Manuel Amieva, MD, PhD, Interim Chief, Peds ID, presented at the Pediatrics Grand Rounds, 4/14/26, on "Bacterial Hide and Seek in the Stomach: How Helicobacter Pylori’s Hideouts Determine Disease"

Helicobacter pylori is a fascinating spiral-shaped bacterium that colonizes about 50% of the human population and has been living in human stomachs for thousands of years. In children, this ancient microbial companion is mostly harmless and may even provide protective effects against allergic and atopic diseases, yet it remains the primary risk factor for peptic ulcer disease and gastric cancer in adults. Traditional models explain H. pylori disease through direct damage to the stomach's surface lining by bacterial virulence factors and through chronic inflammation. However, using advanced microscopy techniques, our laboratory discovered that while most H. pylori live as harmless surface-dwellers in the stomach mucus, some bacteria find their way into deep, protected niches within the gastric glands where they can directly influence the stem cells that regenerate the stomach lining. In this session, we'll explore how these bacterial "hideouts" determine the critical difference between harmless colonization and disease development, and why understanding microbial hideouts could revolutionize how we think about infections throughout the body.

Short, Animated Storytelling (SAS): a novel approach to public health communication
As faculty lead for the Global Health Media Innovation Lab, I develop and test short, animated storytelling video interventions designed to make evidence-based health information more engaging, accessible, and scalable. Current and recent work spans infectious disease prevention, nutrition, maternal-child health, and mental health. 

Here is a link to a recently published Comment describing this novel approach.

International addiction stigma trial
In collaboration with researchers from Columbia, Princeton, Oxford and several other institutions, we conducted a randomized controlled trial testing an SAS intervention designed to reduce addiction stigma (cross-culturally) in 13,500 participants across the US, UK, and South Africa. [See attached figure: Anatomy of a Story] 

New AI-personalized nutrition course
In collaboration with an AI educational technology platform called Next Gen Learning, I am preparing to launch a new one-week public-facing nutrition course. The course will build on my existing food and health education research while piloting an AI-personalization approach.

Arkansas Health Transformation Demonstration Project
Alongside Stanford’s Raj Dash, I have been invited to serve as co-PI of a five-year health transformation demonstration project in Northwest Arkansas, designed to serve as a model for heartland states facing high burdens of cardiometabolic disease.

Colorectal cancer screening collaboration
I recently began collaborating with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) on a digital storytelling intervention to promote colorectal cancer screening, with planned clinical trials in both Germany and the US. See the English prototype here.

Health Compass Podcast
Last year, I began hosting the Stanford Medicine Health Compass Podcast, a public-facing series that humanizes healthcare and medical research through the stories of physician-scientists. The podcast received a 2025 CASE Bronze Award. Find it here.

Measles in America: Five things to know from a Stanford Medicine expert

After a year of record-breaking measles outbreaks, the U.S. is on the brink of losing its “elimination” status—signaling dangerous gaps in vaccination and outbreak control. Pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Sruti Nadimpalli explains why measles is far from a mild childhood illness, how quickly it spreads, and what families can do right now to protect vulnerable communities.

Julianne Burns, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics

• Safely removing isolation for patients with certain multidrug-resistant organism (MDRO) infections, where research shows that basic infection prevention measures are effective. This builds on recently published work by our team showing that reducing the duration of isolation for certain MDROs did not increase rates of healthcare-associated infections in our pediatric hospital (link here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41565183/  and paper attached)

• Working with our adult Stanford colleagues and the Office of Emergency Management to create resources for provider measles education and a measles exposure response plan.

• Recently created a Pulmonary Tuberculosis Evaluation Admission Pathway to standardize evaluation and treatment (link here: https://clinicalpathways.stanfordchildrens.org/Clinical%20Pathways/Pulmonary%20Tuberculosis%20Evaluation%20Admission.pdf )