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Pediatric Surgeon Harrison Wins Innovation Award

May 07, 2002
News Office: Laurie Itow (415) 353-4948

Dr. Michael Harrison, director of the Fetal Treatment Center at UCSF Children's Hospital, has won the 2002 Jacobson Innovation Award of the American College of Surgeons (ACS).

The award, which will be issued on June 7 in Chicago, honors living surgeons who are innovators of a new development or technique in any field of surgery. The Board of Regents of the ACS acknowledged Harrison's major contributions to science, medicine and education in fetal surgery and the development of fetoscopic technical interventions.

Harrison also was named the recipient of the 2002 Journal of Pediatric Surgery Award of the American Pediatric Surgical Association.

Harrison is professor of surgery and pediatrics at UCSF, and chief of the Division of Pediatric Surgery at UCSF Children's Hospital. He is a specialist in fetal surgery, which he pioneered with his colleagues at UCSF. For the past 18 years, Harrison has studied how the natural history of a number of life-threatening fetal abnormalities alter normal physical processes. He has developed techniques for both open surgical repair and minimally invasive surgical repair of many fetal abnormalities.

In addition, Harrison's team developed in utero stem cell transplantation to treat immune system deficiencies, enzyme deficiencies and abnormal hemoglobin in the blood. The UCSF Fetal Treatment Center has an international reputation for treating complex birth defects before and after birth.

He graduated cum laude from Yale University and magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School. He completed his surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and his pediatric surgery fellowship at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. He is board certified in surgery, pediatric surgery and critical care.