Clinical Research Grand Rounds

Clinical Research Grand Rounds

Friday, May 19 | 12:00-1:00 PM | Keefer Auditorium (Hybrid)

"Translating Research into Practice: Patient Navigation in Oncology Care"

Presented by:

Tracy Battaglia, MD
Professor of Medicine & Community Health Sciences
Boston University
Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

2023 Evans Days Abstract Submissions Date Announced!

2023 Evans Days Abstract Submissions Open June 5th!

BUMC Faculty Appointments and Promotions – April 2023

Congratulations to the following Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine faculty on their recent appointment or promotion.

Clinical Associate Professor

Nir Ayalon, MD, Medicine/Cardiology, is an interventional cardiologist with expertise in heart failure and invasive hemodynamics. Ayalon initiated and is the director of the Heart Failure Remote Monitoring Program and co-director of the Invasive Physiology and Hemodynamics Lab (IPH-lab). He divides his clinical time between attending the CCU, HF consult service, catheterization lab and the IPH-lab. At the IPH-lab, he strives to provide high-quality, state-of-the-art and personalized cardiac hemodynamic evaluations to optimize diagnosis and treatment for patients with otherwise unexplained dyspnea on exertion and exercise intolerance. Ayalon mentors and advises residents, fellows and APPs. He teaches and supervises medical students, residents and fellows from diverse specialties. He has been an educator for the school's and the department's advanced cardiac hemodynamics program since becoming an assistant professor in 2017. In 2019, Ayalon received the department of medicine’s Joel Caslowitz Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Ramon Bonegio, MBBCh, PhD, Medicine/Nephrology, is associate chief of the renal section in the department of medicine at the VA Boston Healthcare System (VABHS) and director of its Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury dialysis units. He played a key role in establishing a tele-nephrology program at VABHS that has expanded to the national level and led to his appointment as co-director of the Tele-nephrology Enterprise-Wide Initiative and VISN1 Tele-nephrology Program. Prior to his assignment at VABHS, Bonegio helped establish and co-directed multi-disciplinary lupus and glomerular diseases clinic at Boston Medical Center. He has taught a variety of classes at the school, including the renal module in the Doctoring course from 2017-2021 where he introduced a two-hour module to discuss systemic racism in currently used treatment algorithms and what could be done to mitigate this. He received the department of medicine’s Clinical Excellence Award in October 2022 for his contributions to patient care for the past 20+ years at BMC and VABHS.

Ansu Noronha, MD, Medicine/Gastroenterology, is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) specialist. Currently serving as the interim chief for gastroenterology, she is a lead clinician in the department’s high-volume Crohn’s & Colitis Program, which incorporates a ‘medical home’ model for IBD care. She led the development of novel medication monitoring protocols with pharmacy staff to optimize patient care and safety while on potent medications and also worked with the infusion center and IT department to streamline infusion therapy order sets to expedite patient care while receiving biologic therapy. As medical director for the Center for Digestive Disorders, she has led the development of a referral triage pathway and GI e-consults to improve the experience for both referring physicians and patients.

Megan Young, MD, Medicine/Geriatrics, provides home-based care to frail older adults in the communities of Dorchester, Mattapan and Hyde Park, in addition to being an attending physician on the inpatient geriatrics service at Boston Medical Center. The passion for her clinical practice is intertwined in her teaching and scholarship. She not only cares for the patients clinically, she also guides medical students and trainees to learn how to care for this highly complex patient population by leading challenging family meetings and focusing on transitions of care. She served as one of the doctoring course directors in the medical education office from 2014-2019 and subsequently became the clerkship director for geriatrics in 2019. Since that time, she has provided mentorship for other faculty members to develop a formal curriculum around social determinants of health. Young has been an assistant dean for student affairs since 2016 and is the diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility champion for the geriatrics section. She was recently elected to the board of the American Geriatrics Society.

Applications Now Open for DoM M.A.D.E. Staff Development Program!

Apply for the Department of Medicine Administration Development & Education Program (M.A.D.E.)!

Congratulations to to our April STARs!

We are excited to announce this month's DoM STARs!

Takiesha Brooks - Research Operations Coordinator (Central Research)

Dennis Chow - Director (Central Finance)

Emily Scarbo - Nurse Practitioner (Geriatrics)

Guerline Andre - Nure Practitioner (GIM/6C)

Jen Fosbroke - Senior Administrative Director (GIM)

Johana Ingles - Medical Assistant (5A)

Kelsey Norman - Pharmacologist (Cardiology)

Kiana Mahdaviani - Program Manager (Hem/Onc Research)

Laura Anastasi - Administrative Director (Geriatrics)

Sarah Pinchinat - Fellowship Coordinator (Gastroenterology)

Medical Grand Rounds – April 28

Dr. Tracy Battaglia will be presenting Grand Rounds on April 28th, 2023 at 12:00PM. We will be celebrating her promotion to Professor of Medicine.

DoM Faculty Promotion – February 2023

Professor

Lynn Moore, DSc, MPH, Medicine/Preventive Medicine & Epidemiology, focuses on the epidemiology of nutritional and metabolic disorders throughout the lifespan. Her findings that excess vitamin A caused birth defects led to changes in manufacturing and clinical practice. She also has studied the evolution of cardiometabolic dysregulation among children and adolescents, the effects of a DASH eating pattern in free-living adults and children on cardio metabolic outcomes, the role of dietary protein on functional outcomes in older adults, and weight change patterns and chronic disease outcomes including cancer, hypertension, and diabetes. Dr. Moore has a long record of teaching at Boston University. In her earlier faculty years, she taught two methodologic courses in epidemiology (an introductory course and an intermediate methods course) and then later served for several years as a facilitator in the school’s Integrated Problems curriculum for MD and MD/PhD students. Since 2016, she has been director of the Graduate Medical Sciences Nutrition & Metabolism programs.

BUMC Faculty Promotions – January 2023

Clinical Professor

David Lichtenstein, MD, Medicine/Gastroenterology, specializes in therapeutic endoscopy, specifically in pancreaticobiliary tract malignancies and calculus disorders, advanced polyp resection techniques, Barrett’s ablation, GI bleeding, small bowel enteroscopy, palliation of malignant enteral obstruction, and endoscope reprocessing/safety. He is a master educator in endoscopy technical skills, training generations of gastroenterologists across the United States in innovative endoscopic approaches to treat GI disorders throughout the GI tract. Dr. Lichtenstein has made significant contributions to the advancement of endoscopic technologies and training in the U.S., and has chaired national committees on this topic for the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and American Board of Internal Medicine. For more than 20 years, he was the director of endoscopy for the GI Section at Boston Medical Center (BMC), during which time he brought many new technologies to the BMC patient population. He also led the design and build of the new endoscopy unit in 2017, and chaired or sat on hospital committees for colorectal cancer screening, infection control and patient safety. In 2019 he was appointed director of advanced endoscopy, overseeing recruitment of new faculty, training in new techniques, and determination of which devices warrant inclusion in the BMC care pathway.

Howard Wolpert, MBBCh, Medicine/Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition,  focuses on diabetes technology and care delivery innovation. He joined BU/Boston Medical Center in July 2021 from Eli Lilly where he served as vice president of medical innovation for five years. Prior to that he was senior physician at Joslin Diabetes Center and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wolpert is a pioneer in the development and clinical use of Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM). He was a member of the three guideline committees regarding the use of CGM in diabetes management and the senior author publishing Consensus Guidelines for Continuous Glucose Monitoring in 2008, the Endocrine Society Guidelines on Continuous Glucose Monitoring in 2011 and Continuous Subcutaneous Insulin Infusion Therapy and Continuous Glucose Monitoring in Adults in 2016. He is the inventor of three issued patents; one of them – a decision support tool that has been incorporated into the Abbott Libre CGM system, one of the two dominant clinical CGM devices in the United States – is in clinical use.

Clinical Associate Professor

Uri Avissar, MD, Medicine/Gastroenterology, is a clinician-educator who specializes in hepatology and management of end-stage liver disease. On staff at South Boston Community Health Center, during the transition of treatment of chronic viral hepatitis to a community-based program, he led the GI Section’s integration of these treatments into community practice. Dr. Avissar serves as the section’s Subspecialty Education Coordinator and is actively involved in the training of fellows, residents and medical students. He also serves as the Education Director of the Massachusetts Gastroenterology Association.

Christopher Shanahan, MD, Medicine/GIM, is a long-contributing clinician-educator concentrating in three domains: clinical and research medical informatics/information technology, substance use disorders and safer prescribing of opioid medications for the treatment of chronic pain, and community medicine as both a clinician in a community health center and expertise in community-engaged collaboration with organizations, clinicians, and patients. A primary care physician at the Mattapan Community Health Center for 25 years, Dr. Shanahan was the founding medical director of the Massachusetts Consultation Service for Treatment of Addiction & Pain, which serves as model for other consultative programs across the country. He is the 2021 recipient of the American College of Physicians award for Distinguished Contributions to Behavioral Medicine.

H. Christian Weber, MD, Medicine/Gastroenterology and Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, focuses on the clinical conditions associated with gastrointestinal (GI) hormones and motility. He spent the early part of his career investigating gastrointestinal peptides at the NIH, and in recent years has pivoted to integrate this knowledge into managing Functional GI Disorders (FGID), acid-related disorders and neuroendocrine tumors. He serves as associate chief and clinical director of the Section of Gastroenterology & Hepatology at VA Boston Healthcare System (VABHS), where he oversees clinical care for veterans with gastrointestinal conditions and supervises clinical teaching in gastroenterology for residents and fellows from training programs at Boston Medical Center and Brigham & Women's Hospital.

Sonia Ananthakrishnan, MD, Receives Stanley L. Robbins Award for Excellence in Teaching

Sonia Ananthakrishnan, MD, assistant professor of medicine, has been recognized with the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine’s highest teaching honor, the Stanley L. Robbins Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The annual award honors an outstanding educator and acknowledges the importance of teaching skills and commitment to students and education. It was established in recognition of the exceptional teaching and devotion to students exemplified by Stanley L. Robbins, MD, former professor and chair of pathology.

“Dr. Ananthakrishnan achievements as a teacher, mentor, program developer, innovator, scholar and leader in medical education made her an outstanding candidate for this award,” a colleague said in recommending Ananthakrishnan for the award. “She identified the need to improve the quantity and quality of feedback and created a local and national reputation around the educational initiative of improving feedback exchanges across all levels of training in the department of medicine.”

Ananthakrishnan also found ways to improve the evaluation of medical student clinical reasoning skills. “As a clerkship director, she addressed the need for more high-quality assessment by creating the Observed Clinical Reasoning Assessments (OCRA). The OCRA has successfully integrated into the internal medicine clerkship and this style of examination has been adopted by several other clerkships (neurology and pediatrics) and even in the preclinical curriculum,” he added.

Ananthakrishnan has championed diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging on the medical campus. She is one of the original creators of the Lights On, Intent vs Impact, Full Stop, Teach (LIFT) training for bystanders, addressing micro-aggressions as part of the Mid-Career Faculty Leadership Program in 2020. The LIFT training program has been widely disseminated across the campus in part due to her work facilitating more than a dozen sessions for students, faculty and hospital leadership.

Ananthakrishnan has been active in medical student and resident education at the School since 2009. She has mentored hundreds of medical students as they travel through the residency application process consistently earning high praise including: “She is a role model for all educators having excelled in every educational domain including direct teaching, assessment, curriculum development and scholarship,” wrote the colleague in the letter of recommendation.

Ananthakrishnan currently serves as the Director of Student Education in the department of medicine and is the clerkship director to third-year students in the Medicine 1 clerkship. She has served as the faculty mentor for the Internal Medicine Interest Group at the School since 2012, the student-led group that plans activities designed to educate the student body on the field of Internal Medicine and its various subspecialties. She is an active national member of Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine.

Ananthakrishnan’s outpatient practice is in endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition at Boston Medical Center with a focus in neuroendocrinology. She works as the endocrine director of a multidisciplinary neuroendocrine group and is a Spanish-speaking provider.