Drew Faust, the incoming Harvard University president, announced that Barbara McNeil will serve as acting dean of the Medical School starting July 1, until a new dean is in place. McNeil is the Ridley Watts professor of health care policy and head of that department, as well as HMS professor of radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Under McNeil’s stewardship, the Department of Health Care Policy has become a national leader in health services research and in the scholarly areas on the boundary between clinical medicine and behavioral science. She has been recognized nationally and internationally for her seminal work bringing the methods of decision science and technology assessment into the health care arena. She is also renowned for her academic contributions describing the relationships between clinical services, quality of care, and patient outcomes.
Sports Medicine Makes Gain with Thorndike ChairFollowing HMS dean Joseph Martin, who opened the speaking program for the new Augustus Thorndike, MD, Professorship in Orthopedic Surgery, Peter Slavin, president of Massachusetts General Hospital, described the chair’s namesake as one who “probably did more than any other physician to advance the field of sports medicine.” After graduating from HMS in 1921, Augustus Thorndike, now deceased, became an orthopedic surgeon and immersed himself in sports medicine, making strides in preventing and treating sports injuries at a time when the field of sports medicine did not yet exist. Among his early panel of patients were members of the Harvard College football team. Slavin said that he was confident the first incumbent, Bertram Zarins, would “aggressively carry Dr. Thorndike’s legacy further down the field.” In describing the experience that Zarins brings to sports medicine, Harry Rubash, the Edith M. Ashley professor of orthopedic surgery at HMS and MGH, offered that Zarins is head team physician for the Boston Bruins and the New England Revolution and was head team physician for the New England Patriots for 24 years. At the lectern, both Zarins and Nicholas Thorndike, son of Augustus, alluded to the symbolic weight of the chair, since, as Zarins commented, “Dr. Thorndike was the father of sports medicine in the United States.”
New Family Van Extends Services
This month, the Medical School’s Family Van made two major advances, putting a new van on the road (above) and extending its services to two other communities, Jamaica Plain and Hyde Park. Van director Jennifer Bennet said, “Hyde Park has demonstrated a real need for our services, and I am confident that with the partnerships we’ve made with community organizations and the van’s reputation for compassionate curbside care, the site will be successful.” The van travels to seven predetermined locations in some of Boston’s most vulnerable communities, offering confidential medical screenings, health education, and referrals to appropriate area services.
It focuses mainly on diabetes, obesity, hypertension, nutrition, glaucoma, prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, prenatal care, reproductive health, and oral health. The van has seen more than 87,000 at-risk individuals since it was first launched in 1992.
