Rebecca Hoban

Staff Neonatologist
Division of Neonatology

Dr. Rebecca Hoban is a staff neonatologist and The Director of Breastfeeding Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), and an Assistant Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. Dr. Hoban graduated from Indiana University School of Medicine, and then completed a pediatric residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship at Tufts University, and a master in Public Health in Global Health at Harvard, before joining the neonatology staff and human milk research team at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Dr. Hoban was recruited to SickKids in 2017 as neonatology staff, where her focus is on nutrition and human milk. She brings extensive international clinical, educational, and training experiences from a dozen countries, has been an invited speaker on breastfeeding topics locally and internationally, and is active in clinical and translational human milk research.

Research

Dr. Hoban's current research and projects include improving term human milk provision in the high-risk neonatal population, milk biomarkers to predict lactation success, inflammatory markers in human milk, and human milk as potential stem cell therapy in premature infants with intraventricular hemorrhage.

1. Hoban R, Bigger H, Patel A, Rossman B, Fogg LF, Meier P. Goals for human milk feeding in mothers of very low birth weight infants: How do goals change and are they achieved during the NICU hospitalization? Breastfeed Medicine 2015: 10 (6): pp 305-311.  
2. Hoban R, Bigger H, Schoeny M, Engstrom J, Meier P, Patel AL.  Milk volume at 2 weeks predicts mother's own milk feeding at NICU discharge for very low birthweight infants. Breastfeed Medicine. 2018:13 (2): pp 135-141. 
3. Hoban R, Patel AL, Medina Poeliniz C, Lai CT, Janes J, Geddes D, Meier PP.  Human Milk Biomarkers of Secretory Activation in Breast Pump-Dependent Mothers of Premature Infants.  Breastfeed Medicine. 2018:13(5): pp352-360. 
4. Hoban R, Schoeny M, Esquerra-Zwiers A, Kaenkumchorn T, Casini G, Tobin G, Siegel A, Patra K, Hamilton M, Wicks J, Meier P, Patel A. Impact of Donor Milk on Short and Long-Term Growth of Very Low Birth Weight Infants. Nutrients. 2019: 22(11):pii E241.
5. Hoban R, Khatri S, Patel AL, Unger SL. Supplementation of Mothers Own Milk with Donor Milk in Infants with Gastroschisis or Intestinal Atresia: A Retrospective Study. Nutrients.  2020: 12(2):589.