Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Program

The Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Inflammatory Bowel Disease program is home to a group of leading gastroenterologists and health care specialists who provide expert care in the diagnosis and management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Equipped with the best available scientific evidence, we work with you and your family to determine if your child has IBD, and then we develop a personalized therapy plan with shared decision-making. As part of the Center for Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and Celiac Disease at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, we have the ultimate goal of achieving sustained remission and enabling your child to live a full life without limitations. We care for children from birth to age 22 and work closely with Stanford Health Care to ensure a smooth and timely transition of care.

What is IBD?

IBD, an umbrella term for conditions that include Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and other inflammatory diseases affecting the bowel, is characterized by chronic inflammation of the intestines and/or colon. Common symptoms of IBD include abdominal pain, diarrhea, bloody stools, fatigue, weight loss, delayed puberty, and poor growth. Though there is no cure for IBD, our interdisciplinary team approaches IBD from every angle, customizing the right treatments and therapies to enhance your child’s long-term health and quality of life.

Program highlights

Thanks to our state-of-the-art facilities, specialized medical care team, highly advanced diagnostic tools, integrative approach, and successful outcomes, families come to us from throughout the United States for treatment. At the Stanford Medicine Children’s Health IBD Center, we do the following:

• Provide leading-edge medical treatments driven by research, including personalized pharmacotherapy (drug treatments determined by multidisciplinary input and testing). We have the experience to determine appropriate drug treatment for each patient, to use it safely, and maximize effectiveness.
• Have world class imaging and endoscopy for diagnosis and tracking progress including magnetic resonance enterography, bowel ultrasound, and capsule endoscopy.
• Offer holistic and personalized treatment plans that take into consideration the needs of your child and family:
  • Integrative GI therapies to complement our medical interventions. We are the only center on the West Coast with an integrative GI therapy program and the only center in the nation with an integrative medicine fellowship.
  • Nutritional therapies as one of a few pediatric centers in the West that offer special diets, including the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), Crohn’s Disease Exclusion Diet, Mediterranean Diet, and exclusive enteral nutrition.
  • Robust psychosocial services that include individual and family therapy, group sessions, patient and parent support groups, and coping skills for the whole family to help you manage IBD and the challenges it brings.
  • A state-of-the-art IBD Interdisciplinary Clinic that ties all care elements together to best serve our families. This clinic brings together medical care, psychology, social work, and nutrition in a single clinic visit. Our goal is to help you understand the diagnoses, discuss if changes are required in treatment, provide nutritional counseling, and support with coping, school adjustments or life transitions.
• Partner with our IBD Family Advisory Council that brings together parents, caregivers, and IBD experts to collaborate and provide input on ways to continually improve care, keeping your child and family at the center.
• Apply knowledge gained from the collaborative community of IMPROVECARENOW as one of 100+ centers worldwide working to improve the health of children and youth with IBD.

Interdisciplinary approach

We recognize that IBD can impact the whole person and the whole family. Therefore, we take an interdisciplinary approach to develop and provide a holistic treatment plan exclusively for your child and specific to your family’s lifestyle. Our team of gastroenterologists, pediatric IBD surgeons, integrative medicine GI doctor, psychologist, social workers, nurse practitioners, registered dietitians, nurses, child life experts, and educators are involved in a well-rounded approach to developing an effective plan that considers your needs, goals, and hopes.