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Proceedings of the Harvard Medical School Faculty Council

Cambridge Health Alliance Gains HMS Affiliation

Fineberg Professorship Established to Advance Practice of Public Health

New Faculty Appointments to Full and Named Professorships

Connelly Named Assistant Dean for Faculty Affairs

News Brief

Ed Reform at a Critical, Malleable Phase

Front Page

Proceedings of the Harvard Medical School Faculty Council

At the Nov. 17 meeting of the Faculty Council, Robert Crone, CEO of Harvard Medical International and dean for international programs at HMS, presented an overview of HMI’s long-term goals and objectives. HMI’s latest initiative is to provide oversight of certain aspects of Dubai Health Care City (DHCC), a 100-acre academic medical center. The vision for DHCC is to develop an integrated academic health center campus that will serve the needs of the greater Middle Eastern region. The government of Dubai is supporting the development of this center with land, financial resources, and the granting of autonomous legal and economic status.

Plan for Dubai

Crone explained that there is no intention to create a medical school in DHCC. HMI foresees postgraduate education developing in two phases; in the first, Dubai fellowships in Boston leading to subspecialty certification will be offered at Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and, in the second, the DHCC anchor hospitals will offer both general and specialty residencies and fellowships, which also will lead to subspecialty certification. Several CME courses have already been offered through DHCC.

The Dubai Harvard research model is similar to that created through the relationship the Medical School has with the Armenise Foundation, and a new foundation is being established. The return on this endowment will support clinical research, basic science research, health sciences research, and quality initiatives. Research carried out in Boston and at academic medical centers in other cities will be twinned with research at DHCC.

Crone described the numerous benefits for HMS generated by HMI’s involvement in Dubai. Through DHCC, Harvard will contribute to improving health and education in the region. HMI can work to create a new international model for medical education, research, and health care across the continuum of care. DHCC represents an opportunity to participate in an innovative societal initiative for a region in need and to learn more about the emerging global burden of disease in the region, as well as regional research in public health, health systems, and medical education. Finally, this project will generate financial support for HMS-led research in Boston, Dubai, and the region.

HMS dean Joseph Martin remarked that as part of its tenth anniversary, HMI will undergo a thorough review. He and Harvard University provost Steven Hyman are currently forming a review committee, and any suggestions from the HMS community are welcome.

Daniel Podolsky, the Mallinckrodt professor of medicine at HMS and Massachusetts General Hospital, said that the Allston Task Force on Science and Technology was charged by Harvard president Lawrence Summers to examine not just what might be sited in Allston, but also to consider the future of science and technology across the University.

Allston Progress

Podolsky noted the future Harvard Allston campus represented a “generational opportunity.” He said that the 260 acres available for development was approximately equal to the entire Harvard campus in Cambridge. About 70 acres of the parcel, mostly along the Western Avenue corridor, will be available in the near term. Some building may begin as early as 2006. Preliminary plans for Phase I in Allston call for two buildings totaling approximately 1 million square feet.

This development is moving along a very fast track, with the first of these two buildings likely to open at the end of 2008. Podolsky commented that the membership of the task force reflects diverse perspectives, but the assumption is that the life sciences will be a big part of Harvard University’s developing science program. The explicit charge to the task force is to develop a vision for science in Allston, define the goals and themes of such a science campus (and map potential organizational implications), describe the programmatic components of this vision, and participate in linking science planning to facilities planning.

Some emerging principles that have developed from the task force’s work to date include the commitment to maintain the vitality of science and technology at Harvard’s existing campuses as new programs are built in Allston. Plans for Allston are very broad and will include housing, museums, and programs for quality of life in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Martin said that at this time, the ongoing presumption is that the Graduate School of Education and HSPH will relocate to Allston. Podolsky agreed and stated that these moves would not coincide with the opening of the first two buildings, but were expected to occur shortly thereafter. This will, of course, affect the Longwood Medical Area, and the task force will consider how these developments will affect other programs and areas. Allston is a positive opportunity for collaborations, but it is necessary to consider and assess the effect of moving faculty from their home institutions. Martin said that one of the epiphanies of the last few months was the realization that while Phase I was five years off, the task force needed to make decisions within the next six months. These decisions and their consequences will be assessed as the project unfolds.

Podolsky said that all plans are preliminary and nothing has been excluded, though at this point, there are no plans to build a hospital in Allston.

Cambridge Health Alliance Gains HMS Affiliation

HMS dean Joseph Martin and Cambridge Health Alliance CEO Dennis Keefe have announced that the Alliance is now one of HMS’s affiliates.

Dennis Keefe, CEO of the Cambridge Health Alliance, a new HMS affiliate.

“Over 300 alliance physicians and providers have HMS faculty appointments,” said Martin at a gathering to mark the agreement. “They have demonstrated a commitment to teaching that is recognized by our students and colleagues and is celebrated with this affiliation ceremony.”

Cambridge Health Alliance was formed in 1996 when Cambridge Hospital, an HMS affiliate for more than 30 years, merged with Somer-ville Hospital. With the new agreement, Somerville Hospital is now an HMS teaching hospital as well. The alliance currently operates hospitals, ambulatory practices, the Cambridge Public Health Department, the Institute for Community Health, and educational programs within the academic health system.

Keefe has been working to strengthen the alliance’s academic mission since assuming his role as CEO in 2003. “We take great pride in our roles as a teaching hospital system and as members of the HMS community. This affiliation will create even stronger ties across our institutions, benefiting staff and patients alike, and is another important step in achieving our vision of becoming the premier academic public health care system in the nation,” he said.

Fineberg Professorship Established to Advance Practice of Public Health

The Harvey V. Fineberg professorship of public health has been established at HSPH in honor of the former dean of the School and past Harvard University provost. Howard Koh, professor of health policy and management and associate dean for public health practice, has been appointed the first recipient.

The professorship was endowed with a gift from Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel and may be held by a faculty member in the Division of Public Health Practice or in the Department of Biostatistics. It will rotate to a new appointee every five years.

“It is a tremendous honor to be the recipient of this professorship, which reflects the sterling lifetime achievements of Harvey Fineberg and Richard and Ronay Menschel,” said Koh, whose title is now the Harvey V. Fineberg professor of the practice of public health. “Public health practice is ultimately how we all make a difference in the lives of people and in communities, where research and government intersect.”

Fineberg was dean of HSPH for 13 years before serving as provost of the University from 1997 to 2001. He is currently president of the Institute of Medicine.

New Faculty Appointments to Full and Named Professorships

The following faculty members were appointed in October.

Per-Olaf Hasselgren
The George H. A. Clowes, Jr. Professor of Surgery
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Hasselgren’s clinical activities are mainly centered on endocrine surgery, including thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenal surgery. His research laboratory is focused on the metabolic and inflammatory responses to sepsis and severe injury, particularly, the molecular regulation of muscle wasting in these conditions. Hasselgren is vice chairman of research and director of endocrine surgery in the Department of Surgery at BID.

Yang Shi
Professor of Pathology
Harvard Medical School
Shi is interested in mechanisms that control gene transcription in development and cancer. Recently, his lab has focused on the development of a DNA vector-based RNAi to facilitate gene function studies in mammals; the identification of the first histone demethylase that regulates transcription by demethylating histones; and the identification of a cellular protein that is required for Mdm2 to mediate polyubiquitination and degradation of the tumor suppressor p53.

These faculty members were appointed in November.

William Harmon
Professor of Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Boston
Harmon has been instrumental in establishing effective international pediatric kidney transplant research consortiums and linking them to outstanding transplant immunology laboratories so that informative clinical trials with mechanistic studies can be undertaken. As a result of these programs, young children have gone from having the worst outcomes of kidney transplantation to having the best. Harmon is chairman of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s Cooperative Clinical Trials in Pediatric Transplantation steering committee, president of the North American Pediatric Kidney Transplant Cooperative Study, and director of Children’s Hospital’s Division of Nephrology.

Mohamed Sayegh
Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Sayegh, director of the new Transplantation Center at BWH, is interested in understanding the mechanisms of antigen recognition and T cell activation during the process of transplant rejection. He is also interested in applying this research to cases of human organ transplant recipients for developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to improve outcome and induce immunologic tolerance. Sayegh was recently awarded $13.5 million from the NIH to form a consortium to develop novel therapies in transplantation. He is also associate chief of the Renal Division at BWH, research director of the Division of Nephrology at Children’s Hospital Boston, and past president of the American Society of Transplantation.

Floyd Dewhirst
Professor of Oral and Developmental Biology
Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the Forsyth Institute
Dewhirst’s laboratory has determined the diversity and identity of the cultivable, and as yet uncultivable, organisms present in the human oral cavity in order to determine the role of the oral microbiome in oral infectious diseases and health. To understand the genes involved in the virulence of specific oral bacteria, he has completed whole genome sequencing projects for Porphyromonas gingivalis and Treponema lecithinolyticum. Dewhirst is a senior member of the staff and chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Forsyth Institute.

Bruce Paster
Professor of Oral and Developmental Biology
Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the Forsyth Institute
The research objective of the Paster laboratory is to develop methods for the rapid identification and enumeration of oral microorganisms to elucidate their roles in oral diseases. By using molecular techniques based on sequence analysis of 16S rRNA genes, Paster, a senior member of the staff of the Forsyth Institute, and his colleagues have determined that the oral cavity harbors more than 700 species of oral bacteria, of which over half cannot yet be grown in pure culture. They are currently developing a microarray DNA hybridization assay using 16S rRNA–based probes that can test for most of the 700 oral species on a single microscope slide.

Harvey Levy
Professor of Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Boston
Levy and his colleagues at Children’s study the relationship between biochemical/molecular patterns and phenotypic expression in the inborn errors of metabolism and how this expression is influenced by dietary and related therapies. Two major areas of interest are the fetal effects of maternal inborn errors, particularly maternal phenylketonuria, and the role of newborn screening in the prevention of clinical complications in the metabolic disorders. Levy is senior associate in medicine at Children’s and a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Connelly Named Assistant Dean for Faculty Affairs

Maureen Connelly, HMS assistant professor of ambulatory care and prevention, has been appointed assistant dean for faculty affairs. In her new role, she will participate in management of the promotions process, including advising faculty about issues related to promotion. Connelly succeeds Mary Clark, who retired after 25 years of exemplary service to HMS.