Skip to main content

The Feingold Service at Mass General for Children


The Feingold Service at Mass General for Children provides comprehensive, coordinated care for children born with rare diseases and genetic disorders.

DONATE NOW

The Feingold Center for Children—now The Feingold Service at Mass General for Children—was established in 1982 to provide diagnosis and treatment to children born with genetic disorders and rare diseases throughout the New England area. The Feingold Model of Coordinated Care exists to offer comprehensive, holistic care in an effort to better the lives of patients and ease the difficulties parents and caregivers face after receiving a diagnosis of a rare disease.

Clinical Care

The Feingold Model of Coordinated Care, exemplified by the staff at Mass General for Children (MGfC), focuses on providing more in-depth time with families.

Since many of the children treated at MGfC require the care of numerous specialists, the Intake and Triage Coordinator arranges appointments as much as possible to decrease the necessity for frequent trips. Specialists at the hospital understand how important it is to truly listen to parents’ concerns and take the time to fully get to know the child personally, not just focus on the diagnosis. Additionally, the staff works directly with insurance companies to help families get coverage for any necessary, specialized testing. When test results are back, staff have face-to-face reviews to explain them in a way that’s easy to understand. The Feingold Service focuses on collaboration from specialists to provide additional care or address any therapy and educational needs, as well as the social and emotional needs of the entire family.

Currently, The Genesis Foundation funds the care of 1,000 children with rare diseases and genetic disorders at Mass General for Children, but with your support, they can reach all 4,000 patients being treated within the Division of Medical Genetics and Metabolism.

SUPPORT OUR MISSION

Get In Touch With Us

To make an appointment with one of our doctors for a medical care visit at any of our clinic locations, or to learn more about them, please call (617) 726-1561, email jlauck@mgh.harvard.edu, or fill out the form below.

*NOTE: If you have questions about our therapeutic programming and informational services, please check out our Therapeutic Programs and/or MothertoBaby – MA page. 

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The Genesis Foundation supports the Mass General for Children Genetics Program in Boston, as well as the Mass General for Children satellite clinics in Waltham, Sandwich, Danvers, and Nantucket.

The Feingold Service Staff

David Sweetser, MD, PhD

Dr. David Sweetser is the Chief of Medical Genetics and Metabolism at Mass General Hospital. He is also an Attending Physician in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, and the Co-Director of Pitt Hopkins Clinic. Dr. Sweetser graduated with Honors from Stanford University, then completed his MD/PhD at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Pediatric Residency training at St. Louis Children’s Hosp. He completed his Medical Genetics Fellowship training at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Washington in Seattle along with a Biochemical Genetics Fellowship. He subsequently completed a Fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is Board Certified in Clinical Genetics and Genomics, Clinical Biochemical Genetics, as well as Pediatric Hematology-Oncology.

Since 2003 Dr. Sweetser has been at MGH and sees patients in Medical Genetics and Metabolism and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. He specializes in children and adults with metabolic disease, neurodevelopment disorders, complex undiagnosed disorders as well as those with inherited hematological disorders and children with genetic disorders predisposing to malignancies. He has been Chief of Medical Genetics and Metabolism at MGH since 2011 and was awarded the Lewis and Leslie Holmes Endowed Chair in Genetics and Teratology in 2017. He is Co-Director of the Pitt Hopkins Clinic, MGH Site Director of the Harvard Medical School Genetics Training program, Co-Director of the Harvard Medical School Affiliated Hospitals NORD Rare Disease Center of Excellence and a Primary Investigator in the MGH Center for Cancer Research. Dr. Sweetser is also the MGH site director for the NIH sponsored Undiagnosed Diseases Network linking 11 medical centers around the country to accelerate discovery and innovation in the way we diagnose and treat patients with previously undiagnosed diseases. He has been a leader in the application of genomic sequencing to clinical diagnostics and expanding clinical genomic applications throughout MGH. He has contributed to the discovery of numerous new genetic diseases.

Dr. Sweetser runs a research lab in the Center for Genomic Medicine and MGH Cancer Center investigating several genetic disorders including Pitt Hopkins Syndrome, IQSEC2 -related disorder, CACNA1E epileptic encephalopathy, as well as leukemia. He has systematically generated and characterized patient derived induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models of several inherited monogenic causes of intellectual disability and neurodevelopmental disorders developing phenotypic assays amenable to drug screening to precision targeted therapeutics.

The Feingold Service Staff

Catherine Bearce Nowak, MD

Dr. Nowak has over 30 years of experience caring for children born with rare diseases and physical or intellectual challenges. She is a board-certified clinician in Clinical Genetics (ABMGG). Particular areas of interest include dysmorphic syndromes, cleft lip/palate, overgrowth disorders, autism spectrum disorders and conditions with intellectual disability. She received her medical degree from McGill University and completed residency in Pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Dr. Nowak then completed a fellowship in Clinical Genetics at The National Birth Defects Center. After practicing clinical genetics for 8 years at The Feingold Center for Children, Dr. Nowak served as the Chief of the Division of Genetics at UMass-Memorial for four years before returning to The Feingold Center. She also practiced clinical genetics at Boston Children’s Hospital for 11 years.

Dr. Nowak spent much of her career at The Feingold Center for Children, the brainchild of Dr. Murray Feingold, who saw the importance of spending in-depth time with families to truly listen to parents’ concerns and to get to know the whole child rather than focus only on diagnosis. The mission of the Feingold Center was to work collaboratively with families of children with rare disorders to coordinate their multiple specialty appointments and to address issues such as insurance coverage, educational/therapy concerns as well as the social and emotional needs of the entire family. A network of satellite clinics allowed care close to home. After Dr. Feingold passed away and The Feingold Center closed, Dr. Nowak continued this “Feingold Model of Care”. In 2022, Dr. Nowak joined the Division of Genetics and Metabolism as Clinical Director and brought with her The Murray Feingold Coordinated Genetic Service supported by a grant from The Genesis Foundation for Children. She currently sees patients at: Mass General for Children Genetics Program in Boston, Mass General for Children – Waltham, Mass General Satellite in Sandwich, MA. and Mass General Satellite on Nantucket.

Dr. Nowak has been named as a Top Doctor in Boston and has also been recognized as an Exceptional Woman in Medicine. She is the Medical Director of the Mother-to-Baby MA program that educates the public and the medical community about the importance of avoiding potentially harmful exposures during pregnancy. She serves as the medical advisor to The Genesis Foundation for Children.

Dr. Nowak’s professional mission is to improve the lives of her patients and ease the difficulties experienced by parents and caregivers juggling their child’s complex needs.

The Feingold Service Staff

Jenny Lauck

Jenny Lauck is the Intake and Triage Coordinator for The Feingold Service at Mass General for Children. She obtained her BS in Biology from Simmons College. She pursued graduate-level coursework in genetic counseling at Brandeis University. Jenny provides assistance with care coordination and patient advocacy. She has served the Genesis Foundation for over a decade.

Bella needed many specialists and we wanted the top ones. Jenny Lauck stepped in immediately to help with that and still organizes Bella’s yearly visits with her team. It takes a huge amount of stress off of us as the parents to schedule everything, which is extremely important since Morquio is a progressive disorder.

The Burton Family, patient family

Our gratitude to the Feingold team & The Genesis Foundation is immeasurable. Because of their assistance, we have been able to spend more time focused on loving Daniel and his younger brother Brendan. By providing and facilitating optimal care for Daniel, he has reached his true potential and our family has been transformed.

The O’Donnell Family, patient family

When I learned that my child had problems, I was sick with worry. It is an indescribable feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, fear and anxiety. I don’t know if those feeling ever went away completely. I will always worry. But I now know I don’t have to go it alone. We have the team of professionals at The Feingold Service to thank for that.

Denise Porcello, patient mother

I could see the fear in my wife’s eyes. Dr. Feingold took a lot of time to explain everything to us that day. The most important thing he said was that it would be a journey, but one that he would take WITH us. In that moment, I saw the fear in my wife’s face disappear.

Michael Murphy, patient father