize and appreciate this concept even more. While I may have always known a patient was being raised by a single mother or living in a lower-income area, what I didn’t know was what was going on inside the home…maybe the grandmother was in the background in a wheelchair with four other kids running around, and the mother was just doing her best to take care of everyone with the resources she had. That environment is a hugely important consideration when it comes to treatment options for conditions like ADHD and when recommending practical solutions for both the child and the caregiver.
GaHIN is doing exactly that…providing insights we’ve not had available in more traditional healthcare settings and enabling whole-person care. That’s what we’re here for.
Q: What does ‘whole person care’ mean to you, and why is it important?
Whole-person care is what the practice of medicine should have always been. It’s about aligning all elements of a person's care team — from specialists to general practitioners to social workers — and ensuring we’re all on the same page. It prevents fragmentation, which leads to less burnout. Having the whole picture of a patient allows us to not just check the boxes based on what is right in front of us at the time, but get to the root of what may be causing some of the presenting issues.
Q: Any other areas you’re excited about pursuing with GaHIN?
I was extremely excited to hear the updates about direct patient interaction and connection to GaHIN. Allowing patients to go into the system and access resource directories and find services for themselves is huge! We still have work to do to eliminate the stigma around certain things, and patients may not always share everything with their providers, but now they will still be able to find and access the services they need and maintain their desired privacy.
About Dr. Kathryn Cheek:
Dr. Kathryn K. Cheek has been dedicated to the private practice of Pediatrics in Columbus, Georgia, for the past 37 years. Dr. Cheek completed her undergraduate education at the University of North Carolina and earned a Master of Health Education from the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. She received her Doctor of Medicine from the same institution and completed her postgraduate training in pediatric residency at Emory University's affiliated hospitals, where she served as Chief Resident in Pediatrics from 1985 to 1986.
Dr. Cheek is a past president of the Georgia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (GaAAP) and a past chairperson of the Pediatric Healthcare Improvement Coalition of Georgia (PHIC). She has been a member of the Georgia Composite Medical Board since 2021. She has served as a board member of the Georgia Department of Public Health since 2011. She serves on the executive committee nationally on the Council of Clinical Information Technology (COCIT) for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Outside of her professional roles, Dr. Cheek is married, has three adult children, and cherishes the joys of having seven grandchildren. Through her experience and commitment to pediatric healthcare, she hopes to continue to work to inspire those who practice medicine to continually strive to improve healthcare by providing comprehensive, compassionate, and coordinated care for all the children of Georgia.