The Social Network
Top Doctor Viren A. D’ Sa discusses his specialty, what drew him to the field, and how social media use affects childhood development. By DANA LAVERTY
DR. VIREN A. D’ SA, THE TOP DOCTOR who graces our cover this month, has been practicing developmental behavioral pediatrics for twenty-two years. He is also director of developmental behavioral pediatrics at Hasbro Children’ s and an associate professor of pediatrics and clinician educator at Brown University’ s Warren Alpert Medical School. We sat down to ask him some questions about childhood development, trends he’ s seeing in the field and how outside forces like social media, community and the environment shape children’ s behavior and emotional growth.
HOW DID YOU GET INTERESTED IN THIS PARTICULAR SPECIALTY? I’ ve always been interested in the brain and how it functions, how it develops. And I always knew I wanted to work with children and their families. So marrying that combination of my love for pediatrics, my interest in brain function, brain development, developmental and behavioral pediatrics, really presented that broadest approach to keeping these interests going. And as I did rotations and got experiences in that subspecialty, it took off from there.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHAT A DEVELOPMENTAL BEHAVIORAL PEDIATRICIAN DOES? A developmental behavioral pediatrician has gone through additional training after pediatrics. It’ s about three years of clinical and research in early child development and behavior but also includes child development through the age of eighteen, particularly for children with developmental disabilities. Some of the areas we focus on in terms of identification, and then management and treatment, are developmental delays, autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities and behavioral disorders like ADHD. We deal a lot with anxiety, which is commonly seen with many of these disorders, but also seen separately as well.
PHOTOGRAPH: ALEX GAGNE.
DO YOU STAY INVOLVED WITH THE PATIENTS THROUGHOUT CHILDHOOD? We are often more regularly involved with these families and children than their pediatricians or primary care physicians are, because we might have made some tweaks to treatment, might have adjusted certain medicines, suggested certain medicines or other kinds of treatments, and we’ re looking at how the child and family are coping and hopefully improving with them. That monitoring sometimes needs to be at three- or six-month intervals, which is often more frequent than they would see their pediatrician.
88 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I MAY 2026