St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital welcomes pediatric neurologist as vice chair of Pediatrics
St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital has welcomed pediatric neurologist Dr. Leigh Ramos-Platt, who will also serve as vice chair of Pediatrics, expanding the hospital’s specialized care for children with neurological and neuromuscular conditions.
Ramos-Platt joins St. Luke’s from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, bringing expertise in genetic therapies and other treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy, two genetic diseases that cause progressive muscle weakness.
“I’m excited to come to this progressive, growing and friendly system with a goal of working with expert teams to help improve quality of life in pediatric patients who suffer from these and other neurologic conditions, which can be either genetic or acquired,” said Dr. Ramos-Platt, who lives in Bethlehem.
Ramos-Platt has special qualifications in child neurology and clinical neurophysiology. She plans to introduce neuromuscular gene transfer programs at St. Luke’s, potentially allowing more families in the region to access advanced treatments closer to home.
She describes her lifelong medical passion as “anything electric affecting kids’ muscles and nerves.”
Bringing advanced therapies to St. Luke’s, she says, “will ease the burden on patients and families so they don’t have to travel to New York or Philadelphia for this specialty medical care.”
According to St. Luke’s, the addition of Ramos-Platt and Dr. Amisha Jain, a pediatric pulmonologist and co-division chief of Pediatric Specialty Care, further expands the health network’s services across more than 40 pediatric subspecialties.
“St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital is committed to providing families with the best primary and specialty care for their children,” said Jessika Haynos, vice president of Women’s and Children’s Service Lines at St. Luke’s University Health Network. “By adding Dr. Ramos-Platt’s expertise in pediatric neurology, we have expanded the care options available to families across the region.”
Ramos-Platt said gene transfer therapies have produced promising results at advanced specialty centers in the United States and internationally. She hopes to bring similar treatment options to St. Luke’s as research and clinical applications continue to advance.
“There are hundreds of gene therapy trials active or planned for neurological conditions,” Dr. Ramos-Platt adds. “I’m excited to help bring this treatment to St. Luke’s.”
In 2020, while working at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Ramos-Platt treated an infant with spinal muscular atrophy who was the first patient with the condition referred to the hospital through California’s newly expanded newborn screening program.
The case highlighted the importance of early diagnosis and access to specialized treatment for children with inherited neuromuscular disorders.
Ramos-Platt graduated from the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai’i and completed a general pediatrics residency at Loma Linda University Hospital Medical Center in California.
She later completed a neurology residency and a clinical neurophysiology fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin Affiliated Hospitals, including Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. She was the institution’s first pediatric fellow in clinical neurophysiology and also earned a Master of Business Administration from Eastern University.
Beyond her clinical work, Ramos-Platt serves as president of Neuroscience for All, a nonprofit organization that supports neurological medical education and provides equipment to improve patient care in Cambodia.
She plans to participate in a volunteer medical mission to Cambodia this fall. The organization works to strengthen neurological care in a country whose medical community was devastated during the 1970s.
Ramos-Platt also serves on the board of Hunter’s Heart Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing awareness and providing connections for families affected by Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
She speaks English, some Spanish, Mandarin and Khmer, the national language of Cambodia.
Ramos-Platt and her husband, Lorne Platt, a geography and urban planning professor at West Chester University, recently became empty nesters. Their son is a graduate student at Wake Forest University, while their daughter is a freshman and tennis player at Grinnell College in Iowa.
Outside of medicine, Ramos-Platt enjoys baking, jogging, making jewelry and caring for the family’s rescued animals, including a Schnoodle named Buttons, two rabbits named River and Lilly, and two guinea pigs named Selyse and Gimbap.
