The Chair's Notes

We are delighted to announce the appointment of a new Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency Training Program – Dr. Angela Rogers.

Dr. Rogers graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed her Internal Medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowship in the Harvard program. She moved to Stanford as an Assistant Professor in 2013. Her research focus is on using genomics to identify novel biomarkers and improve phenotyping in sepsis and ARDS.

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Since coming to Stanford two years ago, Dr. Rogers has emerged as one of the most beloved educators in the Department, with a true passion for resident/fellow education. As a member of the residency program’s Core Faculty, Dr. Rogers has served as an outstanding mentor and recruiter, particularly for trainees interested in Pulmonary/Critical Care & for those in our Medicine-Anesthesia combined program. She will continue to have a particular focus on these two areas moving forward.

Dr. Rogers joins an extremely talented team of Associate Program Directors, including Dr. Neera Ahuja, Dr. Stephanie Harman, and Dr. Shri Nallamshetty. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Rogers on her new leadership role.

Ronald Witteles, M.D.
Program Director
Internal Medicine Residency Training Program

Robert Harrington, M.D.
Chair
Department of Medicine

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I am very pleased to announce that Drs. Steven Asch and Sang-ick Chang have agreed to assume leadership of the Division of General Medical Disciplines (DGMD) in the Department of Medicine, effective Monday June 15th, 2015. Dr. Mark Cullen, the outgoing Chief, is taking on new University leadership responsibilities as the inaugural Director of Population Health Sciences. DGMD is at the foundation of our tripartite mission in the Department. On the clinical front, it includes primary care, family medicine, hospital medicine, geriatrics, palliative care, occupational health, global health and many other important activities. DGMD faculty provide leadership for a large proportion of graduate and undergraduate medical education throughout the School of Medicine. The clinical and population health researchers in the Division are at the forefront of the applied discovery activities that learning health care systems like ours depend upon. Because of this diversity of activities and the 150+ faculty, we have decided to have two senior faculty to lead this Division into the future.

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Dr. Sang-ick Chang has been with the Division for 3 years and has led the division’s recent growth of both clinical faculty and practice locations in the outpatient arena. He has enormous experience as a family medicine clinician and clinical operations leader. He will be primarily responsible for leading the clinical activities of the Division. We are proud that for the first time, a clinician-educator will share leadership of one of the Divisions of our Department – a first for Stanford. Dr. Steven Asch has been with the Division for 4 years. He is an internationally known expert in health services research with more than 300 publications and has led the general medicine research activities both on Stanford campus and at the VA, where he will continue to direct the Center for Innovation to Implementation (Ci2i). He will oversee the continued expansion of the implementation science, epidemiology, health services and other research activities of the Division. Both Co-Chiefs will oversee the educational mission. Together, they have the right skills and experiences to lead the Division and to participate in the overall leadership of the department. They make an excellent team!

We are fortunate in the Department of Medicine to have such a deep and broad faculty in DGMD. Drs. Asch and Chang are the right leaders for this time of growth and we look forward to working with them both. Please join me in welcoming them to their new leadership roles.

Robert Harrington, M.D.
Chair
Department of Medicine

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We are delighted to announce the appointment of Cathy Garzio, MBA as the new Vice Chair and Director of Finance and Administration in the Department of Medicine, effective July 6, 2015. Cathy is an experienced academic medical center executive who has spent over 20 years at UCSF in a variety of leadership positions.

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Cathy graduated with a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University and earned her MBA at the University of Chicago. Early in her career, Cathy held planning and operations roles in the hospital and medical group sectors. In 1991, Cathy joined the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine as Practice Manager, Medical Specialties for the Department of Medicine. In 1997, she became Administrative Director for the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 2002, Cathy became Administrative Director for the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, and most recently added another department — Otolaryngology-Head/Neck Surgery — at the UCSF School of Medicine.

In her role as Vice Chair and Director of Finance and Administration, Cathy will serve as the key business leader for the Department of Medicine. She will partner with the Department Chair to ensure the success of the department, and will be responsible for financial and administrative management, support of clinical care, teaching and research activities, and for compliance with university, government, and external sponsor rules and regulations, and sustaining a productive, effective, and respectful workplace.

We want also to thank Julie White, Phyllis Bussey, and Laura Adams for their dedicated leadership as interim DFAs during these past nine months.

Please join us in welcoming Cathy to her new position in the Department of Medicine at Stanford School of Medicine!

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As we continue to expand and refine communication efforts in the department, it is clear that all of us appreciate receiving and consuming information in different formats. The revised website has been well received and is now an important source of regularly updated content describing the many activities happening across our three mission areas of clinical care, research, and education. It’s been fun (and informative) to follow the Twitter feed on our homepage and great to see additional faculty joining the ranks of Tweeps or Twitterers. In an effort to keep faculty, staff, and trainees current with department activities, I will contribute an occasional “Chair’s Notes” where I will reflect on things that strike me as important, interesting, or maybe even both.

Three recent events struck me as worthy of comment as they all reflect the excellence of the department’s faculty, staff, and trainees.

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First, I attended the annual primary care retreat this past Saturday. Kudos to Sang Chang for putting together an outstanding program for the day. SHC’s COO, James Hereford, provided the keynote address and reminded all of us of the importance of team care in modern health care delivery. It was inspiring to see such a large group of engaged department members brainstorming on a Saturday as to how best to deliver a variety of models of primary care to our patients. I was especially pleased to see both residents and medical students participating in the retreat activities.

On Friday March 20, Sam Gambhir, Chair of the Department of Radiology, and Medicine’s Ken Mahaffey, Vice Chair for Clinical Research, hosted a School of Medicine Town Hall on a new collaborative research project among Stanford, Duke University, and Google, called the Baseline Study. This is a groundbreaking project that will attempt to reclassify health and disease, specifically cancer and cardiovascular disease, among 10,000 participants who will be enrolled into a longitudinal research study ( http://medicine.stanford.edu/news/current-news/standard-news/baseline-study-town-hall-meeting.html ). Opportunities abound for Stanford investigators to participate in the study, including in project committees and in requesting access to data once the study is underway. Lots more to come on this project!

Finally, Friday March 20 also marked the day of the annual residency Match (“Match Day”). We have a fantastic housestaff training program directed by Ron Witteles and supported by an outstanding group of associate program directors. Once again, Ron and his team successfully recruited a truly superb group of 50 interns into our training program, with 35 being in the categorical medicine training program, 2 in the global health track, 3 in the combined medicine-anesthesia program, and 10 in the preliminary intern programs (2 in neurology and 8 in anesthesia). They represent top medical schools from across all regions of the country and were the very best at those medical schools. They have diverse interests, and more than 20% have earned another advanced degree beyond their expected MD. Four of them prospectively entered our clinician investigator program. Special thanks to all the faculty core interviewers who handled more than 44% of the student interviews during a very busy series of interview days. The success of our residency program is directly attributable to all of our dedicated and committed faculty, staff, and trainees. Thanks to all for the work on this. We now look forward to welcoming the next class of Stanford medicine residents!

Best wishes,

Bob

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