After joining the department of pediatrics in 2013, Dr. Pittsenbarger has been involved in projects inspired by his clinical work in pediatric emergency medicine and with the goal of improving the care provided for all children presenting to emergency departments anywhere in the globe. He has dedicated his time to study health service outcomes with a hope to identify areas for improving the systems that provide care and training the next generation of physicians.

I spend the majority of my clinical time seeing patients in the Emergency Care Center at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital in downtown Chicago. He is also on staff and see patients at Northwestern Medicine Central Dupage Hospital and Northwest Community Hospital in those pediatric emergency departments. In his clinical role, he works with a variety of trainees and treats all patients who present for care with acute injury or illnesses.

He devotes his work outside of clinical time in large data analysis and health services research. The focus of his recent research projects has been improving pediatric emergency care by decreasing disparities and improving the quality. By studying health care systems and the most common diagnoses seen in the pediatric emergency department he hopes the projects will be easily translatable to a variety of other clinical settings. Current projects focus on asthma and anaphylaxis with the hope of reducing the negative effects these diseases have on patients daily lives.