Jan Ellen Paradise, a former faculty member in the department of pediatrics in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and at Penn’s School of Medicine, died on April 12. She was 71. 

Born in Baltimore in 1950, Dr. Paradise grew up in Bellaire, Ohio, where her father was a pediatrician. She graduated from Bellaire High School, then came to Swarthmore College to get a bachelor’s degree. She then transferred to Penn, where she got a BS and then, in 1976, an MD. After completing a residency in pediatrics at Penn and a Robert Wood Johnson Fellowship in general pediatrics and adolescent medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Dr. Paradise joined the medical staff at CHOP and the faculty at Penn’s School of Medicine as an assistant instructor of pediatrics in 1978. She was promoted to instructor in 1980, and two years later she became a clinical associate professor. While at Penn, Dr. Paradise provided expert and compassionate care to children and adolescents, many of whom were victims of child abuse. She also conducted seminal research on sexual abuse, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health.

In 1986, she relocated to Boston to join the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the staff at Boston Children’s Hospital. She later joined the faculty at Boston University and became chief of the division of adolescent medicine at Boston City Hospital. In 1999, she left academic medicine and joined Bridgewater Goddard Park Medical Associates in Easton and Brockton, Massachusetts, where she served as a pediatrician for thousands of children and adolescents. In her free time, Dr. Paradise loved dancing, playing the piano, birdwatching, and knitting. 

She is survived by her husband, Gary Fleisher; children, Daniel, Carl, and Madeline; children-in-law, Yoko Mizumoto, Matthew McKenzie, and Rebecca Lewis; father, Jack; mother, Leone; and sisters, Emily and Julia. Donations in her memory can be made to the Jan Paradise Brain Cancer Research Fund at Boston Children’s Hospital, to the neuro-oncology Program at the Dana -Farber Cancer Institute, or to the Massachusetts Audubon Society.