Keith J Benkov, MD

Keith J. Benkov, M.D., is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and at the Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital. He was division chief for 12 years and fellowship program director for 20 years. He has been instrumental in the training of almost 50 fellows in the field of pediatric gastroenterology. Along with his extensive clinical practice, his main interest has been the outcome analysis of children and adolescents with various types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Over the last 10 years, he has enrolled all of his current patients in the ImproveCareNow registry, which is a network of over 100 centers and almost 40,000 children with IBD that is dedicated to quality improvement and research. He has written on topics that have included genetic aspects of Crohn’s disease and the unique clinical phenotype on young children presenting with inflammatory bowel disease. He has also written on various aspects of therapy and has been interested in interplay of normal intestinal flora and mucosal immunity and the inflammatory response. He has been a frequent contributor for various projects involving banked specimens from children with Crohn’s disease. He has been funded by the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation (CCF) to study the role of anxiety and disease activity. He has been honored by the both the Greater New York Chapter and the Westchester chapter of the CCFA for the work he has done for them, including being the medical director for their summer camp program.  

When not seeing patients or doing research, Dr. Benkov enjoys running. He has finished 32 New York City Marathons, and started Team IBDkids which raises money for research and to support family-centered and comprehensive care in pediatric IBD.  Watch a video of an interview with Dr. Benkov discussing his work and his marathons.

Watch a video of Dr. Benkov and Team Mount Sinai running in the 2008 NYC Marathon raising money and awareness for IBD Kids.