From 2002 until 2020, the Medical University of South Carolina treated burned children but had no burn unit for adults, and WCSC Live 5 News reported in 2020 that the unit MUSC was preparing to open would be the state’s only adult burn center. Dr. Steven Kahn was recruited to change that.

“Right now for patients who suffer a burn injury in South Carolina, they have to go a very long way away from home to receive high quality burn care,” Kahn told the station in January 2020, months before MUSC reopened its burn center to adults. Patients were traveling to North Carolina or Augusta, Ga., he said.

Six years later, Kahn is MUSC’s chief of burn surgery and medical director of the MUSC Health South Carolina Burn Center. On Aug. 4, MUSC Health and Shriners Children’s cut the ribbon on an outpatient clinic for children recovering from burns, in the Roper Medical Office Building at 125 Doughty St. in downtown Charleston.

“For a child recovering from a burn injury, healing does not end when the hospital stay is over,” Kahn said in Shriners Children’s announcement. “Families need expert follow-up care, therapy, education and reassurance over time.”

A clinic for the long haul

The clinic moves MUSC’s existing outpatient pediatric burn services into dedicated space and connects patients with Shriners Children’s programs, according to Shriners. It has five exam rooms, a rehabilitation area, occupational and physical therapy and a child life specialist, WCSC reported. Shriners said in July that the clinic would begin seeing patients this fall and that its care is provided regardless of a family’s ability to pay.

The Post and Courier reported that it is the fifth American Burn Association-verified pediatric burn unit for Shriners in the country, joining Boston; Dayton, Ohio; Galveston, Texas; and Sacramento, Calif.

Kahn, whom the newspaper identified as the clinic’s medical director, said the team hopes “to help children from across the entire region, possibly the country, and eventually we hope to do international.”

“A burn injury doesn’t stop when someone leaves the hospital,” he told WCSC. “It’s our job to get people back to their pre-injury life.”

Rebuilding a burn center

MUSC closed the adult side of its burn center in 2002 and kept caring for children, Kahn said in a 2022 MUSC Health podcast. He was recruited to help reopen a comprehensive center, which happened in May 2020, with a unit for patients 15 and younger at MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital and one for patients 16 and older at the main university hospital.

“The first part about building the burn center was recruiting a team,” he said on the podcast.

Before Charleston, Kahn ran the burn center in Mobile, Ala., for four or five years, he said. He trained in general surgery at the University of Rochester and completed fellowships at Vanderbilt in burn surgery, critical care, and trauma and acute care surgery, according to his MUSC biography. The biography says he has performed more than 3,000 burn operations, has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and served on the American Burn Association’s board of trustees from 2021 to 2025.

MUSC and Shriners announced a partnership in November 2022, with each contributing $3 million for a collaborative pediatric burn unit, WCSC reported. In August 2025, the American Burn Association verified MUSC’s burn center, joining 40 other centers in the United States and Canada with that distinction, ABC News 4 reported. The station reported the center had 25 beds, with nine more planned.

“You meet somebody on the worst day of their life, but you get them better, you get them back to their life,” Kahn told the station.

Firefighters’ doctor

Kahn’s research has focused on firefighter safety, burn resuscitation, smoke inhalation and pain control without opioids, according to MUSC. He serves as medical adviser to the South Carolina Association of Professional Fire Fighters and the International Association of Fire Fighters, and he helped draft the state’s firefighter cancer legislation, his biography says.

In 2022, he received the Charleston Health Care Heroes Award for his work building the South Carolina Burn Center, according to MUSC.