Nominate A Staff Member for a DoM Annual Staff Award – Deadline June 10, 2024!
Submissions are now open through June 10th for our two Annual DOM Staff Awards! See details and links to submit below.
The David "Aaron" Freed Compassion & Excellence Award
Nomination Criteria
Nominee should be a non-faculty member of the Department of Medicine for at least one year who demonstrates the following qualities:
- Dedication to the community
- Selflessness
- Dependability
- Compassion
- Goes above & beyond expectations (outside of their job description)
Please be prepared to provide specific examples of your nominee for each of these categories as well as their overall impact on the DOM Community.
The Maria Antoinette Evans Staff Diversity Award
Nomination Criteria
Nominee should be a non-faculty member of the Department of Medicine for at least a year who exemplifies the following qualities:
- Models inclusive behavior
- Commitment to educating peers in DEIA topics
- Mentoring
- Creates, initiates or support DEIA program development
- Goes above and beyond (outside of their job description)
Please be prepared to provide specific examples of your nominee for each of these categories as well as their overall impact on the DOM Community.
Deadline for submissions is June 10, 2024.
Hollis D. Day, MD, MS, MHPE, Delivers Distinguished Professor in Geriatrics Keynote Lecture
Hollis D. Day, MD, MS, MHPE, associate professor of medicine, delivered the Distinguished Professor in Geriatrics (DPG) keynote lecture at the annual Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) meeting held recently in Boston. Day, who also is chief of geriatrics at Boston Medical Center (BMC), discussed the future of geriatrics and if it is a dying specialty. Her answer was an emphatic no. She proposed ways for geriatricians and general internists to become more actively engaged in the research, education and clinical care of the older adult.
Invited professors are general internists and/or geriatricians with nationally recognized expertise in education, research, and/or clinical care related to the care of older adults. The DPG program facilitates career development of SGIM members in academic fields directly related to older patients.
Day recently was accepted into the premier leadership program for women in academic health sciences in the country, the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program. Established in 1995, ELAM offers an intensive one-year fellowship of leadership training with extensive coaching, networking and mentoring opportunities aimed at expanding the national pool of qualified women candidates for leadership in academic medicine, dentistry, public health and pharmacy.
Day’s research interests include integrating geriatrics into the internal medicine curriculum at the student, resident and faculty development level; interdisciplinary team teaching; and inter-professional communication. Her clinical focus areas include dementia and delirium in geriatric patients and cognitive assessment in the primary care geriatric setting.
She is a member of the American Geriatrics Society, the Society of General Internal Medicine, and the American College of Physicians.
Day earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Johns Hopkins University, a master’s degree in anatomy from the University of Maryland and medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia. She also completed a master’s degree in health professions education from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She completed her residency in internal medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and fellowships in general internal medicine and geriatrics at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
She came to BU/BMC from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) where she specialized in geriatrics, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPSM) where she was advisory dean, associate professor of medicine and the medical director of the Advanced Clinical Education Center. While in Pittsburgh, she led the efforts to integrate geriatrics throughout the medical school curriculum at UPSM and was a Founding Program Director for the geriatrics track in UPMC’s internal medicine residency program.
The Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) is a global association of over 3,300 leading academic general internists dedicated to enhancing medical education, improving healthcare access, eliminating disparities, and advancing comprehensive, coordinated, and cost-effective care for adults through innovative education, research, and clinical practice.
DoM Faculty Appointments and Promotions – April 2024
Congratulations to the following Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine faculty on their recent appointment or promotion!
Associate Professor
Maureen Dubreuil, MD, MSc, Medicine/Rheumatology, specializes in spondyloarthritis, including the pharmacoepidemiology of spondyloarthritis. Her work has shown protective effects of medications on disease outcomes and comorbidities. She recently led a national project to develop referral recommendations for adults who may have spondyloarthritis. She serves as director of research training for the section of rheumatology and as faculty for the rheumatology fellowship program.
S. Reza Jafarzadeh, DVM, MPVM, PhD, Medicine/Rheumatology, specializes in the development of novel Bayesian methods and the application of causal inference methods in rheumatic diseases, critical care and infectious diseases. He applies innovative statistical methods to solve challenging research questions and has established a national reputation in the development of Bayesian methods in the evaluation of diagnostic tests and prevalence estimation in the absence of a reference standard. He developed a novel Bayesian approach that was more accurate than the CDC’s method to estimate the prevalence of arthritis in the U.S.
Karen Antman Stepping Down as BU’s Medical School Dean and Medical Campus Provost
Karen Antman, who led two transformative decades for Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine as dean of the school and provost of the Medical Campus, has announced plans to step down from those roles and return to the faculty at the BU medical school as a professor of medicine when her successor is named.
Antman, a leading expert on breast cancer, mesotheliomas, and sarcomas, also presided over the construction of BU’s first medical student residence, throwing an affordable housing lifeline to students facing medical education bills. Antman oversaw the renaming of the medical school in 2022 following a staggering $100 million gift from alum and philanthropist Edward Avedisian (CFA’59,’61, Hon.’22). She has led the Medical Campus since 2005 and says the pending inauguration of a fellow physician, Melissa Gilliam, as the new University president helped prompt her to step down from the school’s leadership.
“A new president—an MD—should pick their own new dean for the medical school,” Antman says. She also wants to spend more time with her family. “I plan to take a sabbatical. After a real vacation, I plan to collaboratively write infrastructure grants,” for the medical school, she says.
Kenneth Freeman, BU president ad interim, says information about appointing her successor will be forthcoming in the next several months.
“Dr. Antman has been consistently committed to facilitating faculty and student research,” he adds. “Faculty members have particularly appreciated the establishment of the Proposal Development office, which assists faculty in writing grants.”
Robert A. Brown, BU president emeritus, who worked closely with Antman during his 18-year tenure, says Antman “has been a wonderful leader of our medical school, demonstrating time and again her unwavering commitment to our medical students and the quality of their education. Her work has been recognized nationally, and she leaves the school well positioned to excel.”
The Medical Campus provost oversees the South End complex, which includes the medical school, the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, the School of Public Health, and the University’s collaborative role with Boston Medical Center, BU’s primary teaching hospital and New England’s largest safety net hospital. (BMC has also just named a new president.)
Antman sums up her institution-changing tenure as “construction, fundraising, and recruiting the right leadership for the campus and school.”
The $100 million gift from Avedisian, an investor and for four decades a clarinetist with the Boston Pops and the Boston Ballet Orchestra, was a capstone to Antman’s tenure. Avedisian had suggested that the school be renamed after his lifelong friend Aram Chobanian (Hon.’06)—cardiologist, BU president emeritus, and dean emeritus of the medical school and provost of the Medical Campus. Neither man wanted his name on the school until they were persuaded to allow it to be named after both of them.
The gift will enable $50 million for scholarships for medical students, $25 million to support endowed professorships, and $25 million to the Avedisian Fund for Excellence, supporting cutting-edge research and teaching.
Brown said of the medical residence, at its 2010 groundbreaking: “This facility will make the burden of a medical education a little bit lighter to carry.” In recent years, MDs have been among the five degrees that account for most student debt.
Financial management of the medical school and Medical Campus involved more than the renaming gift, especially during the first decade of Antman’s tenure, a time of flat budgets at one critical funding source, the National Institutes of Health. Antman says she nevertheless managed to recruit “outstanding, grant-funded faculty to new and renovated campus facilities, paid for by moving faculty to campus from off-campus rental space, thus decreasing costs and significantly increasing our research funding.”
She is proud, she says, of the “better prepared, more accomplished medical and graduate students” that the medical school has attracted during her tenure. “We are now the top choice for many, and turned down for only the most competitive medical schools.”
Antman led in opening more than 20 new research cores (shared research facilities) “to provide access to expensive, state-of-the-art equipment,” she says, including the $8 million Center for Biomedical Imaging and the $4 million Cryogenic Electron Microscopy (Cryo-EM) Core Facility, opening this summer with a state-of-the-art electron microscope. Antman also cites the establishment of an office to assist faculty with grant writing.
BU’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center, created on her watch in 2008, has garnered international recognition for its research into the debilitating effects of repeated head traumas, in athletes and military especially. The center says its bank of 1,250-plus donated brains for study is “the largest tissue repository in the world focused on traumatic brain injury and CTE.”
Beyond new facilities, Antman oversaw a revised, team-based MD curriculum that necessitated “substantial renovations of every floor,” in the Instructional Building, she says, “including a 250-seat testing center, a 6,000-square-foot Team-Based Learning Lab, and completely renovated library floors.”
Before her BU service, Antman was deputy director of translational and clinical sciences at the National Cancer Institute. She also has been on the faculties of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (where she earned her MD and codirected the cancer care service line at New York–Presbyterian Hospital) and of Harvard Medical School, from 1979 to 1993. At Harvard, she had hospital appointments at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
She has edited five textbooks and monographs, authored or coauthored more than 300 publications, and written reviews and editorials on such topics as medical education, medical policy, and the effect that research funding and managed care have on clinical research.
As dean, Antman was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine, an advisory group to the federal government, and chaired the American Association of Medical College Council of Deans. She also served on the board of the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates.
DoM STARDoM May Awardee!
Join us in congratulating this month's STARDoM Awardee, Ve Troung!! Ve Truong is a Senior Research Manager in General Internal Medicine.
"Ve Truong truly is a STAR employee. Her SERVICE is consistently exceptional – from expertly managing the start-up, transition and implementation of an NIH clinical trial from one international setting (Russia) to another (Uganda) to organizing a four-day annual immersion training for 30 incoming medicine chief residents and other physicians on state-of-the-art methods to diagnose, manage, and teach about addiction medicine – she consistently delivers exceedingly high-quality work. Her approach is THOUGHTFUL and wise. She treats all colleagues and trainees with kindness. Through her ACTIONS and exemplary work, she has demonstrated her dedication to substance use research and education. Despite her full plate, she is always willing to jump in to assist on other projects. She takes ownership of each project and is able to effectively navigate and identify solutions to complex problems. She is extremely positive, proactive, efficient, reliable, on top of the details and incredibly hard-working. Given her professional ethic, she is widely regarded by her co-workers as a ROLE MODEL of excellence."
How many years have you been at BUSM/BMC?
10 years in August 2024
Describe your role within the Department of Medicine:
I manage two research studies in Ukraine and Uganda.
What do you like best about your job?
What I like best about my job is my team and the way we work together so collaboratively. We support each other, share knowledge freely, and always step up to help one another when needed.
Favorite thing to do outside of work?
Outside of work, I like watching shows, Youtube videos, play video games and during the spring and summer, I like to play pickleball.
Tony Hollenberg, MD, John Wade Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine, has been appointed President of Boston Medical Center
As we continue to reimagine how we deliver expert and equitable care to our patients and members as a fully integrated health system, we are excited to share that the BMC Board of Directors has voted to appoint Anthony “Tony” Hollenberg, MD, as President of Boston Medical Center. Dr. Hollenberg was selected following an extensive national search and currently serves as Physician-in-Chief at Boston Medical Center and the John Wade Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. He will assume the role of hospital President on June 3.
Dr. Hollenberg’s deep leadership experience at academic medical centers, demonstrated experience as a highly accomplished physician-researcher, and longstanding commitment to clinical excellence and health equity make him an ideal leader to lead Boston Medical Center as we bolster our reputation as a premier academic medical center. In this role, Dr. Hollenberg will provide strategic leadership across our hospital to further our delivery against institutional goals, advance a culture of high-quality patient care, and elevate our research endeavors.
Throughout his time leading the Department of Medicine — the largest clinical department at BMC — Dr. Hollenberg has partnered with colleagues from across the organization to drive healthier outcomes for our patients and communities by incorporating advancements in cutting-edge clinical practices, including innovative CAR T-cell therapies for cancer and gene therapies for patients living with sickle cell disease. Additionally, he has supported novel research that addresses the unmet medical needs of our patients and the broader communities we serve. Prior to joining BMC and BU, Dr. Hollenberg was the Chair of the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Department of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City. He also previously served as Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism and Vice Chair for Mentoring at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
As a specialist in endocrinology, Dr. Hollenberg’s clinical work focuses on thyroid disorders, and his research has centered on investigating the physiological and molecular mechanisms by which thyroid hormones regulate metabolism, including body weight, as well as thyroid gland development. He has published more than 100 original studies in journals and contributed more than 30 book chapters and reviews.
Dr. Hollenberg, a native of Toronto, received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and his medical degree from the University of Calgary. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, followed by a clinical and research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Karen Antman, MD, BUMC Provost and Dean, BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and I are grateful to Dr. Hollenberg for advancing the Department of Medicine since 2022. Dr. Hollenberg joins Heather Thiltgen, President of WellSense Health Plan, and Nicole Faucher, President of Clearway Health, as a leader of our health system’s largest entities.
We will be launching a search for a Chief and Chair to continue to advance the Department of Medicine’s rich history of clinical innovation. We are pleased to share that Sushrut Waikar, MD, Chief of Nephrology, will serve in an interim capacity and be supported by Dr. Hollenberg. Please join us in thanking Dr. Waikar for stepping into an interim leadership role.
Please also join us in congratulating Dr. Hollenberg on his new role as hospital President.
DoM Nurse Receives Nurses Week Provider Partner of the Year Award
Congratulations to DoM's Dr. Christopher Huang for winning one of this year's Nurses Week Provider Partner of the Year Awards, given to providers who are great partners to us in caring for our patients here at BMC! Quotes from nomination letters are below.
"Dr. Huang is the first to recognize exceptional teamwork and its affect on both patient care and patient experience. He frequently sends out full staff emails thanking them for the unit's work that day and encouraging all nurses to connect with him if they have ideas, suggestions, or concerns over anything.
Dr. Huang is inspiring in his perpetual friendly, constant, and can-do outlook on even the most pressing projects. He constantly contributes to collaborative problem solving for all elements of his practice. He is quick to volunteer to call a patient, nurse, or anesthesia provider to make the day run as smoothly as possible.
Dr. Huang has worked tirelessly, via a strong collaboration with administration and nursing leadership, to increase patient access to colorectal cancer screenings. He has continuously interfaced with clinic staff, his fellow endoscopists, and the GI charge nurses to make available the maximum amount of GI screenings possible to make progress on the backlog present since COVID closed many similar units. Dr. Huang utilizes his excellent communication skills to add patients, shuffle attending schedules, and give patients an excellent BMC experience."
DOM Faculty Receives DEIA Recognition Awards
Assistant Professor of Medicine Ricardo Cruz, MD, MPH, MA is one of two to receive the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility (DEIA) of the Year Award. The award recognizes those who have done an extraordinary job at addressing and improving diversity and fostering a culture of inclusion, equity and accessibility throughout the school community.
Cruz joined the faculty in 2014. His clinical work at Boston Medical Center (BMC) focuses on primary care and treatment of substance use disorders and viral hepatitis for vulnerable populations including racial and ethnic minority communities and individuals with history of criminal justice involvement. He also is a physician in the Faster Paths to Treatment, BMC’s innovative, low-barrier, substance use disorder bridge clinic.
His research interests include clinical innovations to address health and treatment disparities among people with substance use disorder. He was the principal investigator of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health-funded Project RECOVER (Referral, Engagement, Coaching, Overdose preVention Education in Recovery), a project that utilizes peer recovery coaches to assist with engagement and retention of individuals with opioid use disorder into treatment and primary care services after completion of acute treatment services (detoxification). He has been a co-investigator on National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded randomized clinical trials testing medications for alcohol and cocaine use disorders.
Additionally, Cruz serves in the school’s Academy of Medical Educators where he teaches medical students during the preclinical doctoring courses with a focus on development of communication, physical exam, and clinical reasoning skills.
According to another colleague, Cruz educates medical students and residents on the health impact and inequities driven by the criminal justice system. “Dr. Cruz is known as an excellent clinical teacher and his educational scholarship is deeply tied to the values of antiracism.”
DOM Faculty Appointments and Promotions – March 2024
Professor
Stefano Monti, PhD, Medicine/Computational Biomedicine, integrates systems biology, machine learning and bioinformatics approaches to investigate the molecular drivers of human disease, with the goals of advancing prevention and care. This multidisciplinary effort relies on the development of novel computational methodologies, and on the design of experiments based on the generation and integrative analysis of high-throughput multi-omics data, with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets and developing accurate diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. Dr. Monti’s areas of research include the study of the molecular mechanisms of tumor initiation and progression and of the role played in it by environmental exposure, with funded projects in head and neck cancer and breast cancer, as well as the study of the biological factors contributing to healthy aging and extreme longevity. His lab also led the computational studies of genomic events associated with diffuse large B cell lymphoma that could provide prognostic biomarkers for that disease.
DoM Education Week – May 20-24
The Department of Medicine will hold its first Education Week from May 20th through May 24th. There will be a series of activities for educators, administrators, and trainees with the hope to promote a sense of community, foster collaborations in teaching, and celebrate educational success at DOM. Please check out the agendas below for more details and RSVP HERE if you are interested in participating in any of the sessions. We look forward to seeing you there!
