Marc Thomas DiSabella, DO, a born clinician-educator, grew up in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, a small rural town In the Pocono mountains, the son of a dad who worked in air quality at the Department of Environmental Protections and a mom who served as a Bell telephone operator. His older brother, known for intellectual prowess, famous for a near perfect score on college boards in seventh grade with matriculation into University of Pittsburgh on a full scholarship in engineering, followed by post-graduate work at Cornell University.
Dr. DiSabella, instead, was gripped by the decline of his maternal grandfather, the beloved fire chief, with Alzheimer disease and ALS, recalling the salute at his funeral as a nine-year-old boy. He was inspired further by his paternal grandfather, a big burly welder with the gentleness of a saint, and his great uncle Mikey, who became a Franciscan monk and took a vow of poverty after being widowed at a young age. These towering figures of service, grace, and humility shaped Dr. DiSabella’s views on life, and, ultimately legacy, on his chosen career, child neurology.
Dr. DiSabella proceeded, in family tradition, to college at the University of Pittsburgh, majoring in biochemistry and mastering basic science in a pharmacology lab of two amazing MD, PhD scientists from Bulgaria, and swayed into medicine, given his natural proclivities and prodding by others who recognized his talents. He matriculated at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where he was struck by a lecture given at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Cooper University Hospital by the late pediatric neurologist Dr. James Wark, an early role model for Dr. DiSabella, who personified genuine empathy in his care for patients. Dr. DiSabella did his pediatric residency at Cooper in Camden, New Jersey, serving the poorest city then in the US, riddled with HIV and heroin. Seeing the ravages of poverty, homelessness, and disease in life, starting with repeated neonatal fatalities, Dr. DiSabella had to be lulled back into completing his residency by an omniscient program director, Dr. William Graessle. This Program Director understood that Dr. DiSabella’s degree of caring meant he had to fulfill his destiny and remain in medicine. This has served as the template by which Dr. DiSabella serves his trainees, mentees, and patients. His training then followed in the pediatric neurology residency at Cincinnati Children’s, where he appreciated the fantastic knowledge base of Program Director Dr. Mark Shapiro, the wisdom and kindness of Chief Ton DeGrauw, and the outstanding clinical and research headache program that became his clinical focus.
His career then took him to Children’s National in 2008, where his affinity for teaching was recognized early, leading him to ascend rapidly to Associate Program Director and then succeed one of us (PLP) as the training Program Director in 2010. He received the Neurology Educator of the Year award, voted by trainees, the first faculty member to receive this award in their first year. He then completed the Master Teacher Leadership and Development Program in 2012 at the George Washington School of Education and Human Development. His early projects were the development of a neurology board review course that became city-wide, a variety of resident quality improvement projects, a curriculum composed of evidence-based lectures and protocols, reorganization of continuity clinics, and doubling the size of the residency program. These innovations drove program recruitment and quality, and they were published in a first-of-its-kind article, DiSabella et al: Using Qualitative Inquiry to Enhance a Child Neurology Residency, J Child Neuro 2018. All told, he has trained over 50 child neurology residents from Children’s National, as well as from the military. His weekly intake case conference easily became the best teaching conference in the center.
Dr. DiSabella’s departmental role naturally shifted from education to operations, given his gift for administration. He simultaneously mentored Associate Program Director, Dr. Jeffrey Strelzik, into his own completion of the very same Master Teacher and Leadership Program to his successor as Program Director. In the words of Dr. Strelzik in his support letter:
“He has taught me what it means to be a true professional. When it came time to graduate from residency and look for my first attending position, he reached out to colleagues at institutions that I was considering, wrote strong letters of support for me, met with me frequently to discuss the interview process, and was very open and honest about his own experiences. Those meetings and his guidance were invaluable. At each of those interviews, people raved about Dr. DiSabella as a clinician, educator, leader, and all-around person, and recognized him as a leading name in child neurology. He is the reason I chose to stay on as faculty at Children’s National.
He is building the future of child neurology by developing the future clinicians and researchers in the field through direct mentorship and educational innovation.”
Dr. DiSabella’s clinical focus has led to a world-class headache program, providing rapid access to care, improved patient outcomes, and a research program. The program has grown organically from himself to seven headache physicians, a behavioral pain medicine psychologist, a dedicated headache nurse and liaison for patient care and safety, two program coordinators, and two clinical research coordinators. This program now holds a capacity of 50-100 appointments per week, an average of 2,000 urgent appointments annually, and over 100 intravenous infusions annually for acute management, serving as a national integrative, multi-disciplinary model for headache care. Initially published as a CHAMP group investigator in the New England Journal of Medicine reporting the trial of amitriptyline, topiramate, and placebo for pediatric migraine (Powers et al, NEJM 2017), this program’s work has been published steadily with papers since 2021 in J Child Neurol, Pain Medicine, Cephalalgia, Neuropediatrics, and Headache, including the propitious, important paper: DiSabella et al: Pediatric Headache Experience During the COVID-19 Pandemic, J Child Neuro 2022.
Dr. DiSabella is working to enhance the Children’s National headache program with a robust care model of same-day infusions and procedures, behavioral health and pain rehabilitation for headaches and acquired dysautonomias, parent training and support programs, novel device development, multicentered clinical trials, and precision trials for genetic causes of headache and dysautonomia. He is also focused on growing the neurology division and representing all providers and staff, including support for basic science and translational researchers and improved quality of care. He has certainly lived up to the dreams and expectations of his early family and career role models.
Dr. DiSabella is a family man with outside interests, from dedicated bicycling to an eclectic taste for beer, and is the devoted father to Bennett, age 12, and Eva, age 10. He never misses the Nats’ opening day with his children. For a view of the elegance and taste of his amazing (his adjective) wife of nearly 20 years, Heather, one only needs to see their annual holiday cards, our personal favorites, or check out the portfolio (https://www.disabelladesign.com/) of her own interior design company.