Assistant Professor
Children’s Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado
Justin Searns is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in the sections of Pediatric Hospital Medicine and Pediatric Infectious Diseases. He received dual undergraduate degrees in physiology and philosophy from the University of Washington in 2007 and went on to receive his medical degree from Oregon Health and Sciences University in 2012. He returned to Colorado for both his pediatric residency and his pediatric infectious diseases fellowship training which he completed in 2018. During fellowship, Dr. Searns received the national Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society Antimicrobial Stewardship Fellowship Award for his work on diagnostic innovation for pediatric bone and joint infections. He went on to join the University of Colorado Department of Pediatrics faculty in the fall of 2018. He received a Children’s Colorado Research Scholar award in 2019 and was awarded the Pediatric Hospital Medicine Researcher of the Year in 2020. He has continued to advance his clinical research skillset by completing the Surgical/Subspecialists Clinical Outcomes Research Fellowship and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Clinical Science. His primary research focuses on improving the care of children hospitalized with acute musculoskeletal infections through clinical pathway implementation and rapid diagnostic development, and he received a K23 Career Development Award from NIAID in 2023 aimed at optimizing the diagnostic strategy for these patients.