Nancy Sanders Harper

Nancy Sanders Harper is the Medical Director for the Otto Bremer Trust Center for Safe & Healthy Children at University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital and Hennepin Healthcare. Dr. Harper is board certified in Pediatrics and subspecialty certified in Child Abuse Pediatrics. Dr. Harper graduated from Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in 1995, and completed her pediatric residency in 1998 at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in Virginia. After graduation, Dr. Harper served as a staff pediatrician and child abuse consultant for Naval Medical Center Portsmouth and US Naval Hospital Okinawa in Japan. In 2004, Dr. Harper resigned from the US Navy and entered into fellowship training in Forensic Pediatrics at Brown University in Rhode Island, graduating in January 2007. Dr. Harper then served as the Medical Director for the CARE Team at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas from 2007 through 2014. Dr. Harper served on the Committee on Pediatric Centers of Excellence (79th Legislature) tasked with the development of guidelines for designating regional centers of excellence for child abuse in Texas. Governor Perry appointed Dr. Harper to the statewide Blue Ribbon Task Force to Reduce Child Abuse and Neglect (81st Legislature SB 2080) and the Task Force to Reduce Child Abuse and Neglect and Improve Child Welfare (82nd Legislature SB 1154). The Task Force was legislatively charged with addressing child abuse prevention and the promotion of child well-being for the state of Texas. Dr. Harper served as the programming chair for the AAP Section on Child Abuse and Neglect (SOCAN) from 2012 through 2017 and is invested in improving educational opportunities on child maltreatment both nationally and internationally.