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ALUMNI WEEK When Medicine Goes Public The 25th reunion Class Symposium sponsored by the HMS Class of 1977, part of this year's Alumni Week activities, features a panel discussion on medical policy, politics, and public service. Three panelists, all members of the class, will share their experiences at the intersection of medicine with public service and business. "We have a number of classmates who are working at the borders of traditional medical practice," said Dori F. Zaleznik, '77, who helped plan the June 6 event. John Crawford, a general and vascular surgeon in private practice in Fort Worth, Texas, will discuss his time spent practicing surgery in an impoverished community on a Guatemalan mountainside. The other two speakers have both taken administrative career paths but have approached their professions from different angles, said Zaleznik. Woodrow Myers Jr., executive vice president and chief medical officer at Wellpoint Health Networks Inc., Thousand Oaks, Calif., has titled his talk "Chaos or Calling? Mission or Madness? Life at the Junction of Medicine, Politics, and Business." The final speaker is Carmen Puliafito, chairman of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Puliafito, who also has an MBA, will explore whether doctors should go to business school. "People wonder, can doctors themselves make the changes that need to be made" in the health care system, Zaleznik said, "or will business people impose them from the outside? Here are some physicians who have bridged that gap." Zaleznik said the symposium's four panels (see Focus, May 3 for details) share some themes, including nontraditional careers for physicians. For example, a panel on life outside of medicine includes Ronald A. Heifetz, '77, a physician who chose not to practice medicine but founded and directs the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Zaleznik, associate clinical professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and HMS, will take part in a session on 21st century medical challenges. Drawing on her work with the Wellesley-based computerized clinical information service UpToDate, she will discuss how a computer program can help physicians manage the medical information explosion. --Tom Reynolds