Christie J. Bruno, DO

Christie Bruno, DO, is a pediatrician who specializes in neonatal-perinatal medicine—the practice of providing medical care to babies in their first year of life who have required intensive care treatment. Many of the babies she treats were born premature or have needed assistance with breathing or feeding, or other support after delivery.

Dr. Bruno also cares for patients up to 4 years of age in the Yale New Haven Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Great Results After Discharge (GRAD) program, which provides neurodevelopmental follow-up care focused on optimizing the outcomes of former NICU patients after they are discharged.

Dr. Bruno decided to become a neonatologist in medical school when she started participating in neonatal resuscitations. “I saw that you can make such an impact on improving the outcomes of these patients in the first few minutes of life,” she says. “I also enjoy that neonatologists admit patients to the NICU and often follow them until hospital discharge. We get to know the children and their families very well. The best part of working with the neonatal population is that we can witness the resiliency and strength of these patients.”

“Contributing to the achievements in the field of neonatology are rewarding as well,” Dr. Bruno says. “Babies are surviving at gestational ages that are younger than ever before,” she adds.

Her research interests include improving processes and neonatal outcomes, and the study of procedural training and neonatal resuscitation for providers who are not trained in neonatal care or who work in areas where medical resources for this population are scarce.