Email

julie.hakim@bcm.edu

Positions

Assistant Professor

Obstetrics and Gynecology
Division of Pediatric Adolescent and Gynecology
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX US

Addresses

Texas Children's Hospital Clinical Care Center (Clinic)

6701 Fannin St., 11th FL
Houston, TX 77030
United States
Phone: (832) 822-3910
Fax: (832) 825-4010
julie.hakim@bcm.edu

Education

Residency at University of Ottawa

06/2014 - Ottawa, Canada Canada

Obstetrics and Gynecology

MD from University of Ottawa

05/2009 - Montreal, Ottawa Canada

Honors & Awards

Assistant Professor

Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology

Texas Children's Hospital | Baylor College of Medicine

Co-Founder

Supporting Tech That Improves Women's Health & Wellness

FemTech Focus

Founder

An educational social media platform for young girls to learn about their gynecologic health in English and Spanish.

SomosGyn

Professional Statement

As a clinician, surgeon, educator, scientist and inventor, I am aware of the intertwined leverage between discoveries on the laboratory bench and unmet clinical application needs, which drive an inner passion to learn, create, and inspire. Therefore, my overarching goal is to: (i) provide effective personalized treatment to patients at every encounter with my medical and surgical care; (ii) to champion underserved adolescent and adult women’s healthcare needs; (iii) to innovate and advocate for women’s health programs; (iv) educate and inspire learners, builders, and the general public on gynecology matters; and (v) harness women’s full potential to optimize the clinical standard of care. I am committed to humane clinical care, educational endeavors, advancement of science, optimal human health, and improved quality of life for our communities.

As a pediatric gynecologist, I see unmet clinical needs as opportunities to create new therapy paradigms, and improve standard of patient care. I am intimately familiar with the challenges in managing post-operative sequelae of vaginal fibrosis in young patients who require complex reconstruction. Early in my career I worked with young patients who struggled to use makeshift vaginal stents and dilators that did not fit correctly. This inspired me to develop innovative vaginal devices that would meet the needs of adolescent and adult women who are at high risk of vaginal fibrosis. To that end, I focused on emerging bioengineering technology and initiated collaborative interactions with experts in the field. These collaborations resulted in a successful project to design and develop state-of-the art medical devices, protected by intellectual property and supported by NIH SBIR Phase I and II awards, which will produce a First-in-Women trial this coming year. In keeping with my focused endeavor to address the multifaceted medical needs of my patients, including a pervasive susceptibility to obesity, which is highly detrimental to their gynecologic health, I pursued a fellowship training on Obesity Management. As an additional means to connect and educate my patient demographic using their own language, Spanish, I established an online bilingual (Spanish/English) gynecology education platform to teach topics related to gynecology, wellness, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), which targets the Latinx adolescent community. To serve the femtech industry, I co-founded FemTech Focus which provides awareness, education, and opportunity with an international podcast and upcoming accelerator platform for femtech startups. To educate the next generation, I teach and mentor medical and engineering students at multiple institutions in Texas, medical residents, fellows in medicine and biodesign. I am also committed to basic science research and its importance to advancing women’s health awareness, funding, and services.

My research thrives on highly translational science, which seamlessly connects a passion for basic science and engineering with prominent women’s health needs. I make it a personal commitment to keep my scientific, technology, and clinical acuity in check and hence, have recently completed a subspecialty fellowship at Texas Children’s Hospital (4th largest children’s hospital in North America). I also earned a Master’s of Science in Clinical Investigation at Baylor College of Medicine and was awarded a 5-year mentored career research K08 funding by NIH/NIGMS to further my studies on the complex interplay between hormones, hyaluronan, and biomechanical tension, which drive vaginal wound healing outcomes. As I am uniquely poised with expertise in biomedical research and clinical/surgical gynecology, I designed a research pathway toward clinical device validation on both novel physical vaginal stent and degradable versions. Similarly, I cohesively implemented STEM tools to analyze and better understand the intricacies of unmet clinical needs, which allows multidisciplinary team interactions under one vision to develop research agendas and promote innovation in women’s health research. Of significant note, I am greatly fortunate to be under the superb scientific mentorship of Dr. Sundeep Keswani, the Director of Basic Science Research at Texas Children’s Hospital, Chief of the Department of Pediatric Surgery, and a world-renowned pediatric surgeon scientist. As such, I am committed to clinical excellence, scientific endeavors, and devotion to education/mentoring of students and the public at large. I am supremely proud of the academic environment in Houston Medical Center, which propelled my professional and personal growth. I will be proud to mentor, serve and inspire all those who come behind me in their medical careers.

Websites

Selected Publications

• Hakim J, Smith PA, Singh M, Han Z, Raghunathan R, Wyman O, Guffey D, Larin KV, Cohn W, Dietrich JE "Can We Improve Vaginal Tissue Healing Using Customized Devices: 3D Printing and Biomechanical Changes in Vaginal Tissue.." Gynecol Obstet Invest. 2018 Sep 28;1-9. Pubmed PMID: 30269139
• Kanner L, Hakim JCE, Davis Kankanamge C, Patel V, Yu V, Podany E, Gomez-Lobo V "Noncytotoxic-Related Primary Ovarian Insufficiency in Adolescents: Multicenter Case Series and Review." J Pediatr Adolesc Gynecol. 2018 Jun 27; Pubmed PMID: 29940314
• Dietrich JE, Adeyemi O, Hakim J, Santos X, Bercaw-Pratt JL, Bournat JC, Chen CH, Jorgez CJ "Paratubal Cyst Size Correlates With Obesity and Dysregulation of the Wnt Signaling Pathway." J Pediatr Adolesc Gynecol. 2017 Oct 30; Pubmed PMID: 28456695
• Patel V, Hakim J, Gomez-Lobo V, Amies Oelschlager AM "Providers' Experiences with Vaginal Dilator Training for Patients with Vaginal Agenesis." J Pediatr Adolesc Gynecol. 2018 Feb 31; Pubmed PMID: 28826904