Dr. Bonita F. Stanton joined Seton Hall University and Hackensack Meridian Health as founding dean of the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University and president of Academic Enterprise at Hackensack Meridian Health in March 2016. Prior to assuming this role, Dr. Stanton served in leadership roles for 14 years at Wayne State University School of Medicine where she had been vice dean for research, chair of the department of pediatrics and pediatrician in chief, Children’s Hospital of Michigan and president of University Pediatrics.
Before joining Wayne State, Dr. Stanton had been chair of the department of pediatrics at West Virginia University School of Medicine and division chief of general pediatrics and vice chair of the department of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. From 1983 to 1988, Dr. Stanton served in Bangladesh as a senior researcher at the International Health for Diarrheal Diseases Research where she led the Urban Volunteer Program in the treatment and prevention of diarrheal diseases in urban slums and a large diarrheal prevention and intervention research program. For her last two years in Bangladesh, she was the World Bank’s Maternal Child Health Specialist. Prior to moving to Bangladesh, Dr. Stanton held the position of medical director of Yale University’s Hill Health Center and attended on Yale’s pediatric infectious disease service.
Dr. Stanton completed her pediatric infectious disease fellowship at Yale and residency training at University Hospital of Cleveland’s Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital. She received her M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine and her B.A. in biology from Wellesley College. She has authored over 350 peer-reviewed manuscripts and edited several textbooks including Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. Since 2012, she has served as consulting editor for Pediatric Clinics of North America and since 2010 has been a member of the editorial board of Clinical Keys. She has served on numerous national educational committees such as the American Board of Pediatrics Global Task Force and Planning Committee and the Macy Conference on Pediatric Professional Education. She has served on and chaired/presided over multiple national organizations, including serving as the president of the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs as well as chair of the Women in Pediatrics Federation of Pediatric Organizations Task Force on Women in Pediatrics. From 2008 to 2014, she served on the advisory board to the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health, Washington, D.C.
Dr. Stanton has been continuously funded as a principal investigator on one or more U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards since 1990 and served on and/or chaired multiple NIH study sections. She has consulted for numerous national and international agencies including WHO, the World Bank, UNICEF, Elsevier and USAID.