Robert Chirlin, MD, FAAP

Dr. Robert Chirlin was born on a fine spring morning in a suburb of Buffalo, NY at the end of the baby boomer generation. He spent his formative years growing up to the sounds of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Dylan, and the Monkees.  He saw the first televised war, Haight-Ashbury, the summer of love, and the civil rights movement brought into our homes by the paternal persona of Walter Cronkite.

Leaving high school after his junior year to attend an Advanced Placement Program, he graduated from the University of Michigan with a BGS degree and followed that with a year of reflection while obtaining his EMT certification. Dr. Bob attended SUNY at Buffalo Medical School, graduating in 1982, and spent his pediatric residency years in Cleveland, OH at Case Western Reserve Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital.

After a year in private practice just outside of Minneapolis, MN he joined Dr. Larry Lutner in Newburyport, MA in 1986 and helped bring Pedi-Practitioners from a two-man practice in a small office at the Anna Jacques Hospital to its current status as one of the finest and most complete medical home-oriented practices on the North Shore.

A life-long Buffalo Bills and Sabres fan (forgive him–neither has ever won a championship), he has converted from his childhood Yankee fanaticism to being a Boston Red Sox fan with a true understanding of the pathos that went with chronic losing.

In 1980 he married his beautiful bride, Patricia, and together they have helped insure the future through their prodigy: Alyssa, their daughter, and Jacob, their son.  His interests include travel and photography and an on/off passion for the game of golf.

Dr. Chirlin is a board-certified Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a member of the American Medical Association and Massachusetts Medical Society, vice-president of the Whittier Independent Physicians Association, and sits on the board of the Lower Merrimack valley Physicians Hospital Association.  He has been president of Children’s HealthCare since 2002.