Rich Named President-Elect of the New England Region Chapter of SGIM

Catherine Rich, MD, assistant professor of medicine, has been elected president of the New England Region Chapter of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM). This three-year role will begin immediately with Rich serving as president-elect. The following year she will serve as president and then past-president during her third and final year.

SGIM is a national medical society of 3,000 physicians who are the primary internal medicine faculty of every medical school and major teaching hospital in the United States. SGIM members teach medical students, residents, and fellows how to care for adult patients. They also conduct research that improves primary care, preventative measures, and treatment services for patients. The New England Region Chapter is comprises Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Rich received her undergraduate degree in religion from Swarthmore College, Penn. She graduated from BUSM in 2002 and completed her residency in internal medicine at Boston Medical Center (BMC) in 2005, where she continues to see patients. Since 2011 she has served as the director of the Primary Care Training Program and as an associate program director in the Internal Medicine Residency program. Rich supervises residents in their outpatient clinic as well as on the general medicine inpatient service.

Under her leadership the Primary Care Training Program has expanded to include residents in a new Primary Care-Preventive Medicine four-year track. In collaboration with colleagues at BMC and throughout SGIM, Catherine has built curricula on advocacy, caring for vulnerable populations, population medicine, women’s health and wellness and resiliency. She has presented two national SGIM workshops on teaching residents to care for vulnerable populations.

Rich has been a reviewer for abstracts and workshops and a poster judge for SGIM at the regional and national levels. In addition she has increased residents’ scholarly submissions and presentations at both regional and national SGIM meetings.