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BULLETIN
Proceedings of the HMS Faculty CouncilAt the Nov. 19 meeting of the Faculty Council, Linda Wilcox, ombudsperson for the Harvard Medical community, discussed highlights of the AY '02-'03 Annual Report of the Ombuds Office and made recommendations.This past year, Wilcox oversaw 680 issues brought by 625 individuals. Career management continues to account for the largest portion of concerns, at 318 cases (46 percent). These involve career performance, career future, promotion, and benefits. The second largest category involved research (130 cases, 19 percent), including authorship issues, conflict of interest, and misrepresentation of data. Sexual harassment and discrimination complaints continued to decline, at seven percent and 10 percent of the total, respectively. Although the number of discrimination issues were generally low, when they were broken down into categories, a sharp increase in disability-related concerns was observed. However, many people with problems in this category contacted Wilcox to seek out options rather than to lodge complaints. There have been fewer reports of discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Wilcox found several positive trends. Requests for education and prevention programs increased. Faculty development groups, including Faculty Affairs and the faculty development offices in the major affiliated hospitals, Human Resources, and the Ombuds Office, are actively working to provide education and skill development to multiple sectors of the HMS community with programming that includes leadership and management training. Wilcox offered some recommendations. With respect to the increase in disability and illness issues, she suggested that the institutions educate their constituents about standards and procedures used to determine accommodations. With respect to the apparent lack of performance reviews, she recommended that supervisors be trained in giving critical feedback. Wilcox noted that the University is currently revising its sexual harassment policy and that HMS's policy will have to be reviewed and made consistent with it, while taking into consideration the needs of our constituency. Wilcox also recommended that every incoming fellow and faculty member be provided with research-related guidelines. Clinical Department ReviewRaphael Dolin, dean for academic and clinical programs, told the council that the Clinical Department Review program, which emerged from discussions between HMS dean Joseph Martin and the CEOs of the affiliated teaching hospitals, is a major goal for Martin. This spring, the reviews will be extended to the preclinical and social science departments on the Quadrangle.Each of the 47 clinical departments will be reviewed every five years at the rate of approximately one per month. Currently, 19 departments have been completed, and four more are scheduled. Reviews are intended to yield a broad-based global assessment of each department. Areas being studied include a determination of the quality and quantity of clinical activities, research, and education, and the way these three missions interact. The review examines the relationship of the department with other departments and the health care system; the department's role in meeting strategic goals of the hospital and the School; faculty issues including leadership, mentoring, and diversity; departmental planning for the future; and the stature of the department both regionally and nationally. The reviewers request a detailed plan from each department describing its strategic goals. The initial stage of each review is an intradepartmental self-study that results in submission of a summary five-year report by the department. The review team, comprising three external reviewers, spends two days interviewing faculty, hospital leadership, trainees, and students. At the end of the visit, the reviewers prepare a detailed report that is presented to Martin and the head of the affiliate whose department is under review. This report is confidential. Subsequently, Martin and the CEO meet with the department chair and provide an oral report. In response to requests from the department heads and faculty, a provision has now been made for a redacted report summary for distribution within the department. Reviews to date have concluded that continuing medical education is flourishing at HMS and have given graduate medical education consistently high marks. The prestige of the residency programs remains high, as does their quality, which has been assessed by both internal and external reviews. However, reviewers have asked the School to become more involved in graduate medical education. Undergraduate medical education, although receiving favorable reviews, has been found to have areas of concern. The faculty in clinical departments are under particular stress, especially those with clinical responsibilities, and both financial and logistical pressures challenge the fulfillment of the academic mission of teaching and research. These issues are under careful review by Malcolm Cox, dean of medical education, and his curriculum reform committees. Cox also has the goal of making medical education, graduate medical education, and continuing medical education part of a continuum. In summarizing the review process, Dolin said the reviews have been considered valuable and constructive by the Medical School, by hospital leadership, and by the departmental leadership. Moreover, the process has engaged HMS and the hospitals directly in planning, both strategic and operational. Additionally, the reviews have provided an opportunity for direct feedback by HMS to the leadership of the clinical departments.
Richmond Receives Heinz Award
Julius Richmond, the John D. MacArthur professor emeritus of health policy at Harvard University and former U.S. Surgeon General, has been awarded a Heinz Family Foundation Award for lifetime achievement in public policy. In his 1979 report, "Healthy People: The Surgeon General's Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention," Richmond brought attention to the importance of prevention as well as treatment in health care. He founded and was the first director of Head Start, a federal program designed to improve the early development outcomes of poor and at-risk children. Each year, HSPH gives an award in Richmond's name to an individual who has promoted public health. It is the highest award conferred by the School.
Jane Neill Appointed Executive Director of Initiative for Curriculum ReformJane Neill, associate dean for academic programs in the Program in Medical Education, has been named executive director of the HMS Medical Education Reform Initiative. She will oversee the first major reform of medical education at HMS since the introduction of the New Pathway 20 years ago. In 2001, Neill was appointed deputy director of the Academy at HMS, and in 2003, she served as senior staff member to the Task Force for a New Curriculum, appointed by Dean Joseph Martin to make recommendations about medical education reform.
Rhodes Scholar Named at HMSSecond-year medical student Pooja Kumar has been named a Rhodes Scholar. Kumar, of Doylestown, Pa., graduated from Duke in 2000 with distinction in her concentration of health policy and social values. She has worked with refugees in central Africa and Azerbaijan, with children afflicted with AIDS in India, with the terminally ill in Calcutta, and with children in crisis in East Timor. At Oxford, she will study toward an MPhil in international relations.
News BriefsThe Aetna InteliHealth website received the Platinum eHealthcare Leadership Award for best health/healthcare content for a consumer general health site. InteliHealth features interactive content and information on specific diseases and conditions for consumers provided by HMS and the University of Pennsylvania Dental School. About 100 HMS faculty members are contributing editors, and 14 of them make up InteliHealth's core editorial board.Joslin Diabetes Center has partnered with the Gulf Diabetes Specialists Center to create a diabetes treatment center in Bahrain, which is expected to open in early 2004. While Joslin has affiliated programs at more than 20 locations in the United States, Bahrain is its first international affiliate and is also the first regional medical center devoted entirely to diabetes. According to the World Health Organization, more than 25 percent of the Bahraini population has diabetes and 40 percent is at risk for the disease. Honors and AdvancesJoseph Bowlds, HSPH '97 and HMS tutor in the Patient-Doctor III program, has won the Henry Ingersoll Bowditch award for excellence in public health from the Massachusetts Medical Society. A retired ophthalmologist, Bowlds's volunteer efforts include leading a medical team that has provided eye care to the underserved in El Salvador for nearly 20 years.William Dec, associate professor of medicine at HMS, has been appointed chief of the cardiology division in the Department of Medicine. He has served as medical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation Program since its inception in 1984 and has been interim chief of cardiology for the past year. Dec also directs the Partners Healthcare Heart Failure Disease management program. He has developed a program of heart failure clinical trials, established a cardiomyopathy and heart failure center, and developed a nationally recognized heart transplantation program. Dec's research interests include the diagnosis and treatment of dilated cardiomyopathy, myocarditis, advanced heart failure, and cardiac transplantation management. Damon Runyan Fellowship Awards honoring young scientists conducting theoretical and experimental research relevant to the study of cancer and the search for cancer causes, mechanisms, therapies, and prevention, have named three fellows from HMS. Three-year fellowships were awarded to Briana Burton, HMS research fellow in cell biology, sponsored by Howard Hughes Investigator and HMS professor of cell biology Tom Rapoport; Howard Hang, HMS research fellow in pathology, sponsored by Hidde Ploegh, the Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. professor of immunopathology in the Department of Pathology at HMS; and David Hava, HMS research fellow in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, sponsored by Michael Brenner, the Theodore Bevier Bayles professor of medicine at BWH and HMS.
In Memoriam
Stanley Robbins, former senior pathologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and visiting professor of pathology at HMS, passed away Oct. 7 at the age of 88.
Robbins received his MD from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1940. After a year-long surgical internship and pathology training at the Mallory Institute of Pathology at the Boston City Hospital, he joined the staff of both the Mallory Institute and Boston University School of Medicine. At BU, he became professor of pathology in 1957 and chairman of the Department of Pathology in 1964, which he remained until 1979. In 1980, BU students established a teaching award in his name. Robbins also served as director at the Mallory Institute from 1966 to 1972. In 1980, he joined BWH as senior pathologist and visiting professor of pathology at HMS, a position he held until 1995. Robbins's impact on pathology includes contributions to the clinical and pathophysiological understanding of a variety of diseases. He also conceived and authored a widely used and influential text on pathology, Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease. The text is now in its sixth edition and has been translated into more than 15 languages. He emphasized the mechanisms of disease, correlations between structural and functional changes, and the inclusion of enough clinical details to make morphology meaningful and exciting. Robbins served as a consultant to HMS until his death. He leaves his son Jonathan, daughter Janet Mark, six grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and his companion, Joan Wylie. His wife, Eleanor, died in 1996.
Robert Bradley, former president of Joslin Diabetes Center and an HMS associate clinical professor of medicine, died on Oct. 12. He was 83. A Yale University and Yale School of Medicine graduate, Bradley was an internist by training. He began his tenure in 1950 as senior physician with Elliott Joslin, the center's founder. From 1968 to 1977, he served as medical director and the vice president of the Joslin Diabetes Foundation. (The foundation combined with the Joslin Clinic to become Joslin Diabetes Center in 1981.) Bradley oversaw the completion of Joslin's first major expansion, the 1985 Howard F. Root Wing, and the creation of the first Joslin affiliate, the Joslin Diabetes Center Affiliated Centers Program, which opened in Florida in 1987. He served as editor of the Joslin Textbook of Diabetes and was the Diabetes Research and Training Center's associate and program director. He retired from the center in 1987 after 38 years of service, the last 10 of which he was president. Aside from his work at Joslin, Bradley published more than 50 papers in medical journals. He served as section chief of endocrinology at the former New England Deaconess Hospital and was a senior associate in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. His research led to the re-introduction of oral insulin in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Bradley is survived by his son, David Benton Bradley; his daughters, Robin Tritta, Pamela Roche, Amy Palmer, and Susan Bradley; and five grandchildren.
Joyce Root Tedlow, clinical instructor in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, died Oct. 2 after a long battle with ovarian cancer. She was 57. Tedlow earned her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1968 and graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical School in 1972. Before beginning her career, she studied with Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter, at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic in London. In 1995, Tedlow completed a two-year fellowship in psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital after realizing that some psychiatric problems could benefit from a combination of counseling and medication. She became a clinical instructor in psychiatry at HMS in 1996, and in addition to her private practice as a psychiatrist, she worked at MGH's Depression Clinical and Research Program. In 2002, MGH established the Joyce Tedlow award to honor her career. It will be given annually to an early career MGH/McLean psychiatrist or psychiatrist-in-training who integrates psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and clinical research into his or her practice. Tedlow is survived by her husband, Harvard Business School professor of business administration Richard Tedlow, her sister Janice Sheppard, and her mother Sylvia Tomash Root.
Coenraad Moorrees, former professor of orthodontics at HSDM and chairman of its Orthodontic Department for 40 years, died on Nov. 18 in London. He was 87. Moorrees crafted the Orthodontic Department to emphasize research, teaching, and innovation. He was a renowned scientist, orthodontist, and anthropologist and authored The Aleut Dentition in 1957 and The Dentition of a Growing Child in 1959. |
