About

Dr. Westmoreland is a general pediatrician, pediatric hematologist oncologist, and clinician scientist. As a general pediatrician she specializes in the unique care of individuals with Down syndrome and is the medical director of the UNC Down syndrome program. She spent nearly a decade living in sub-Saharan Africa providing both general pediatrics and specialty hematology oncology care to her patients. She is a NIH-funded clinician scientists who researches patient reported outcomes and chemotherapy toxicity in unique patient populations, including Burkitt lymphoma patients in Africa and Down syndrome patients in the USA.

Clinical Interests

Dr. Westmoreland spent nearly a decade living in sub-Saharan Africa providing both general pediatrics and specialty hematology oncology care to her patients. Her global oncology area of interest is lymphomas, specifically Burkitt and Hodgkin lymphoma. Since moving back to the USA in 2022, she has developed expertise in Down syndrome care and built the UNC Down syndrome program, where she is the medical director. She directs a interdisciplinary Down syndrome clinic and provides general pediatric care, coordinates care with specialties, and advocates for individuals with Down syndrome. As an oncologist in the USA, she specializes in lymphomas and leukemia, with a special interest in Down syndrome associated leukemia. Dr. Westmoreland’s daughter has Down syndrome, which gives her a unique perspective and passion for optimizing the health of individuals with Down syndrome. She is an active member of the national Children’s Oncology Group (COG) Down Syndrome Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (DS-ALL) Task Force, the Down Syndrome Medical Interest Group (DSMIG), and serves on the board at the North Carolina Down Syndrome Alliance (NCDSA).

Research Interests

Dr. Westmoreland received extensive training and experience in conducting clinical research in sub-Saharan Africa through the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Global Health Fellowship in Botswana (2013-2015), NIH UJMT Fogarty Global Health Fellowship in Malawi (2015-2016), UNC Pediatric Hematology Oncology Clinical fellowship research (2016-2018), UNC-Duke Clinical Pharmacology T32 clinical research fellowship (2017-2019). After joining faculty at UNC, she was awarded a NIH Fogarty K01 Career Development Award (2019-2024) and has focused on optimizing treatment outcomes of adolescent and young adult patients with Burkitt Lymphoma in Malawi. Her research expertise is in methotrexate pharmacokinetics and incorporating patient reported outcome tools among pediatric Burkitt lymphoma patients in Malawi. Dr. Westmoreland is a leading expert in translating and validating pediatric patient-reported outcomes (PROs) tools for use in Sub-Saharan Africa to measure health-related quality of life (PROMIS) and subjective adverse events (PRO-CTCAE) and incorporating these tools into research studies and clinical trials. She was the first to translate and validate these tools into a Bantu language (Chichewa) for use in sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi). She has developed a voice-enabled tablet and is validating its use for low-literacy patients and caregivers in Malawi to be able to self-administer PROs to directly report their quality of life and symptomatic experience throughout their cancer journey. She is also passionate about mentoring junior clinician scientists in Malawi and serves as a mentor for numerous UJMT Fogarty fellows and is the PRO training core director for our NIH D43 M-CORP (Malawi Cancer Research Outcomes Program) training grant.

Since 2022, after relocating from Malawi back to Chapel Hill, Dr. Westmoreland taken her expertise and experience to establish new collaborations and is involved in research focusing on Down syndrome associated acute lymphoblastic leukemia (DS-ALL). She is involved with collaborative group research to better understand methotrexate toxicity in children with DS-ALL, with a focus on methotrexate pharmacokinetic analysis. She is also working to adapt the voice-enabled tablet she developed for her patients in Africa, to allow individuals with intellectual and developmental disability to be able to self-administer PROs to directly report their quality of life and symptomatic experience throughout their cancer journey.

Areas of Expertise

Down syndrome, Pediatric leukemia and lymphoma
Procedures and research: Down syndrome associated acute lymphoblastic leukemia (DS-ALL), Pediatric and adolescent Burkitt Lymphoma and Hodgkin Lymphoma in Sub Saharan Africa.
Special focus: chemotherapy pharmacokinetics, optimizing chemotherapy dosing to reduce toxicity, patient reported outcome measures for health-related quality of life and treatment related adverse events.