2012 Jeffery Lawson Award for Advocacy in Children’s Pain Relief

Elliot Krane, MD

Born in Philadelphia in 1953, Dr. Krane was moved as an infant to the dry desert climate of Tucson, AZ, to benefit his father’s health. He completed his education through high school there, then went to the cold and damp Pacific Northwest to attend Reed College in Portland, OR, graduating with an honors BA in organic chemistry. He returned to Tucson to enroll in the University of Arizona Medical School, graduating in 1977.

After graduation Dr. Krane completed training in pediatrics and anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and a fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston.

After completing training he returned to the Pacific Northwest where he joined the faculty at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1984; his practice at the Seattle Children’s Hospital was in critical care and anesthesiology. However, acting on interests formed during his training and catalyzed by the mentorship and example of Dr. John Bonica and the remarkable pain management group at the University of Washington, he quickly gravitated to pain management in children, founding the Pain Management Service at the Children’s Hospital with his colleague Dr. Donald C. Tyler in 1985. In 1987 he and Tyler organized the 1st International Symposium on Pediatric Pain, which continues triennially.

In 1994 Dr. Krane was recruited to Stanford University where he joined the anesthesia and pediatrics faculty as a professor, becoming the first chief of anesthesia and pain management at the new Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, where he continued his interest in pediatric anesthesia and the treatment of pain in children. He remained chief of pediatric anesthesia and pain management until 2003, at which time he stepped down to focus his administrative and clinical energies on further development of the pediatric pain management service at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. Dr. Krane has quadrupled the size of the pediatric pain management clinic, founded an outpatient pain rehabilitation center and an inpatient pain rehabilitation center, raised more than $1 million to endow the pain program, and increased staffing to its present level of five physicians, three advanced practice nurses, three clinical psychologists, one physical therapist, one occupational therapist, two part-time psychiatrists, and one therapy dog.

Dr. Krane’s two grown children live in the San Francisco area working in technology and graphic arts, and he enjoys long-distance cycling, travel, classical music, and opera when he is not relaxing at home with his two Australian terriers, Moe and Barney.

The Jeffrey Lawson Award was established in 1996 in memory of Jeffrey Lawson, whose mother, Jill, brought to the attention of professional organizations the practice of performing surgery and other procedures on children without the benefit of analgesia. The award recognizes advocacy efforts to improve management of pain in children.