Shriners Children’s Ohio welcomes new chief of staff: Meet the former helicopter pilot and Navy officer

“To come to a place that is truly about delivering the best care is an amazing opportunity,” she said. “Shriners Children’s Ohio has so much potential to grow and provide high-quality care for more children.”

Higginson is familiar with Ohio. She earned her medical degree at the Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus and flew across the state with Medflight of Ohio.

“Medflight helicopters cover the entire state of Ohio and into Kentucky and Indiana, so I’ve flown the area via helicopter, so I’m very familiar with all of Ohio that way,” Higginson said.

Higginson grew up in the Los Angeles area. After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, she taught high school science for a few years. She later enlisted as a naval officer, where the U.S. Navy trained her to fly the SH-60B Seahawk, a helicopter that can land on ships.

Following her naval service, she became an EMS pilot for Medflight of Ohio. Through that experience, she found she enjoyed medicine, particularly assisting trauma patients. This led her to enroll at Ohio State.

Higginson returned to California for a bit, completing her surgical residency at the University of California, San Francisco, Fresno, and then had fellowships in burn surgery and surgical critical care at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She worked in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the University of California, San Diego, before returning to Fresno, where she had trained. She practiced in Fresno for more than two years.

As a burn surgeon, Higginson’s primary focus has always been burns, but she also comes with experience in treating adult and pediatric trauma critical care.

“Coming to Shriners and coming into such a leadership position, it’s the opportunity to build and grow a program and develop in a particular direction, but also there’s something special about working at a Shriners facility,” Higginson said.

Part of what drew Higginson to Shriners was its commitment to treating patients regardless of a family’s ability to pay.

“It’s very different when you can face a patient and a family and know that they’re going to get everything that they that they need,” Higginson said.

Higginson’s goals in her role as chief of staff include expanding Shriners’ reach.

“I want to grow the volume, and I’d like to be able to expand the units, so my goal is to fill every bed,” Higginson said. “We need to let people know that we’re here, and we’re available to provide care.”

No burn is too big or too small for them, and she also said they have robust craniofacial program, such as for treating cleft lip and palates.

“We are one of the only sites that has a neurosurgeon doing cranial facial, and so the complexity of cases that our craniofacial team are doing is fairly rare across the country (within Shriners) and outside of it,” Higginson said.

Shriners Children’s is a nonprofit health care system with more than 20 medical facilities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. In 2021, the pediatric burn and specialty care hospital Shriners Children’s Ohio relocated from Cincinnati to operate in the Dayton Children’s Hospital main campus.