Oncology: Mutated Target Gives Potency to Lung Cancer Medication Education: Harvard Introduces Joint MD-MBA Pathology: Suppressor Cell Subset Crucial Against Autoimmunity Health Policy Summers Urges Analytic Approach to Advancing Care Digestive Protein Directs Fats to Immune System Small, Frequent Doses of Caffeine Best for Staying Awake Tobacco Use in India Hits the Poor Hardest   Proceedings of the HMS Faculty Council Three Endowed Chairs Named in Sleep Medicine Alumni Week Preview HSDM Scholars Program Advances Dental Education Research Armenise Foundation Awards Junior Faculty Grants First Annual "Doctors' Night at Symphony Hall"   Students Mentor Youths at Community Health Center   On Becoming a Doctor--and a Mother   Front Page

EDUCATION Harvard Introduces Joint MD-MBA HMS and Harvard Business School will launch a five-year joint MD-MBA program in September 2005, aimed at producing leaders prepared for the increasingly complex and continually changing health care environment. The MD-MBA will add to Harvard's family of joint master's programs including HMS programs with HSPH and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Business School programs with Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School. Ron Arky (right) and Stan Finkelstein were two of the architects of the new Harvard MD-MBA program, to be launched in September 2005. (Arky photo by Steve Gilbert) With U.S. national health expenditures tipping $1.6 trillion in 2002, a 9.3 percent increase from 2001, and a dollar figure that represents 14.9 percent of GDP, there is a substantive need for medical practitioners who understand the fundamentals of management. "To prepare our medical students for the realities of modern medicine and to emphasize the great contributions they can make, it's appropriate that we offer physicians-in-training an opportunity to study management as they pursue their medical studies," said HMS dean Joseph Martin. HBS dean Kim Clark concurs. "Medicine and business have long been intertwined," Clarke said, "but today, with the extraordinary promise of emerging medical technologies, sweeping changes in the delivery of health care, and the push to control the cost of medications, the need for leaders firmly grounded in both fields has never been greater." The goal of the MD-MBA goes beyond providing medical students with an understanding of management applications in the medical workplace. The program's mission is to develop outstanding physician leaders, skilled in both medicine and management, who will seek out positions of influence. These leaders will be able to contribute to the well-being of individuals and society--nationally and globally. To advance its aim of generating health care leaders, the new course of study will prepare students for careers not only in health care management, but also in health care- related areas including companies that research and develop drugs, build medical devices, and advise investors on the health care sector. By encouraging students to consider a variety of career paths, the program will build on what is already in motion at HMS. "The diversity of interests and careers of HMS students has expanded considerably over the past decade," noted Barbara McNeil, a member of the MD-MBA task force and head of the HMS Department of Health Care Policy, which will house the HMS portion of the program. "Adding an MD-MBA program to the educational portfolio of these students will address this diversity." A Medicine-Business Blend Though several U.S. medical schools offer joint medical and management degrees, the five-year HMS-HBS program will stand apart in fostering intellectual integration of medicine and management in addition to encouraging career diversity. Students will spend the first three years at HMS, the fourth year at HBS, and the fifth year divided between HBS and HMS. Yet the management perspective will be introduced as a prematriculation online module that becomes increasingly pervasive during the first three years at HMS, culminating in a fully integrated fifth year. "To prepare our medical students for the realities of modern medicine and to emphasize the great contributions they can make, it's appropriate that we offer physicians-in-training an opportunity to study management as they pursue their medical studies." --Joseph Martin "We see great opportunities to further the intellectual integration of the disciplines of medicine and management," said Stan Finkelstein, chair of the MD-MBA task force. "And that furtherance is what we see as this program's contribution to the field." Finkelstein, a faculty member in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and an HMS senior lecturer on health care policy, attributes his involvement with the program to the pioneering efforts of Ron Arky, the Charles S. Davidson distinguished professor of medicine at HMS and Beth Israel Deaconess and master of the Peabody Society at HMS. Arky has long recognized that much of medicine is management and that many aspects of both the practice of medicine and the technology that supports it rely on management acumen. It is not surprising then that with Arky as their adviser, about a dozen Harvard students over the past two decades have obtained separate MD and MBA degrees from HMS and HBS. "They designed their own programs," explained Arky. One such student was Peter Slavin, now president of HMS-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. The Dual-degree Gauntlet A major difference between the pioneering days and the new program is that students will be accepted concurrently to the MD-MBA program. This means matriculation will be challenging because applicants must be accepted by each school independently. On the other hand, once the program starts in the fall of 2005, previously enrolled students in both schools may take the course offerings, and some of those students may subsequently decide to apply to the joint program. HMS dean for medical education Malcolm Cox says coursework toward the new joint degree will enable students "to reach beyond traditional boundaries," and he emphasizes that the program will "provide the opportunity for all medical students, not just those enrolled in the new program, to better appreciate the critical importance of strong management skills in improving the U.S. health care delivery system."