Two BUSM Graduates Chosen for New England Journal of Medicine Editorial Fellowships
BUSM graduates MaryAnn Wilbur, MD, MPH (MED ’11, MPH ’11), and James Yeh, MD, MPH (MED ’10), have been chosen for prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) editorial fellowships. With more than 600,000 readers in 177 countries, NEJM is the most widely read and cited general medical journal in the world and has a rigorous peer-review and editing process. The yearlong program involves fellows in the day-to-day editorial activities of the journal, work on journal articles and an independent project.
“The fellowships help us inject new ideas into the NEJM,” says Jeffrey Drazen, MD, editor-in-chief of the NEJM. “We are interested to hear each fellow’s fresh perspective, and we hope their relationships with us continue well after their fellowships end.”
Chief resident in obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Mary Ann Wilbur served as the case manager for the Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center, BUSM’s primary teaching hospital,
before being accepted to medical school. “For me, medicine is the perfect marriage of science and advocacy, and BUSM was the natural choice for my medical education,” she said. “I had been working on campus at BMC, which cares for the underserved populations of Boston and shares my personal mission.” As a co-founder of the BU Advocacy Training Program, Wilbur also completed a Master’s in Public Health, “because I recognized the importance of understanding the social determinants of health and wanted a framework on which to build when advocating for marginalized populations.”
A co-author of a number of published articles while a medical student, Wilbur learned about the NEJM fellowship from doing a BUSM elective at the journal. “NEJM is a prestigious periodical, and I hope to learn more about how editors review medical literature, a key to successful publishing in the future,” she says. “I also am very interested in the NEJM Perspective articles, which strongly influence the politics of medicine and will help facilitate my career as a physician advocate.” After completing the fellowship, Wilbur plans to stay in Boston to focus on women’s health while caring for the city’s underserved populations.
Yeh practices urgent care medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, and is a hospitalist on the inpatient medicine service. He completed his internal medicine residency at Cambridge Hospital and is completing a research fellowship in general internal medicine through the Harvard Medical School (HMS) faculty development program. He also is completing a Master’s in Public Health in Clinical Effectiveness at Harvard School of Public Health.
He is the author and co-author of a number of research articles and book chapters, and editor of several books. Yeh serves as deputy editor for the Harvard Public Health Review and as an ad hoc manuscript reviewer for the Journal of General Internal Medicine, contributing editor to the DynaMed EBM Journal, and was an abstract reviewer for the American College of Physicians Annual Meeting 2010-2013.
“I am interested in evidence-based medicine and knowledge translation, and I hope to gain insights in how a medical journal can help communicating medical research into clinical practice,” says Yeh of his participation in the NEJM fellowship. He also is interested in understanding the effectiveness of the communication process about drug effectiveness and safety, and in the FDA’s regulatory policies and drug risk communication. The recipient of HMS awards for excellence in teaching, he plans to continue in academic medicine because of his love of teaching and research along with patient care.
“The New England Journal of Medicine plays a pivotal role in communicating many of the best biomedical research studies as well as framing many medical policy positions,” says BUSM Dean Karen Antman, MD. “Our recent graduates, Drs. Wilbur and Yeh have earned this important opportunity to broaden their perspective on medical communication.”