Winners Named for Dean’s Community Service Awards
The HMS Office for Diversity and Community Partnership has named the recipients of the 2008 Dean’s Community Service Awards. Initiated in 1999 by then dean Joseph Martin, the awards honor HMS faculty, trainees, students, and staff for extraordinary contributions to community service and encourage volunteering among members of the HMS community. Laurence Ronan, instructor in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, received the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as director of the Thomas S. Durant, MD, Fellowship in Refugee Medicine program. Jennifer Moye, HMS associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton Division, received the faculty award for volunteering with Shawmut Gardens, a healing and medicinal garden in Dorchester. Brian Skotko, a clinical fellow in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, received the trainee award for service with the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, a resource and support organization for parents and professionals. Scott Lee, a third-year HMS student, was honored with the student award for his work with Common Hope for Health, an organization for graduate students and young professionals to improve global healthcare delivery. Laboratory assistant Karen Wepsic received the staff award for time dedicated to the Fenway Garden Society, which maintains the Fenway Victory Gardens. The awards will be presented at a celebratory breakfast on Nov. 12.
Conflict Disclosure Formalized in Medical EducationHMS and Harvard University are in the process of reviewing and strengthening their policies on relationships with industry, including conflicts of interest and interaction with pharmaceutical marketers. In advance of the completion of these efforts, the HMS Curriculum Committee earlier this year formally adopted policies that require disclosure of such conflicts in undergraduate medical education and prohibit pharmaceutical representatives on campus. The written policies appear below.
Policy on Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest:
The Pharmaceutical Industry and Undergraduate Medical Education
As stated in the Harvard Medical School Faculty Policy on Conflicts of Interest and Commitment, collaborations with industry have resulted in “bringing new resources to the support of science and facilitating the translation of knowledge from the laboratory to the bedside.” As the HMS policy also states, however, these relationships can create conflicts, and the “public trust in the enterprise of academic medicine and the legitimacy of its powerful role in society require a constant amenability to public scrutiny.” Conflicts of interest in medical education is one area that is becoming of increasing concern to our students, to our faculty members, and to the public.
Therefore, effective immediately, faculty and students must disclose any financial interests they may have in a pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical instrument company, or other business that owns or has a contractual relationship to the subject matter being reported or discussed in a presentation, lecture, tutorial, paper, or other teaching exercise or assignment. For example, faculty who have received research support or who have consulted for a pharmaceutical company and whose lecture to students includes a discussion of drugs developed by that company should disclose the association in advance either in the lecture syllabus and/or in an introductory slide (at the discretion of the course director).
Policy on Access of Pharmaceutical Representatives to HMS Campus
Pharmaceutical company sales and marketing representatives are not permitted to visit or interact with medical and dental students on the HMS campus, and pharmaceutical company sponsorship of any student events is prohibited. Medical and dental students may not accept any gifts from pharmaceutical companies, and pharmaceutical companies may not provide meals or refreshments for any student function.
The VA Boston Healthcare System has become the 12th member of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT), a Boston-based consortium dedicated to innovative research in medical devices and clinical systems. VA Boston operates major programs in neurophysiology of mental illness, sleep disorders, and storage of organs prior to transplantation. It currently is the major VA referral center in New England for complex surgeries. It is also a major center for invasive cardiology and maintains a large program in spinal injury and posttraumatic stress disorder neurosciences. Nationwide, the VA has developed one of the most comprehensive electronic medical records systems.
Other CIMIT members are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Children’s Hospital Boston, HMS, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Newton–Wellesley Hospital, and Partners HealthCare. CIMIT also has one international affiliate, MIMIT, in Manchester, U.K.
News BriefThe Massachusetts Medical Law Report has named the winners of the 2008 Rx for Excellence Award, including 12 members of the Harvard medical community and one HMS-affiliated institution. The awards recognize distinction in risk management, safety, quality, and best practices in medicine. Recipients of the Leaders in Quality award are Charlie Baker, president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care; George Blackburn, the S. Daniel Abraham associate professor of nutrition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Jim Conway, adjunct lecturer on health care management at HSPH and senior vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement; Andrew Eisenhauer, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Atul Gawande, HMS associate professor of surgery at BWH; Allan Goroll, HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital; Michael Howell, HMS instructor in medicine at BID; Arun Ramappa, HMS instructor in orthopedic surgery at BID; and Anthony Whittemore, HMS professor of surgery and chief medical officer at BWH. Lena Deter, a clinical nurse specialist at Hebrew SeniorLife, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center also received the Leaders in Quality award. Recipients of the Heroes from the Field award are Bruce Cohen, HMS assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at BID, and Steven Schachter, HMS professor of neurology at BID.
Honors and AdvancesMary Cassesso, dean for administration and finance at HSDM, has been named chair of Cambridge Health Alliance’s Board of Trustees. Cassesso is the first woman to be named chair. She replaces outgoing chair Francis Duehay, who had held the position since 2005.
Michael Chernow, HMS professor of health care policy, has been selected to serve on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). MedPAC is an independent Congressional agency that advises Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program. Appointments last for three years and are then eligible for renewal. Nancy Kane, associate dean of educational programs at HSPH, is also a member of the commission.
Drucilla Roberts, HMS associate professor of pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and head of perinatal pathology at the hospital, was one of five recipients of the 2008 College of American Pathologists (CAP) Foundation Humanitarian Grant Award recognized at a ceremony held in September during the CAP’s annual meeting in San Diego. The CAP Foundation’s Humanitarian Grant Program provides grants to members of CAP, which are used to fund pathology and medical services to underprivileged patients in an underdeveloped area of the world. The Humanitarian Grant Award will allow Roberts to recruit a pathologist at a clinic in northern Ethiopia.
Daniel Singer, HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and HSPH professor in the Department of Epidemiology, has received the 2008 C. Miller Fisher Award, the highest research award from the Massachusetts chapter of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. The award is named for Fisher, professor emeritus of neurology at HMS, whose work provided a strong foundation for modern stroke neurology. Singer was recognized for his many contributions to the prevention of stroke in atrial fibrillation, the most devastating complication of this increasingly common cardiac rhythm disorder.
Shukri Khuri, HMS professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the VA Boston Healthcare System, died Sept. 26. He was 65.
Born in Jerusalem, Khuri graduated from American University of Beirut, receiving his BS in 1964 and his MD in 1968. After training in cardiovascular research and cardiothoracic surgery at Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic, he joined the HMS community in 1976, when he was recruited to the VA and where he spent his entire 30-year professional career.
He rose to become chief of surgery at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center in 1984 and professor of surgery at HMS in 1987. Khuri spent 20 years as chief of surgical services at the Brockton–West Roxbury VA Medical Center and the VA Boston Healthcare System (VAB) before stepping down in September 2004. He was chief of cardiothoracic surgery at VAB and vice chairman of the Department of Surgery at BWH.
Khuri’s research led to the development of the first metabolic tool for the online assessment of myocardial protection during cardiac surgery. He was also closely associated with the VA’s Cooperative Studies Program, where he participated in several multicenter studies.
Khuri was instrumental in the VA’s efforts to automate medical records. In 1978, at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center, he established the first automated data management system in a surgical intensive care unit in the Northeast, and he chaired the VA Surgery Specific Interest Users Group.
Khuri led a unique national effort within the VA to establish the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP). The NSQIP is now recognized by the surgical community as the standard for the comparative assessment of quality of surgical care and for continuous improvement in surgery.
Khuri was the recipient of many prestigious awards, including BWH’s Robert Matson Award, the American Heart Association’s Paul Dudley White Award, and the Frank Brown Berry Prize. After his death, he was named the winner of the 2008 Ernest Amory Codman Award for improvements in safety of care to the public.
Khuri is survived by his wife, Randa; his two daughters, Hania Khuri-Trapper and Maya Khuri Plotkin; his son, Nassim; his mother, Vera (Zeidan) Khouri; a brother, Rajai Khouri; and four grandchildren.
Benedict Massell, retired from Beth Israel Hospital, passed away on Jan. 28 at his home in Brookline. He was 101.
Born in Dorchester in 1906, Massell intended to follow his father’s footsteps into a career in dentistry. Yet after only one year at Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1927, Massell switched to medicine.
After earning his degree from HMS, Massell trained at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and at what was then known as Babies Hospital, Columbia Medical Center, in New York City. From there, he began a three-year residency at Children’s Hospital Boston and in the laboratory of Paul Dudley White at Massachusetts General Hospital. It was in White’s laboratory that Massell was introduced to research on streptococcal infections.
By the late 1930s, Massell had joined the medical staffs of the House of the Good Samaritan and Beth Israel Hospital. During World War II, he put his knowledge of streptococcal infections to work for the U.S. Navy. Shuttling between the Good Samaritan and the Navy’s training station in Newport, Rhode Island, Massell investigated the epidemiology of streptococcal infections and rheumatic fever, two conditions spreading through the service’s ranks.
After the conflict, Massell returned to the Good Samaritan, where he became chief of the hospital’s rheumatic fever division.
In 1946, after earlier, limited success using sulfonamides against streptococcal throat infections, Massell began administering the then-new drug penicillin to rheumatic heart disease patients at the Samaritan who had developed strep infections. He found that treating the throat infections with penicillin not only halted the spread of the bacteria to other hospital patients, but also prevented many of the patients from relapsing with rheumatic fever. It was soon clear that using the antibiotic to control streptococcal infections helped prevent rheumatic fever and that prophylactic treatment with penicillin kept patients with rheumatic heart disease from relapsing.
After the Good Samaritan closed, Massell continued studying the natural history of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. In 1988, he published an analysis of the decline in acute rheumatic fever in this country and, at the age of 90, he authored a definitive text that highlighted the research on rheumatic fever and streptococcal infections.
Massell is survived by Josephine, his wife of 66 years.
