John M. Falletta, MD, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Emeritus Senior Chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the School of Medicine, passed away in January 2025.
Dr. Falletta built a strong Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology over three decades at Duke. Under his leadership, the division thrived and expanded, becoming the largest program in North Carolina. He also helped establish a new standard of care for sickle cell anemia and led the reorganization and rebuilding of the Duke Medical Center Institutional Review Board. His work was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the construction of the country’s 13th Ronald McDonald House, built in Durham for families of children undergoing treatment at Duke.
As senior author of two National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute studies, Dr. Falletta helped prove that prophylactic penicillin in children with sickle cell disease under five years of age could prevent deadly pneumococcal infections, establishing a new standard of care and influencing implementation of routine newborn screening for sickle cell anemia. He also helped advance treatment for children’s cancers through his service in the Southwest Oncology Group, one of the country’s largest National Cancer Institute-funded clinical trials consortiums. In addition, he directed the Duke Clinical Pediatric Laboratory for more than 20 years and published more than 100 scientific papers.
Dr. Falletta attended medical school at the University of Kansas School of Medicine and completed residency training in pediatrics and fellowship training in pediatric hematology-oncology at Baylor College of Medicine. He was a faculty member at Baylor, where his work on a local cluster of childhood leukemia cases solidified his interest in pediatric hematology-oncology. He was recruited to Duke as the Chief of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology in the late 1970s. He led the Duke University Institutional Review Board for Clinical Investigation from 1994 until retirement in early 2015.
Please join us in extending our deepest condolences to his family, friends, colleagues, and all those whose lives he touched.