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National Science Foundation, Macy Foundation Fund HST ProgramsThe Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) has recently received two significant grants, one from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the other from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. The NSF has granted a consortium to which HST belongs $10 million to fund an engineering research center to develop bioengineering educational technologies and curricula for the new millennium. The grant calls for the establishment of the Vanderbilt–Northwestern–Texas–Harvard–MIT Center for Bioengineering Educational Technologies. The center will support and enhance the education of a new generation of bioengineers needed to strengthen the industry's competitiveness. The center is the first in the nation dedicated to bioengineering education and will draw from the five institutions' expertise in bioengineering and learning technologies. The grant is for $2 million per year for five years with the potential to extend the grant for an additional three years. "This consortium will have important implications for the premedical HST curriculum at Harvard and possibly for the New Pathway also," said Joseph Bonventre, co-director of HST. The new NSF bioengineering education center will have both industrial and practice partnerships. These organizations will advise the center on the relevance of educational materials and will provide resources to the center, including internships for students, equipment, software, and access to specialized facilities. These partners' facilities will also be test sites for continuing educational materials developed by the center. The Macy Foundation gave HST, the Center for Medical Simulation (CMS), and MIT a $600,000 grant to develop new applications in medical education using the CMS realistic patient simulator. The remarkably lifelike "patient" will help medical students, residents, and experienced practitioners to better integrate principles and practices without having to do all of their learning on actual patients. HST and CMS, a five-year-old nonprofit corporation formed by the anesthesia departments of HMS-affiliated hospitals, will use this three-year grant to develop educational programs using the computerized mannequin currently at the CMS facility on Huntington Avenue. In addition to teaching and honing basic diagnostic and treatment skills, the Macy Simulation Project will work toward validating this model of education and the use of simulation for testing and evaluation as well as teaching. "My colleagues and I are confident that this project will significantly improve the education of health care providers, which ultimately improves patient care. I see this project as a great example of how collaboration with biomedical engineers, medical specialists, and educators will create something that none of us could do alone," said Martha Gray, co-director of HST and principal investigator of the project.
SOCIAL MEDICINE New Freeman Fellows Will Study Aspects of Mental HealthThe Freeman Foundation Chinese and Southeast Asian Fellowship Program in the Department of Social Medicine announced three new fellows for 1999–2000. All three are from the People's Republic of China. Now in its fourth year, the program seeks to promote cross-cultural exchange and dialogue in the field of medical anthropology. * Yang Huaiyu received her medical degree in 1993 from West China University of Medical Sciences. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and a resident on the psychiatric and neurological wards at First University Hospital. As a Freeman fellow, Yang plans to study the scientific research methods that are the basis of social medicine and cultural psychiatry. Her most recent work was on the use of rational emotion therapy for patients who suffer from depression associated with stroke. * Sheng Li graduated from Beijing Medical University in July 1999. He has been working in the Institute of Mental Health both as a faculty member and as a psychiatrist since 1995. His work has centered on asymptomatic complaints in biological medicine, focusing on unexplained chest pain. Sheng Li will conduct a comparative study of diagnostic criteria used in the Chinese and American mental health systems. * Dominic Lee received his medical degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1991, where he is now an associate professor of psychiatry. Lee's main research is postnatal depression. At Harvard he plans to deepen his knowledge of social medicine and medical anthropology as well as establish cross-cultural collaborations with Harvard faculty. Also participating in the program, as a Crichton Fund Fellow, is Shigeyuki Eguchi, director of education and research at Tokyo Musashino Hospital in Japan. Eguchi is a psychiatrist and chief editor of the Japanese Journal of Transcultural Psychiatry. His research will be on cultural and ethnographical methodology in psychiatry. Kathy Chan, chief resident in psychiatry at Kwai Chung Hospital of Hospital Authority in Hong Kong, is in the program as an independent fellow. Chan will concentrate on child mental health policy. Sastrowijoto Soenarto is at Harvard on a senior Fulbright scholarship. He is the former dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia and is now director of the medical education, research, and development unit there. His research will support the establishment of a bioethics department at GMU.
Honors and AdvancesJudah Folkman, the Julia Dyckman Andrus professor of pediatric surgery at Children's Hospital, was in Milan, Italy recently to receive the Italian Association on Cancer Research Award from the European School of Oncology. Two of the four first Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Awards for excellence in bench to bedside research were awarded to HMS faculty members. One of the $3 million awards was presented to Kenneth Anderson, associate professor of medicine at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, for cancer research, and one to Bruce Walker, associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, for AIDS research. The awards support physician–scientists who lead outstanding clinical research programs that apply the latest biomedical research advances against disease. Associate professor of pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital Frederick Bieber received the Massachusetts State Police Public Service Award. Since 1997 when Massachusetts established a state DNA database, Bieber has volunteered his time and expertise assisting as a scientific adviser on the project. News BriefPhysiological Genomics is a new journal with editorial offices at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The editor in chief is Victor Dzau, the Hersey professor of theory and practice of physic and head of medicine at BWH. The journal is sponsored by the American Physiological Society and fosters research in biomedicine, capitalizing on genomics technology. It publishes in print and on-line at www.physiolgenomics.org.
In Memoriam John Clark, a psychiatrist in private practice in Weston and former HMS assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, died October 7. He was 73. Clark graduated from HMS in 1953 and did his psychiatry residency at MGH. He was on the staff of McLean Hospital from 1959 to 1973. In the 1970s, Clark was among the first to research the psychological effects of religious cults on its members. He became a recognized authority on the issue and testified before the Vermont and Illinois legislatures and before the U.S. Senate. In a 1978 JAMA guest editorial that is widely cited, Clark broke new ground in psychiatry's understanding of the phenomenon of cults and their effects on members, their families, and the larger community. In all, he counseled more than 500 former members of such groups. In 1985 he received the Leo J. Ryan Award, named for the congressman murdered at Jonestown, Guyana. In 1991 the Psychiatric Times named him Psychiatrist of the Year. Clark was a founding member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a founding scholar of the American Family Foundation. He is survived by his wife, Eleanor of St. Cloud, Minn.; two brothers, Robert of Minneapolis, Minn. and W. Bruce of Tucson, Ariz.; a son, Gordon of Springfield, Vt.; a daughter, Catherine of Waltham; and a grandson, James. Laura Norling, assistant professor of pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital, died September 13 at the age of 47. Norling received her MD from Ohio State University and was a research fellow at Washington University. A former assistant professor at the University of Virginia, she joined the Division of Pediatric Nephrology at MGH in 1994. Norling was a member of the Society of Pediatric Research and was recognized as one of the best pediatric nephrologists in New England by the Woodward and White "Best Doctors in America" survey. She is survived by her husband, Mark Owen, and her son, Matt. |
