Dr. Wendy Mitchell is a Professor of Clinical Neurology at Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California and an Attending Child Neurologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. She has spent the entirety of her professional career, to date, at CHLA.
Dr. Mitchell was born and grew up in Los Angeles. She was educated at Los Angeles Unified School District public schools. She attended Reed College for 2 years where she changed majors three times but completed almost all the pre-medical requirements. She then took a year off college and got a job in San Francisco during “the summer of love,” which she missed entirely, since the only jobs available for women were typing and “steno.” Her task was typing, which she couldn’t stand, so she quit after eight months and enrolled at San Francisco State College. After one semester, taking mostly electives, she realized she could graduate in one more semester or go back to Reed for two years. Reed would also require her to write a thesis and take second German, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She graduated from San Francisco State during the Great Strike of 1968, with no on-campus classes. She remembers embryology being taught Sunday nights in a preschool classroom, to which her dedicated instructor brought all the microscopes and slides! During her college years in San Francisco, she volunteered at one of the earliest community programs for autistic children.
Dr. Mitchell’s intention was to pursue child psychiatry when she started medical school at University of California, San Francisco. She discovered early on that all the psychiatry residents were in it to get coverage for their own personal psychoanalysis. So, she diverged and undertook residency training in general pediatrics at UCSF, followed by behavioral pediatrics at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. Her child neurology training was at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Program. She arrived at CHLA in 1981.
Dr. Mitchell now has all the accomplishments that one would expect a lifetime achievement awardee to have in her curriculum vitae. She has had a wide variety of research interests over her long career and propelled the field forward for many conditions including, opsoclonus myoclonus ataxia, infant botulism, childhood epilepsy, neurocysticercosis, neurodevelopmental disorder in children and adolescents with HIV/AIDS, to name a few. A vast majority of her approximately 100 peer-reviewed journal articles have been highly cited, and she has been a site principal investigator for dozens of pivotal clinical trials. She served as the residency program director for many years. Several of her mentees are now leaders in the field around the country and beyond. She was Interim Division Head of Neurology at CHLA for about eight years during which the program saw significant growth. Dr. Mitchell has served, in various capacities, the American Academy of Neurology, the American Epilepsy Society, the International Child Neurology Association, and particularly the Child Neurology Society, including as a Councilor from the West. She has championed health rights as a board member of the Southern California Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union and additionally been an advocate through her partnerships with Epilepsy Foundation Greater Los Angeles, Dancing Eye Syndrome Support Trust, and OMSLife Foundation. Dr. Shafali Jeste, the current Division Chief, recognizes Dr. Mitchell’s contributions over decades and considers CHLA neurology to be synonymous with her.
But if we were asked to state just one attribute that would make Dr. Mitchell worthy of this honor, it would have to be her masterful clinical skills. And it comes to her naturally, a result of a sixth sense, if you will. Over the years many at CHLA, both trainees and faculty, have often been left awestruck by her nonchalance, going from room to room with her Queen Square Hammer held like a magic wand, diagnosing common and rare conditions at the drop of a hat, and making minimalist but adequate management recommendations. If there is one thing that anyone can learn from her, it is to focus on clinical assessment and use judiciously the plethora of investigations and treatment modalities we now have at our disposal. When a trainee asked her a few years ago how she would confirm a suspected diagnosis of botulism, she pointed to her eyes and said, “Using these.”
As Dr. Arthur Partikian, head of child neurology at Los Angeles General Medical Center and a past mentee, says Dr. Mitchell commands deep respect because of her unwavering dedication to equality. When Dr. Mitchell is in charge, there are no VIPs who get to skip the waitlist, and all children deserve access to compassionate and timely evaluation based on resource allocation and the severity of their medical challenges. As division head, she consistently refused to placate administrative peers whose priorities were often mired in the financial pressures of health care, as opposed to the realities of the human experience shared by those with neurological disorders. Dr. Partikian remembers that when the hospital leadership announced the composition of its first diversity and inclusion committee years ago, with 10 out of 12 members being white males, Dr. Mitchell did not hesitate to “respond all” to the hospital-wide email simply with, “That doesn’t seem very diverse or inclusive to me.” She has always put fairness even above her own career ambitions.
Dr. Mitchell is married to Andrea Horwatt. Their first marriage in 1996 was without legal significance. It was followed by a legal one in 2008. They are mothers to two adorable dogs, Sunny and Star. They both enjoy scuba diving at exotic locales around the world. Other interests include folk music, ethnic food, and cooking. They both play ukuleles and guitars (“badly” per her). While Dr. Mitchell doesn’t have any biological children of her own, thanks to her decades-long dedication as a teacher and mentor, she is “mother” to many in child neurology.
Despite her impactful career, Dr. Mitchell remains humble. The Mitchell-Pike OMS Rating Scale for opsoclonus myoclonus ataxia is widely used around the world, but we have never seen her mention the eponym and she downplays her contributions in general. As Dr. Yasmin Khakoo, the President-elect of the Child Neurology Society, says, “Dr. Mitchell is always available to give advice when asked, even if she is on vacation, and hardly ever expects any acknowledgement.” When Dr. Mitchell came to know that some of us at CHLA, with the help of others around the country, planned to nominate her for this award, the first reaction was reluctance. But we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to celebrate her impact on our field and are grateful to the CNS for bestowing this well-deserved honor.
And, finally, here in her own words is the answer to the question everyone has but few ask. “Always goes on as magenta, fades to pink—almost 18 years, because otherwise older women become invisible!”