HMS/HSDM CLASS DAY
In Speech to Grads, HMS Dean Urges Openness to Change, Readiness for Action
In his keynote address at the 2008 commencement on the HMS Quad, Dean Jeffrey Flier noted the spirit of change that marked the occasion for both the graduates and himself: they are embarking on the practice of medicine and dentistry; he is completing just his first year as medical dean. In recollecting the years since his own graduation, Flier described cultural and scientific currents since the early 1970s, presenting a tableau, from one generation to the next, of lived experience as a physician-investigator.
“This joyful occasion holds a similar spirit of change for both of us,” Flier said. “This is my first year as dean—an opportunity that I never imagined having during the 36 years since my own graduation in 1972. This new beginning for me resonates very strongly with your own impending entry into this extraordinary profession.”
In his talk, titled “My Generation to Yours,” Flier emphasized the defining roles of chance and serendipity in his life and that of many other colleagues. “Unexpected discovery and its impact on my career is just one example of the many ups and downs and changes during the course of my life,” he said. “I never knew precisely where I was heading.”
After his residency, he followed a mentor’s advice, joining a diabetes lab at the National Institutes of Health rather than pursuing clinical medicine right away. “Between cell culture and pipetting, frustration born of repeated failure was about to send me back to my original destination as a clinician and teacher,” he said. “One night, however, as I watched the data emerge from the gamma counter, I was overwhelmed by the exciting positive results of my experiment. That one moment of discovery, being able to understand a disease mechanism that no one ever had before, gave me an extraordinary thrill and inspired me to pursue a career as a physician-investigator.”
Addressing the graduating students, Flier called the doctor’s profession “unique and extraordinary.”
“To have the opportunity to enter this vocation remains as much of a privilege today as it was thousands of years ago,” he said, “when Hippocrates practiced and wrote on the physician’s calling.”
“Few can question that medical science is moving forward at an accelerating rate or that your capacity as physicians to understand, to predict, and to treat disease, including common disorders, will be unrecognizably better when you are 36 years from your graduation day, as I am today,” Flier said.
“If we have done our job well,” he continued, “many of you graduating today will make the discoveries and change the basic- and social-science paradigms that will represent our next generation of progress.”
Flier noted the outward focus of many of the graduating students as evidenced by the recent renaming of the HMS Department of Social Medicine, the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, a change partially driven by student interest.
“Your individual careers may also change over time, in unpredictable ways, as did mine,” Flier said. “Some of you will travel a clear path to a well-imagined goal within medicine, and you will stay on that path with great satisfaction through your entire career. I know of many such physicians, and their careers and successes are wonderful to behold. Others of you will start down one road and then change directions, perhaps because of new opportunities, a change of mind, adversity, or sudden inspiration. Such career changes have the opportunity to be wonderful and will create lives, and successes, unimaginable to you today. And as your dean, watching your careers evolve will be one of my great joys, and this will surely be among the pleasures of your families, your classmates, and our faculty.”
Yet “passion and idealism alone do not change the world,” Flier cautioned. “Rather, it is what you will do as physicians, scientists, policymakers, academic leaders, entrepreneurs, writers, or even artists that will have the greatest impact.”
Students Anticipate Trials and Joys as Doctors
As the HMS and HSDM graduates neared the moment they would officially become doctors, the student speakers at the 2008 Class Day celebration reflected on the path that led them to this passage and considered what might lie ahead.
HSDM speaker Daniel Cassarella advised fellow graduates to approach the opportunities presented to them upon graduation with the same sense of wonder and possibility they felt when climbing aboard the school bus as children for the very first time. He also reminded his classmates that with opportunity comes responsibility. “The magnitude of the privileges that we will have as leaders in dental medicine and medicine can only be as great as the magnitude of responsibility that we assume to ourselves.”
Taniqua Alexander, an HMS student speaker, encouraged the graduates to take pride in their accomplishments, no matter how they got there, and to remember what a privilege it is to be in their shoes, not just as HMS graduates, but as caregivers. “We have the honor of knowing a stranger’s life during the most vulnerable times and the most joyous times. We see the extremes of sorrow and of happiness,” she said, urging her classmates to remember these privileges when feeling discouraged during trying times and early shifts.
“Adjusting to the uncertainty of medicine is one of the toughest things we as medical students must do,” said Hugh Glimcher Auchincloss, the second HMS student speaker, of his most important lesson learned in medical school. He noted that no place is more uncertain than the hospital, where no lecture or textbook can take the place of experience, but that they will never be wrong if they listen to their patients and aren’t afraid to ask for help.
Speakers also paid tribute to their late classmate David Magoon, who died in 2006 at the start of his third year. Magoon, whose parents were in the audience, would have graduated with the Class of 2008.
—Emily Lieberman
Voices Rise for World Health
In his final commencement remarks as dean of HSPH, Barry Bloom reflected on change at the heart of public health. This year’s graduates, numbering more than 480, have the capacity to impact the public’s health, Bloom, who is stepping down as dean, told attendees of the graduation exercises on June 5 in the Kresge courtyard.
“Throughout the years, the School has witnessed and contributed to the control of poliomyelitis, measles, varicella, rubella, and battled new public health concerns such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, violence, health disparities, environmental threats, and HIV/AIDS,” Bloom said. “As we consider the global reach of this institution, we turn to today’s graduates, your colleagues, as the next generation of public health leaders.”
He reiterated another theme he has emphasized during his tenure as dean. “Our greatest challenge in public health, I believe in the long run, is the disparities in health that exist within this rich country and within and between most countries of the world,” Bloom said, citing HSPH studies. “It is well known, for example, that health care outcomes in hospitals for blacks and Hispanics in this country are poorer than for whites.” Outside of the United States, China, despite huge economic gains, has about 600 million people in rural areas who lack a basic health safety net. Studies carried out by HSPH faculty on community-based insurance in rural areas have blossomed into a nationwide pilot program in 19 provinces, according to Bloom.
A webcast, slide show, photo gallery, and transcripts are available on the program at www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/commencement-2008/. Other speakers included Phillip Blanc, who gave the student speech, and former HSPH dean Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, who gave the commencement address.
Fineberg, who is also the former Harvard University Provost, echoed the theme of transition. “Public health means changing more than yourself,” Fineberg said. “It means using yourself as the vehicle to effect change around you, to effect change through discovery, and you have many, many predecessors and examples from graduates and from your faculty of great discovery. Change through action, change that depends on making a difference by the action that you take and that you encourage others to take, change that results from a common commitment to do things together to make the world a healthier place.”
Challenges await HSPH graduates in every part of the world, he said. In this country, graduates should help “establish, finally, health care for everyone, universal insurance that applies regardless of what you have or who you are,” he said. “The needs only begin there because a health system that will operate effectively and efficiently and apply value and rely on science is within our reach, if we are willing and able to be the agents of change.”
Roaming the stage with a wireless microphone, student speaker Phillip Blanc invoked the shared sense of mission to help people whose health is jeopardized by being poor or otherwise disenfranchised. He instructed the crowd on the sign language for voice (two fingers in front of the throat moving up to the mouth, as if drawing words from the larynx to the lips) and the sign language for voiceless (same hand motion with head shaking side to side to negate it).
“The corners of the world are waiting to hear from you,” Blanc said, using the sign with every example. “In the north, where there are native peoples who seek justice and sovereignty, the voiceless are waiting. To the southern hemisphere, from Haiti to Bangladesh, where the sting of hunger pains persists, the voiceless are waiting. To the east in Burma and wherever else human rights have been denied, the voiceless are waiting. And here in the west, where 47 million remain without health insurance, the voiceless are waiting.”
Several students received awards during the ceremony, and faculty members were honored for their teaching efforts the previous evening.
Bruce Curliss, a member of the local Nipmuc Nation, reminded graduates of the Harvard legacy of education for both Indians and youth, dating back to the college charter of 1650. He offered a blessing in his native language and gave the English translation.
Mark Clanton, chief medical officer of the High Plains Division of the American Cancer Society, offered greetings from the Alumni Council.
—Christina Roache
New Hopes for Treating Brain Disease
On a recent trip to Rome, while taking in the grandeur of the Sistine Chapel, Joseph Martin and his wife, Rachel, saw a woman point up at Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam and make a startling claim. She said that the painting—which famously depicts God reaching out from a billowing cloak full of angels—was actually a thinly disguised rendering of the human brain.
“I thought this was nonsense,” said Martin, the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler professor of neurobiology and former dean of the Faculty of Medicine. He spoke on June 5 at the HMS Faculty Symposium, “Neurodegenerative Disease: New Developments and New Hopes.” Back in Boston, Martin came across a 1994 paper arguing that Michelangelo, who had dissected numerous cadavers, intended to show God bestowing intellect on Adam—not life, as many assumed—and used the image of the brain to reinforce his message.
“You’ll notice, even more important, that Michelangelo painted a synapse,” said Martin, zooming in on God’s and Adam’s nearly touching fingers.
Martin’s comments, which came at the beginning of the symposium, were apt as well as colorful. Synaptic failure is at the core of most neurodegenerative diseases, from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). But they were fitting for another reason. These diseases hold iconic images of their own—the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer’s disease, the Lewy bodies of Parkinson’s. Traditionally thought to be agents of disease, these dense clots of protein have come in for reinterpretation. Some believe they may actually rescue the brain from the real culprits—smaller, synapse-disrupting protein fragments.
The three-hour symposium was devoted to describing efforts to capture and thwart these rogue peptides and to restore synaptic function to diseased brains.
“I have an interesting story to tell,” said Dennis Selkoe, the Vincent and Stella Coates professor of neurologic disease in the Department of Neurology at HMS and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. For years, he and colleagues have been arguing that Alzheimer’s is the consequence of the overproduction of amyloid beta42 (Abeta42), a component of plaques, by a set of enzymes called the secretases.
To test their hypothesis, he and colleagues, including Ganesh Shankar, exposed slices of rat hippocampus, the brain region involved in memory formation, to soluble Abeta taken from the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s and other memory-impairing disease. The hippocampal synapses did not function normally. The researchers repeated the experiment, this time exposing the neurons to amyloid plaques from which all the Abeta was removed. “There was no perturbation of the signal,” Selkoe said.
Though Abeta is found in plaques, some think its presence there is a consequence of the brain’s effort to sequester the nimble Abeta oligomers. “We think the plaques are protective, but it’s the soluble oligomers that go in and interrupt synaptic function,” Selkoe said. One strategy to stop the rogue peptides would be to target the secretases that make Abeta in the first place. Another would be to get the immune system of patients to attack Abeta peptides. This vaccine approach has yielded promising results in clinical trials, in some cases helping to stave off mental decline in subjects.
An even more effective measure would be to monitor the appearance and spread of Abeta in the brain. “We need to ultimately image the small bits of amyloid, the dimers and trimers,” said Reisa Sperling, HMS associate professor of neurology at BWH. “We’re not there yet.”
In contrast to Alzheimer’s disease, with its slow spread, ALS cuts a swift and deadly course, destroying motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord within two to five years, though some patients can live much longer, said Merit Cudkowicz, HMS associate professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Unlike Alzheimer’s with its telltale plaques and tangles, there are no distinguishing hallmarks of disease. Several years ago, Robert Brown, HMS associate professor of medicine at MGH, and colleagues identified a mutant form of the protein, SOD1, in families affected by the disease. Researchers have since identified several more loci in familial forms, which has led to the development of a wide array of animal models.
Researchers recently found that a well-known antibiotic, ceftriaxone, delayed loss of muscle strength and body weight in a mouse model of ALS. Cudkowicz is part of a consortium involving the ALS Association and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) that has been testing the drug in humans. “We are currently expanding the 60-person study to 600,” she said.
Though there are not yet effective treatments, patients are living longer thanks to the use—early in the course of disease—of assistive devices such as G-tubes, noninvasive ventilators, and exercise programs. “One of the largest advances has been in improved care,” Cudkowicz said. “It has shifted survival dramatically.”
—Misia Landau
Back from the Medical Front
Twenty-five years ago, when the HMS Class of ’83 graduated, “Every Breath You Take” by the Police and “Beat It” by Michael Jackson topped the pop charts. The last episode of M*A*S*H aired. Ronald Reagan was president. Two research groups published the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS. The invention of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was still two years away.
This year, on June 5, scientific talks at the morning session of the 25th Reunion Symposium on the Quad looked back to that time as a gauge of progress. Alums on the front line of basic and translational research updated their classmates on an array of topics—hearts beating dangerously out of control, blocked arteries, HIV therapies, the birth and boom of biotechnology, and the future of genomics discoveries.
Opening the session, Gilad Gordon answered a question he posed in the title of his talk. “Overall, new biotechnology has largely met and even exceeded its promise,” said Gordon, president of ORRA Group, a biotechnology consulting company, and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Boulder. “It’s actually cured some diseases,” he said.
Since the first such company in 1976 (Genentech) and the first approved biotechnology product (human insulin) in 1982, the industry has grown to 336 public companies in the United States and four times as many worldwide. The industry as a whole loses money, but in 2006, 18 products each had annual sales revenue of more than $1 billion, with human insulin leading the way at $8 billion. Ongoing profound challenges include the complexities and costs of clinical research, U.S. Food and Drug Administration policies, pricing, and access to patients.
Switching gears, Hugh Calkins shared his top-ten list of breakthroughs in the understanding and management of cardiac arrhythmias. “The field of electrophysiology has taken off in the last 25 years,” he said. “It’s not just tweaking for better pacemakers or procedures, it’s totally new ways of looking at arrhythmia.”
For example, a large study in 1989 showed the popular anti-arrhythmia medications do not prevent sudden death, said Calkins, the Fortuin professor of cardiology and medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Arrhythmia Service at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Now, cardiologists rely on implantable defibrillators, first approved in 1985. Radiofrequency catheter ablation is often the first line curative approach for treatment of many arrhythmias, he said. Heart specialists also have an improved understanding of the mechanisms of many arrhythmias, including newly described inherited syndromes and genetic mutations.
Moving from the heart to the arteries, Elazer Edelman recounted the long effort to enhance vascular repair with a combination of biology and engineering. In early work, Edelman and his colleagues found that “endothelial cells don’t like to be touched” by the devices and tools needed to clear a blocked artery.
They showed that changing the design of stents (invented by others in 1983) and coating them with slow-release drugs helped reduce endothelial damage, but the improvements brought other complications. Inexplicably, wrapping the outside of arteries with endothelial cells grown on a three-dimensional matrix appears to dampen inflammation and promote open arteries, according to early-stage clinical testing. The cellular therapy approach is now being studied as a means to promote the success and durability of vascular surgery in 65 people, said Edelman, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot professor of health sciences and technology at MIT.
Therapy has also advanced for another global scourge, HIV/AIDS, said Daniel Kuritzkes, HMS professor of medicine and director of AIDS Research at BWH. With antiretroviral therapy, “individuals are able to live close to a normal lifespan,” he said. Unfortunately, only about half of eligible U.S. patients are receiving therapy, and the situation is more desperate in the developing world, where only three million of the 33 million infected people have access to the drugs they need.
In one of the latest scientific developments for cancer and other diseases, a new generation of genomic studies holds promise for new biological insights, drugs, and risk assessment—eventually, said Stephen Chanock, chief of the Laboratory of Translational Genomics at the National Cancer Institute. Despite many new rigorous association studies that have identified unexpected risk markers, “the function is not known on any of these,” he said.
The scientific to-do list is even longer. “We’re not just a bag of genes,” Chanock said. “The environment is everything. That interaction is the key to understanding and using genetics in useful ways.” He warned that individual genetic testing and whole-genome sequencing now marketed by private companies is premature and raises more questions for patients in most cases than it can answer.
The morning symposium was moderated by Edward Bromfield, HMS associate professor of neurology at HMS and BWH. Daniel Federman, the Carl W. Walter distinguished professor of medicine, gave the welcoming remarks.
—Carol Cruzan Morton
Good Work: Medicine and Service
The afternoon session of the 2008 25th Reunion Symposium, “Medicine and Service: Then and Now,” featured speakers who shared their personal stories of good work. Lachlan Forrow, president of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship and HMS associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, defined good work as skilled, moral, and meaningful (based on Harvard professor Howard Gardner’s GoodWork Project).
“It feels good,” said Forrow; it creates a “positive feedback loop” that makes you want to do more.
In medicine, however, sometimes there are barriers to good work. Instead of becoming demoralized by these obstacles, Forrow called for action in the form of science-based advocacy for human health. The stories that followed demonstrated that such advocacy and good work come in many forms.
To begin, Forrow used Albert Schweitzer, winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Lambaréné Hospital in Gabon, as an exemplar of good work. “Everyone has his or her own Lambaréné,” he said. He then reported on the growth of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, which supports students with ideas for service projects. In the past 16 years, the program has grown from 12 to 229 fellows, with more than 2,000 alums.
Much can be learned through service, said Peter Baginsky, associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. Baginsky took several premed and medical students to Tanzania to work at a small clinic. Hands-on work, from assisting with surgery to helping distribute mosquito nets to villagers, taught them “more than a lecture in a lecture hall,” he said.
The remaining speakers focused on the good work they do in their own back yards. Benjamin Chaska, adjunct associate professor at the University of Minnesota, described his efforts to improve patient safety in a rural critical access hospital (CAH). These small rural hospitals serve 62 million people across the country. “Our patients are our friends, families, and neighbors,” said Chaska, who advocated for using management techniques to introduce and maintain a “culture of quality.” Since 2003, the number of unexpected deaths in his CAH has dropped to near zero.
David Keller followed with a local program that creates partnerships between doctors and lawyers to help improve the health of children. A clinical associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Keller said that “pediatrics, at its core, is a community practice,” and that health and social conditions are linked. Doctors cannot write prescriptions for food or for housing, he said. But in his program, an attorney can step in and advocate for his patients’ social welfare.
The session closed with the story of Camp Periwinkle, a “camp for all” that caters to children fighting cancer, epilepsy, HIV, multiple sclerosis, and other debilitating disorders. Self-proclaimed “camp junkies” Jayne Finkowski-Rivera, medical director of the Women’s Hospital of Texas Neonatal ICUs, and Carlos Rivera, assistant professor of pediatric neurology at Baylor College of Medicine, shared a slide show filled with sunshine and smiles. Their good work keeps them, and the campers, coming back for more.
—Elizabeth Dougherty
Ethical Binds: No Easy Way Out
When is it acceptable to breach patient–doctor confidentiality to protect others? Should a family’s request that a patient be taken off life support override moral qualms of his doctor? Although these kinds of challenging ethics questions are hardly new, the field of medical ethics is only now becoming a major part of medical training. HMS, which just completed its first year of a required ethics course for medical students, held a symposium during Alumni Week titled “Practical Issues in Medical Ethics.” Speakers posed controversial questions and provoked audience discussions on topics ranging from abortion to HMOs.
The symposium, moderated by George Thibault, director of alumni relations, began with the first medical ethics professor at HMS, Dan Brock, the Frances Glessner Lee professor of legal medicine. Brock introduced the concept of moral dilemmas, which arise when “two or more moral duties or important ethical considerations are in conflict and you can’t satisfy them both.” Brock explained that ethical dilemmas are inevitable and have two possible solutions: avoid them or resolve them. Underlying both options are critical thinking and clear communication among all parties, two ideas revisited throughout the symposium.
An additional challenge of ethical dilemmas, as discussed by Lachlan Forrow, HMS associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is that although ethics support networks now exist to help physicians, there can be no “ethics by committee.” Decisions should be less about rules and more about individual moral standards: “Meeting obligations is a minimal threshold and is not good enough,” Forrow said. “The question is What would we be proud of doing?”
Robert Truog then illuminated a topic that doctors were long advised to avoid—admitting mistakes. Truog, HMS professor of anesthesia (pediatrics) and of social medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston and HMS, bravely told of his first medical mistake and the question that has haunted him since: “How did my error impact that child, that family?” Over the last five years, the main fears of admitting mistakes, such as the financial consequences, have proven to be misconstrued and have begun to dissipate. For example, medical centers practicing open communication polices show not only decreased litigation, but also stronger patient–doctor relationships, resulting in increased patient satisfaction.
Sadath Sayeed, HMS instructor in social medicine, examined ethical dilemmas that occur within neonatal care. A 1970s report illuminating end-of-life practices on babies with nonterminal congenital anomalies sparked public concern, leading to laws containing objective guidelines on when to try to save a baby’s life, and when to stop. Babies can’t speak for themselves; they have no medical history to draw from; and the outcomes can only be life or death. Even with guidelines, how does one decide objectively if death is better than an extremely difficult life?
“So is there a principled way out?” Sayeed asked. He suggested doctors focus on the baby’s best interests by taking into consideration chance of survival, burden on the child if he survives, and views of the family.
Although Sayeed provided an answer, he ended his talk listing statistics on unlikely neonatal survivals and challenging decisions based upon rules. While taking a critical approach usually helps doctors choose a course of action, there is often no truly “right” answer. Doctors can only try to be honest with themselves and their patients and attempt to make decisions that do not compromise their work or their values. As Brock warned the audience, “You should be skeptical of anyone who promises you easy and decisive answers to genuine ethical dilemmas.”
—Jocelyn Lippman
Dean Addresses Alums on State of the School
In a speech to alumni during Alumni Day activities on the Quad, HMS dean Jeffrey Flier described the future direction of the School through the lens of the past year’s milestones—key recommendations from the School’s Strategic Planning Initiative, innovative components of the new curriculum, opportunities for cross-University initiatives spearheaded by HMS, and the promise of discovery through a $118 million, multiyear National Institutes of Health clinical and translational science grant that will launch a center to transform patient-oriented research at the School and create an unprecedented level of unity and communication across the University and affiliated medical centers.
“I am extremely energized to be in this place at this time: we are in the midst of a true revolution in biomedical research and discovery, and we are making great strides in accelerating the translation of our discoveries and insights … into meaningful clinical advancements,” Flier said. “I am thus thrilled to be able to share with you some of our recent accomplishments so that you will have a sense of the excitement we feel, our priorities as we chart our course, and our hopes for an ever-more-meaningful impact in education and research, our two core missions.”
He pointed to curriculum changes that are helping to transform “business as usual” in medical education at HMS. In addition to integrating courses and clerkships across the curriculum, bringing together clinical medicine with basic sciences and population sciences, and reenergizing the faculty, the School has also initiated innovations in faculty development and compensation, along with plans to reduce student debt.
The strategic planning process he launched nine months ago already is having an impact on the School, Flier said.
“So far, more than 100 faculty from across the University and hospital communities have participated in this planning process,” Flier said, noting that Harvard president Drew Faust has been supportive of the strategic planning process and attended one of the steering committee meetings.
“I am happy to report that she was as impressed with the extraordinary energy and level of engagement as I have been throughout the process,” Flier said. “Based on her interim assessment, President Faust has provided an initial and substantial investment of University funds in support of our planning efforts and has promised that this was just an initial down payment.”
Flier urged alumni to visit the HMS strategic planning website for more detailed information on the process and the recommendations that have emerged from it, and invited them to share their views.
Another key innovation he pointed to is the creation of the “paradigm-shifting” Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center, made possible by a major grant from the NIH. Although it is not part of the formal strategic planning process, the new center addresses many of the School’s strategic needs and goals.
“With this major achievement, we are witnessing the beginning of a new era of collaboration and unity across our community,” Flier said. “I hope you will share my enthusiasm for this center and its role in securing Harvard’s place as the world’s leading medical research institution.”
—Judith Montminy
Student, Faculty, and Staff Honors for 2008
HMS/HSDM
Class of 2008
Christina Mills, Richard C. Cabot Prize
Sachin Jain, Henry Asbury Christian Award
Gary Swain Jr., Community Service Award
Sarah Stewart de Ramirez, Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Excellence in Emergency Medicine Award
Hannah Brown, The Gerald S. Foster Award
Sarah Stewart de Ramirez, Bemy Jelin ’91 Prize
Tiffany McNair, Marisa Gonzalez, Mohammed Saeed, Gary Swain Jr., and Taniqua Alexander, Multiculturalism Award
Denise De Las Nueces, Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award
Mollie Lebowitz and Katherine Nelson, The New England Pediatric Society Prize
Ruchira Jha and Yee-Ping Sun, Leon Reznick Memorial Prize
Kevin Shapiro, Dr. Sirgay Sanger Award
Amar Dhand and Ziad Obermeyer, Rose Seegal Prize
Carlos Paz and Bryan Kee-Hong Sun, James Tolbert Shipley Prize
Jennifer Lewey, Robert H. Ebert Primary Care Achievement Award
Krishna Reddy, PASTEUR Award
Faculty and Staff Awards
Richard Schwartzstein, Professor of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Best Preclinical Instructor
Julian Seifter, Associate Professor of Medicine Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Best Preclinical Instructor
Daniel Hunt, Associate Professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Best Clinical Instructor
Christine Kim, Instructor in Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Best Clinical Instructor
Joseph Bettencourt, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award
Ronald Arky, the Charles S. Davidson Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Overall Contribution
Health Sciences and Technology Teaching Awards
Henry Klapholz, Associate Clinical Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Irving M. London Teaching Award
Elfar Adalsteinsson, Member of the Faculty of Health Sciences And Technology, Thomas A. McMahon Mentoring Award
HSDM Faculty, Staff, and Student Awards
Michael Bundy, Harvard Dental Alumni Association Gold Medal
Cameron Cavola, Harvard Dental Alumni Association Silver Medal
David Baker, Dr. Norman B. Nesbett Medal
Jaruma Sakdee, James H. Shaw Award
Julia-Gabriela C. Wittneben, Joseph L. Henry Award
Michelle Antonia Graham, James M. Dunning Award
Lawrence Tabak, Goldhaber Award
Bruce Paster, Professor of Oral Medicine, Infection, and Immunity, Distinguished Senior Faculty Award
Sang Park, Instructor in Restorative Dentistry and Biomaterials Sciences, Distinguished Junior Faculty Award
Brian Chang, Lecturer on Restorative Dentistry And Biomaterials Sciences; Shigemi Nagai, Assistant Professor Of Restorative Dentistry And Biomaterials Sciences; and Nachum Samet, Assistant Professor of Restorative Dentistry and Biomaterials Sciences, Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award
Kevin Guze, Outstanding Resident Teaching Award
HSPH Prizes and Awards
Class of 2008
Brian Swann, Albert Schweitzer Award
Bethany Hedt, Fang-Ching Sun Memorial Award
Mary Siegrist and Nzovu Ulenga, Edgar Haber Award in Biological Sciences
Jocelyn Kelly, Gareth M. Green Award for Excellence in Public Health
Gourab De and Elizabeth Ogburn, Robert B. Reed Prize for Excellence in Biostatistical Science
Sean Dunbar and Julia Simard, Student Recognition Award
Molly Franke, Uwe Brinkmann Memorial Travel Award
Faculty
Richard Siegrist, Adjunct Lecturer on Management in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Roger L. Nichols Excellence in Teaching Award
Matthew Gillman, Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Mentoring Award
Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Associate Professor of Society, Human Development, and Health; Barry Dorn, Instructor in the Division of Public Health Practice; Kimberlee Gauvreau, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics; and Leonard Marcus, Lecturer on Public Health Practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Teaching Citation
Lindsey Cox, Teaching Assistant Award
