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.

Medical Grand Rounds – April 7

Medical Grand Rounds

Friday, April 7 | 12:00-1:00 PM | Keefer Auditorium (Hybrid)

Joseph Korn Memorial Lecture: "Dissecting the Complex Phenotype of Scleroderma Vasculopathy"

Presented by:

Tracy Frech, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine 
Rheumatology & Immunology Division
Vanderbilt University
Medical Center

STARDoM – Employee Recognition Program

We are excited to announce the "STARDoM" Employee Recognition Program to acknowledge out standing non-faculty employees!