Guest Speakers
We are excited to have in attendance speakers from all over the Philadelphia area and the northeastern region. Please see
below for a list of our current speakers and their personal biographies.
For information on what each speaker is presenting on, please refer to our conference schedule.
KEYNOTE
Dr. Arnold Relman
Dr. Relman graduated from Cornell University and the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. His postgraduate medical education was at Yale. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Medicine and of Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Senior Physician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He was Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine from 1977 to 1991 and before that was Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia from 1968 to 1977.
From 1950 to 1968 he was on the faculty of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and in 1967-68 was Chief of the BU Medical Service at the Boston City Hospital. He is a board certified internist, a Master of the American College of Physicians, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a Senior Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been President of the American Federation for Clinical Research, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians.
He has also served as a Trustee of Columbia University, and of the medical centers of Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania. He served a 6-year term on the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine and chaired its committee on the quality of care. His current interests are health care policy and the reforms needed to improve the U.S. health care system. He has recently completed a book on this subject, A Second Opinion. Rescuing America’s Health Care (Public Affairs, NYC, 2007).
KEYNOTE
Ronald Barg MD, FACP is currently the executive director of Clinical Care Associates (CCA) of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. CCA is a not for profit corporation owned by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. It is the community based practice network for Penn Medicine with 40 sites distributed throughout the five counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania and three counties in Southern New Jersey. CCA currently employs approximately 155 physicians in Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics and a number of other specialties. The current focus of the organization is to aggregate practices into larger, well branded sites where patients can access integrated care across multiple specialties in a coordinated fashion. Utilizing advanced health information technology patients receive efficient and effective care with a focus on high quality care, superior patient outcomes and a positive patient experience. CCA currently has revenues of approximately $85 Million annually and 700,000 annual patient encounters.
Dr. Barg has been the Executive Director of CCA since 2005. Prior to that serving in a variety of administrative roles within Penn Medicine including Senior Medical Director of CCA, Regional Medical Director of CCA, Interim Chief Medical Officer-Phoenixville Hospital and Chair of the Cardiovascular Service Line. Dr. Barg is board certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics practicing in Suburban Philadelphia for twelve years prior to joining Penn in 2005. He continues to see patients one day per week in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Dr. Barg is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the Philadelphia College of Physicians. He remains active in Medical Student Education at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and precepts medical students regularly at a student run free clinic in West Philadelphia.
Dr. Barg is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Mathematics and MD Degree. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Hahnemann University Hospital. He has three grown children, Jason, Robert and Paula and resides in the Merion, Pennsylvania with his wife Debbie.
KEYNOTE
An internationally renowned oncologic surgeon, author, researcher and academician, John M. Daly, MD, FACS, FRCPS (Hon. Glasg.) became Dean of Temple University School of Medicine in 2002. Prior to joining Temple, he was the Lewis Atterbury Stimson Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Surgeon-in-Chief. Before that, he was the Jonathan E. Rhoads Professor of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as an invited lecturer and visiting professor at Harvard, the Royal Academy of Medicine, and other leading academic medical centers around the globe.
A prolific researcher and author, Dr. Daly has 368 publications to his credit, including dozens of book chapters and several books, such as the Atlas of Surgical Oncology (Daly and Cady, J.B., Lippincott, 1993) and Surgical Oncology, Contemporary Principles & Practices (Bland, Daly, Karakousis, McGraw-Hill, 2001). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Surgery, as Editor of Current Surgery, and is a past editor and/or current editorial board member of Cancer, Surgery, and a dozen other leading journals. He has served as principal investigator on numerous research grants from the National Institutes of Health and holds a U. S. Patent Pending for the “Use of COX-2 inhibitors to treat/ameliorate sepsis and septic complications.”
An expert in clinical nutrition and parenteral hyperalimentation, Dr. Daly is a past president of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (1985-1986). He is also a former President of the Society of Surgical Oncology 2002-2003); the New York Surgical Society (1998-1999); and the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Cancer Society (1992-1993). Moreover, he has served on governance boards and in leadership capacities for the American Board of Colon and Rectal Surgery, the American Board of Surgery, the American College of Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, the Association for Academic Surgery, the Association of American Medical Colleges and a dozen other professional associations. His areas of expertise include physician competency and liability, credentialing and board certification, surgical education and research, public policy and long-range planning, and technology assessment.
Dr. Daly has received numerous honors and awards for teaching, research and practice, including Sam E. Roberts Nutrition Foundation Medal of the University of Kansas (1981) and the Elliot Hochstein Medical Student Teaching Award of Cornell University (1995). Over the years, he has appeared in some two dozen “best” lists (Best Doctors in Philadelphia, Best Doctors in America, Best Doctors in New York, Top Cancer Doctors in New York City, Best Doctors in New York, The 318 Top Cancer Specialists for Women, etc.).
A native Philadelphian, Dr. Daly received his undergraduate degree form LaSalle University and his MD from Temple University School of Medicine in 1973. He completed an internship and residency at the University of Texas Medical School (Houston) and received his certification from the American Board of Surgery in 1979.
Lara Carson Weinstein, MD is a family physician and faculty member in the Department of Family and Community Medicine of Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Weinstein completed her undergraduate degree in with a major in Philosophy at Georgetown University. During her years of medical school at Jefferson Medical College, she was part of a core group of students who founded Jeff HOPE, a medical students run shelter based medical clinic for homeless individuals. Over the past 17 years, Jeff HOPE has greatly expanded to 5 weekly outreach clinics, which involves over 600 students in providing 1500 client visits annually.
At the end of her residency, Dr. Weinstein co-founded the St. Elizabeth’s Health Center of Project HOME with her mentor and partner, Dr. James Plumb. The mission of St. Elizabeth’s is to provide low demand access to primary care services and the larger health care system to those whose lives have been complicated by experiences of homelessness, mental illness, addiction, abuse, poverty, and violence, and who have been marginalized by the existing system. Plans are underway to expand the services of the St. Elizabeth’s Center into an integrated neighborhood health and wellness center.
In the Department of Family and Community Medicine Residency Program, Dr. Weinstein coordinates community oriented primary care and population health activities. One highly successful outcome of these activities has been the establishment of a weekly family medicine resident run medical outreach team in partnership with the Project HOME street outreach team.
After 10 years of providing direct clinical service and education, Dr. Weinstein felt drawn to more rigorously consider the larger issues and outcomes of the vulnerable populations she served. In September 2008, she became a primary care research fellow in the DFCM and began the Master’s in Public Health Program at the John’s Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. In November 2008, she partnered with Pathways to Housing Philadelphia, a non profit agency with the mission of ending homelessness for people with psychiatric disability by providing housing first and giving support and treatment for recovery and community integration. Her area of research interest is in improving chronic illness care systems and health outcomes through community based participatory research to support recovery and healing alongside people with psychiatric disability and histories of chronic homelessness.
Dr. Paranjape is Associate Professor in the Section of General Internal Medicine at Temple University School of Medicine with a secondary appointment in the Department of Public Health of the College of Health Professions at Temple University. She is a general internist, practicing Primary Care, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Paranjape grew up in India, where she completed medical school and obtained an additional degree in Internal Medicine, graduating from Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College at the University of Poona, Pune, India. She did her internal medicine residency in the Primary Care program in Internal Medicine of the University of Rochester. Following residency, she did a two-year general medicine fellowship at Boston University, where she obtained her Masters in Public Health.
She joined Temple University in 2006, after six years on faculty at Emory University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on health disparities, with her most recent studies occurring at the nexus of family violence, patient perceptions of health, and aging in urban minority female patients. She is has authored numerous papers related to family violence and health and has served as a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging. Her work is recognized locally and nationally; recently she was the recipient of the 2008 Healthcare Advocate Award by the Philadelphia Coalition of Victims Service Providers. In addition to her own research, she mentors students, post doctoral trainees and junior faculty colleagues in their scholarly efforts and serves as an advisor to Temple medical students through Temple’s four year long Doctoring course. In her spare time, she maintains personal wellness through cycling, gardening, travel and family trips. She is looking forward to speaking at this year’s AMSA conference and appreciates the opportunity to talk about an important problem that touches people from all walks of life.
David U. Himmelstein M.D. is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and practices primary care internal medicine and serves as Chief of the Division of Social and Community Medicine at Cambridge Hospital. He graduated from Columbia Univerity’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, completed a medical residency at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California, and a fellowship in General Internal Medicine at Harvard.
He has authored or co-authored more than 100 journal articles and three books, including widely-cited studies of medical bankruptcy and the high administrative costs of the U.S. health care system. His 1984 study of patient dumping led to the enactment of EMTALA, the law that banned that practice. He co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program.
Sam Parrish serves as Senior Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Admissions at Drexel University College of Medicine. A South Carolina native, Sam received his undergraduate education at the College of Charleston and graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina. Sam took residency training in Child Health at the University of Missouri where he was also Chief Resident. Sam completed fellowship training in Adolescent Medicine at Long Island Jewish-Hillside Medical Center and joined the faculty of the Medical College of Pennsylvania following his fellowship. Sam established the Division of Adolescent Medicine at MCP and served as Chief until 1992 when he became Residency Director for the Department of Pediatrics at East Carolina University. Sam subsequently served as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University until he joined Drexel University College of Medicine as Associate Dean for Student Affairs in January of 2001. Sam became the Dean for Admissions at Drexel University College of Medicine in February of 2009.
Sam currently serves as the National Chairperson of the Committee on Student Affairs of the AAMC. He is also a member of the Visiting Student Application Service Oversight Committee and the Mental Health Working Group of the Group on Student Affairs of the AAMC. Sam’s areas of interest include LGBT student issues, Mental Health Concerns affecting medical professionals, substance abuse issues affecting medical professionals as well as the holistic review of medical school applicants.
Dr. Garg is the current Associate Residency Program Director in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Temple University Hospital. Dr. Garg graduated from Wayne State University School of Medicine in 2001 and was an active member of his local AMSA chapter concentrating on medical student wellness. He subsequently completed his Emergency Medicine Residency at Detroit Receiving Hospital in 2004. Since that time, Dr. Garg has been on faculty at Temple University Hospital and has developed a niche in the area of wellness.
He is currently a member of the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine Graduate Medical Education subcommittee on resident wellness. This subcommittee is charged with shaping the education of resident wellness in Emergency Medicine residency programs across the country. Additionally, Dr. Garg is one of the faculty supervisors for the annual Citywide Resident Symposium hosted by Temple University Hospital. This symposium annually is attended by residents from all departments within the hospital in addition to all of the Emergency Medicine programs in the Philadelphia area. At the last symposium, he had the honor of presenting, “How We Deal With Death,” a talk on the toll of death-telling on health care professionals. Dr. Garg is excited to speak with you on “Wellness from A Student’s Perspective” and he appreciates the opportunity to share with you in this truly important topic.
After finishing his medicine and chief residencies at The Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh, he joined their full time teaching faculty in the Department of Internal Medicine. His areas of special interest have been Domestic Violence, International Medicine and Homeless Health Care. In 1992, he founded Operation Safety Net (OSN), the first full time, comprehensive medical service of its’ kind for the unsheltered homeless. Medical care is delivered directly on the streets, along the river banks and in the abandoned buildings of Pittsburgh, with full social service and housing follow-up.
OSN has been recognized internationally and is being replicated or studied by cities throughout the world. In 2005, Dr. Withers established the annual International Street Medicine Symposia (with current partners in North America, South and Central America, Europe and Asia) to foster collaboration in the care of those sleeping on the streets. In 2008, Dr. Withers created the Street Medicine Institute to focus on helping communities establish Street Medicine programs, improve existing practice and create a student fellowship in Street Medicine. Dr. Withers enjoys numerous volunteer activities, Board memberships, and medical teaching appointments. He is most proud of the many students who have gone on to careers in service oriented medicine.
Her academic training includes a baccalaureate (BA) in the Biological Basis of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania; masters degree in pharmacology and neuroscience from Columbia University with 6 years of graduate work in biotechnology, biomedical sciences and laboratory work toward a PhD; a masters degree in international public health (MPH) from Harvard University; and a medical doctorate (MD) from Rush Medical College in Chicago. Her residency training in family practice at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital; and in community & preventive medicine at Mount Sinai, have inspired her to work with the underserved. In addition, she has several certifications in the healing arts. Bhaswati’s holistic training comes through numerous formal courses and the traditional apprenticeship format known as gurukala still practiced by traditional healers in Tibet, India, China, Nepal, Brazil, Nigeria, and El Salvador. Her management skills evolved prior to medical school, through ten years of biomedical research, active international public health work and consulting projects in medical education, biotechnology, medical publishing, and management on Wall Street with an investment bank.
Alongside formal schooling, Bhaswati has maintained the ongoing pursuit of knowledge in traditional medicines, studying formally under Drs.Ted Kaptchuk, David Eisenberg, Rachel Naomi Remen, Ben Kligler, Ellen Tattelman, Jeffrey Bland, Norman Farnsworth, Deepak Chopra, PR Krishnakumar, Joseph Helms, Vivek Shanbhag, Aparna Bapat, and her mentor, the late human rights activist Jonathan Mann. Bhaswati accepted the vows of vidyaarambham, the traditional acceptance into ayurvedic apprenticeship from the great VaidyaBhooshanam Raghavan Thirumulpad in 2001, and goes to India annually to study. She incorporates traditional medical systems into her clinical practices, where she provides holistic medical care for the underserved as well as for insured patients, using herbs, nutrition, exercise counseling, ayurveda, energywork, mind-body medicine, homeopathy, yoga, and aromatherapy.
Bhaswati is the recipient of a 1998 American Holistic Medical Association national award. Bhaswati worked at the Office of Alternative Medicine in 1994. She was selected to the NIH Advisory Panel of the Complementary Medical Education Task Force in 1996. From 1995 until 1998, she served as the national co-coordinator of the Humanistic Medicine task force of AMSA. She was selected from 4000+ graduates as the Commencement Graduate Orator at Harvard University in 1993. She received international coverage for her outspoken views alongside then Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell in a speech on blind traditions and the need for insightful healing as we shape policies. She was awarded the 2004 AMA Leadership Award for her work in holistic medicine and international health. She received the 2008 award for Outstanding Services in Global Ayurveda from the Arogyadham Institute in India.
Bhaswati has written several creative and technical works in textbooks and journals and magazines focusing on educating and healing the healers. She is currently creating a visual journey in holistic medicine through her filmmaking company, Betel Nut Productions. She served as the founding medical director of InnerDoorway, the premier publishing company for peer-reviewed medical journals in alternative medicines. She served as author and founding co-Principal Investigator and co-author of EDCAM, a NIH-funded grant to AMSA that successfully created a curriculum with 96 experts integrating holistic medicine into medical schools in the US. Bhaswati served for 5 years on the Board of Trustees of the American Holistic Medical Association. She has served as the CAM expert as a contributor to Dorland’s Medical Dictionary and as the chair of the CAM Advisory Council of the Elsevier medical publishing group. She was the Education Director at Kerala Ayurveda Academy in 2006-7. Her work has been featured in a documentary called Healers: Journey into Ayurveda, that premiered worldwide in July 2003 on The Discovery Channel. She continues to serve the holistic community by actively lecturing and providing workshops internationally
Calvin B. Johnson, M.D., M.P.H., joined Temple University Health System on October 13, 2008 as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer. As Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Johnson is responsible for providing vision and leadership for the development and implementation of quality initiatives at all Health System hospitals and facilities. This includes assuming system-wide responsibility for all patient-safety, infection control/prevention, and other key programs and initiatives that have an impact on clinical outcomes and patient-satisfaction.
Johnson also works to promote, in collaboration with Temple’s medical faculty, increased community outreach and public-health programs and initiatives. Prior to joining Temple, Dr. Johnson served as the 24th Secretary of Health for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was appointed to this role in April 2003 by Governor Edward G. Rendell. In that capacity, Johnson directed the health-services and regulatory functions of Pennsylvania’s Department of Health, an agency with more than 1,500 employees and a budget of nearly $900 million, which serves Pennsylvania’s 12.5 million residents.
During his five-year tenure as Secretary, Dr. Johnson successfully advanced the mission and effectiveness of the Department of Health by initiating and implementing several key strategies and programs – including the allocation of more than $350 million to research projects in the fields of vaccine development, regenerative medicine, and antibiotic resistance; increasing state funding by $3 million for targeted HIV/AIDS prevention and early detection; and establishing a data-driven management system to improve performance management, resource allocation, and outcome measurement. Of note, in 2003, shortly after his appointment as Secretary, Dr. Johnson led Pennsylvania’s successful management of the largest Hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history.
As Secretary of Health, Dr. Johnson also successfully implemented key components of the Governor’s health-care reform plan, including hospital-acquired infection control and health-disparity reduction. Other priority initiatives included the creation of a surveillance and intervention pilot program to reduce youth violence, and the management of more than $50 million, annually, in federal appropriations for bioterrorism and public-health preparedness. At the time of his nomination for Secretary of Health, Dr. Johnson was an assistant professor of pediatrics at Temple University School of Medicine and a practicing pediatrician on the medical staff of Temple University Children’s Medical Center. Before becoming Temple faculty and a member of the medical staff, Dr. Johnson was medical director for Family Health Services at the New York City Department of Health. Johnson is a member of several professional organizations and societies, including the National Medical Association, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (alumni).
His national leadership in a variety of medical, medical-research, and social-science fields is evidenced by his many past and present Board and/or Committee memberships, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Advisory Committee, the National Adoption Center, and the Pennsylvania Life Sciences Greenhouses. A sought after presenter and public speaker, Johnson has shared his expertise and perspective at local, national, and international meetings and seminars. Some of his most recent presentations included Driving Public Health Performance: Sustaining Success and Results in Public Health Practices (Taiwan Ministry of Health Symposium, in Taipei, Taiwan); Public Health Planning and Vaccination Policy Decisions: In the Shadow of Pandemic Influenza (Pediatric Academic Societies meeting, in Toronto, Canada); and Eliminating Health Disparities by Focusing on Quality (AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals’ State of our Health Forum, in Conshohocken, PA).
Dr. Johnson graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, with a degree in chemistry. He earned his medical degree in 1993 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He completed his training in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Johnson is married and has four children.
Dina Goldstein Silverman, Ph.D., is currently Associate Director of the Student Counseling Center on the Drexel University Center City Hahnemann Campus, where she frequently works with medical students, allied health professions students and other aspiring healthcare professionals on managing stress and relationships in individual psychotherapy and psychoeducational workshops. She is also an adjunct faculty member of the Drexel University Department of Psychology and the Continuing Education Department of the Drexel University College of Medicine.
She received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001 and her M.A. and Ed.M. - both in Psychological Counseling, from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City in 2003. Dr. Goldstein Silverman received her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at Temple University in 2007. Her pre-Masters and predoctoral practica were completed among other institutions at the New York Uni versity Bellevue Hospital Center, the Columbia University Center for Educational and Psychological Services, the Temple University Counseling Psychology Clinic, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the Drexel University Student Counseling Center - Center City Hahnemann Campus. She completed her pre-doctoral internship in clinical psychology at the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in Trenton, NJ in 2007 with an outpatient rotation at The College of New Jersey Student Counseling Center and her postdoctoral residency in clinical health psychology at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, CT, and the Yale University School of Medicine.
In her spare time, she is frantically studying for the psychology licensing exam. On a personal note, Dr. Goldstein Silverman has a very good reason for being passionate about supporting physicians and physicians in training, as she is married to a Hahnemann cardiology fellow.
Before joining Temple University, Ms. Patience worked as a Bilingual Diabetes Educator, Research Dietitian at Drexel University, and in the hospital setting as a Clinical Dietitian. Ms. Patience completed her Masters degree at Penn State in the Human Ingestive Behavior Laboratory in the department of Nutrition. She earned her undergraduate degree with a double major in Food Science and Nutritional Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and trained at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago as part of her Loyola University Dietetic Internship.
In her spare time, Ms. Patience teaches as a Certified Diabetes Educator at Montgomery Hospital. She is a Pilates instructor, an active member of the Latinos and Hispanics in Dietetics and Nutrition group of the American Dietetic Association. She enjoys swimming, running outdoors and experimenting with new recipes.
Vikram Kambampati is a psychiatrist at a federal prison in Massachusetts, where he has committed to serve as a National Health Service Corps Scholar. He graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2001, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2005. In June, he completed his residency in psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center. As a medical student, he received a David E. Rogers Fellowship from the New York Academy of Medicine to study user adoption of a community-based health service for veterans. He is also honored to have received a Minority Fellowship from the American Psychiatric Association as a resident, which allowed him to organize an increase in psychiatric staffing at the Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland and to add educational programming in cultural psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University.
Dr. Kambampati has been interested in issues of health service delivery, particularly primary care and mental health collaboration, as well as medical homes. He is a member of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists and the American Psychiatric Association, where he currently serves on the Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing.
Dr. Sharon J. Herring, M.D., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Temple University. Trained as a General Internist, Dr. Herring now spends the majority of her clinical work and research focused on obesity prevention and treatment. She Co-Directs the “Fresh Start to a Healthy Weight Program” in Temple’s Outpatient Internal Medicine Practice, designed to promote healthy behaviors — such as physical activity and better food choices — and prevent and treat adult obesity through one-on-one counseling. She has presented both locally and nationally to physicians about counseling strategies related to nutrition and physical activity for use during brief office visits. Herring has also authored and co-authored several papers examining the predictors and sequelae of excess peripartum weight gain, given its links to obesity and chronic disease in women.
Dr. Herring received a B.S. in nutrition from the Pennsylvania State University in 1997 and her M.D. from Temple University in 2002. After completing residency training in Internal Medicine at New York University in 2006, Dr. Herring moved to Boston to pursue her master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her public health work has predominately focused on obesity prevention in childbearing women. After joining the faculty at Temple in 2008, Herring received internal funding to study predictors of peripartum weight change in urban, minority women. She hopes to use this data to develop an obesity prevention intervention among childbearing women in North Philadelphia.
As Dr. Herring most enjoys her time teaching medical students about weight management and behavior change counseling, she is very much looking forward to speaking at this year’s AMSA conference.
Dr. Fein is a practicing general internist with experience in health policy and a commitment to access to care for vulnerable populations, health system reform and global health education. He is currently Professor of Clinical Medicine and Clinical Public Health and Associate Dean at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. As Associate Dean, he is responsible for Weill Cornell’s domestic affiliations and the Office of Global Health Education. He also coordinates the David Rogers Health Policy Colloquium, a weekly interdisciplinary health policy forum at Weill Cornell. He is President of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Chair of the New York Metro Chapter of PNHP, and immediate past Vice President for the United States of the American Public Health Association (APHA). He also is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and serves on the Health Policy Committee of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM). He is on the Editorial Board of the journal Medical Care. In 1993-94, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in the office of U.S. Senate Majority Leader, George Mitchell.
His recent writings include a chapter (with Joanne Landy) on the feasibility of fundamental health reform in the new book 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care (2008); an editorial (with Charlotte Phillips) in Medical Care titled “Evidence-based health policy supports single-payer health insurance reform” (January 2008); an article titled "US health care reform and the Presidential candidates” in Journal Health Services Research and Policy (July 2008); an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer titled “For-profit health insurance has outlived its usefulness” (August 31, 2008); and an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution titled “There is a cure available for the current plan” (December 14, 2008).
Keith Gumery is a teacher and administrator at Temple University in Philadelphia. Originally from the UK, he has lived in Philadelphia for fifteen years. His MA in English (Creative Writing) and PhD (English) are from Temple U. His literary field is "technically" American Literature post-1865, but he teach a variety of other things, too. Relevant to this conference is the work he has done with literature and medicine, and creative writing workshops he has organized with medical students.
He works with his own medical doctor Dr. Paul Lyons, who also teaches at Temple's Medical School, on projects that integrate literature and medicine. They have team-taught a class on literature and medicine where students read material by doctors who write, and writers who doctor, as well as writers who have made medical practice central to their work. Participants in the class wrote medical narratives in the form of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as a final paper based on the experience of joining Dr. Lyons for rounds at the hospital. They see this as a working toward further integration of the humanities into the regular program of a medical school education.
Dr. Certa is the psychiatry residency training director at Thomas Jefferson University and the director of the medical student personal counseling center. He has spent nearly all of his career at Jefferson, as medical student, resident, and faculty.
Caryn Babaian has a B.S. in Biology, a Master's in Science Education, and has completed 30 hours of graduate coursework in ecological biology, general biology, and scientific illustration. She has taught biology, anatomy, and related courses at the community college and 2-year college level for 15 years. She has aso taught and designed several integrated biology courses and currently is set to teach a unique course entitled, "The Art of Science and Nature," at Bucks County Community College that combines plant chemistry, biophilia, nature writing and drawing, and advocacy work for the planet.
Ms. Babaian received 2nd place in the NSF/Science Visualization challange in 2006, has exhibitioned at the NSF on chalkboard drawings, at BCCC on microbiophilia, and is current exhibitioning at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia on aquatic and marine organisms. Her areas of interest are ethnobotanical medicine, the application of scientific drawing to teaching the life sciences and medicine, creativity and cognition, the concept and application of biophilia to teaching. Ms. Babaian is currently enrolled in a graduate biology class to keep herself up-to-date.
Paul Lyons, MD is Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Temple University School of Medicine where he serves a variety of educational and mentoring roles for medical students and residents. He also serves as the President of Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility. Building on his personal and professional experiences Dr Lyons has developed a strong interest in the many elements that contribute to well physicians including personal assessment, self critique, professional challenge, interpersonal dialogue and social engagement.
In 2004, he began what would become an extended and very fruitful collaboration with Dr Keith Gumery, exploring the intersection of literature and medicine from the perspective of writers, patients, students and physicians. The results of this collaboration include a Narrative Medicine elective for 1st/2nd year medical students, a clinically related elective for 4th year medical students, a reflective writing exercise for graduating medical students, a writing intensive course for Temple undergraduate students and a collaborative course for the undergraduate Honors program. In 2008 Dr Lyons was awarded the AMSA National Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence.
Marc Altshuler, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Jefferson Medical College. Dr. Altshuler also serves as an Attending Physician and the Associate Resident Director for the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. In 2004 Dr. Altshuler was awarded the Jeff HOPE Achievement award for his “Outstanding Contribution to Serving the Needs of the Underserved.” Dr. Altshuler’s volunteer work continues today with his involvement in Jeff HOPE, Jefferson Medical College’s free student-run clinic serving the homeless community of Philadelphia. Dr. Altshuler’s passion for the underserved community’s health has expanded beyond the homeless population to the refugee population. Recently Dr. Altshuler started and is now serving as the Director of the Jefferson Center for Refugee Health wherein he works with refugee resettlement programs in Philadelphia to initiate health screens and provide other much-needed services for refugees in Philadelphia. Moving forward, Dr. Altshuler is interested in improving immigrant access to healthcare as well as educating the healthcare community on cultural competency
Michael Baime, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, is the Director of the Penn Program for Stress Management and the Director of Mind-Body Programs for the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. The Penn mindfulness-based stress management program has enrolled more than 5,000 individuals in a structured eight-week meditation-based training course since its inception in 1992. Dr. Baime graduated from Haverford College in 1977 and from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1981. He completed post-graduate training in internal medicine at The Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia in 1984, and served an additional year as chief resident. He is currently a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Baime was the recipient of The Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. He was also awarded the Appel award for student work in psychiatry in 1981.
Under his direction, the Penn Program for Stress Management has provided training in several local and regional school districts, for both teachers and students. He has also, under the auspices of the City of Philadelphia Department of Human Services provided training for foster parents, social workers, and department staff, for all of the staff and officers of the University City Police District. He has also worked in prisons, hospitals, drug rehabilitation centers, businesses, churches, and hospices locally and nationally.
At Penn, Dr Baime teaches a mindfulness-bases stress management course, “Mind-Body Medicine and Mindfulness Meditation: Theory and Practice” to medical and nursing students, a full-time one-month meditation-based elective for medical students, "Spirituality and Medicine", a Graduate School of Education course called “Enriching our Learning Communities” offered through the Penn Literacy Network, an undergraduate Department of Psychology course, “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Meditation”, and an annual CME/CEU course for health care providers called “Healing the Heart and Mind”.
He is engaged in research on the impact of mindfulness meditation on empathy, burnout and patient care in the hospital setting, the use of meditation for the treatment of obesity, ADHD, tobacco addiction, cancer, insomnia, and multiple sclerosis, the behavioral and neural changes associated with meditation practice and a mindfulness-based training interventions and workshops for caregivers at numerous sites across the nation.
Associate Director for Student Affairs at Temple University's School of Medicine and serves as the Temple University coordinator for a Philadelphia collaborative community health internship program, Bridging the Gaps. She also is as an adjunct faculty member at Widener University’s Center for Social Work Education, teaching courses in socio-cultural issues, social policy and community development. Her experience includes facilitating community based learning experiences for doctors in training, participating in a range of grassroots collaborations; managing youth counseling services, coordinating community arts programming; and assessing “participatory action research” conducted in the Philippines and Thailand for the Canada Asia Partnership Project.
Kathleen Reeves, MD, is Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Temple University School of Medicine. Dr. Reeves completed her pediatric residency at University of Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital, attended medical school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and received a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in philosophy and religious studies from Juniata College in Pennsylvania. She was the first program director of the Crozer Pediatric Residency Program, where she worked for eight years. Her experience as a pediatrician has contributed to a strong commitment to community health issues. She is also dedicated to providing a comprehensive and compassionate education throughout a medical school curriculum. It is only the physicians who concentrate on their own wellness who are truly able to concentrate on the wellness of their patients.
Lucy Wolf Tuton, PhD, is Executive Director of the Bridging the Gaps Program. BTG is a program that links the interdisciplinary training of health and social service professionals with the provision of health-related service in underserved communities. Dr. Tuton is representing the BTG Network, comprised of faculty/staff from academic health centers in Philadelphia, Erie, Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as well as in New Jersey. The BTG Network collaborates with over 100 community organizations serving vulnerable populations. Joining Dr. Tuton is an interdisciplinary group of students who have recently completed the BTG Community Health Internship Program: Katy Baker-Cohen (nursing); Megan Basham (social work); Justin Bosley (medicine); Stephanie Hoffmann (law); and, Padma Sundaram (dentistry).
At the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Dr. Tuton is Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Prevention and Population Health in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, and Director of Program Development in Community Health in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is a core faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program in both the community and leadership curricular components. Dr. Tuton is also Director of Professional Development for FOCUS on Health & Leadership for Women, a program that promotes advocacy, education, and research in women's health and supports the advancement of women in academic medicine.
Harry J. Morris, DO, MPH is professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM). Dr. Morris graduated from and completed his residency in family medicine at PCOM. He practiced family medicine in rural Chester county and was a residency director in Orlando, Florida. He has been chair at PCOM since 1995.
Dr. Morris has works closely with students and residents and teaches “Primary Care Skills” to PCOM students. In addition, he directs four inner city healthcare centers which are clinical training sites for fourth year students and which provide primary care to populations with access to medical care barriers.
Francisco Laboy III, D.O. is currently Chief Resident in Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine/ Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine at The Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Originally, from Bronx, N.Y. Dr. Laboy received his B.S. in Biology from The City College of New York, CUNY. After eight years as a fitness professional and post rehabilitation specialist, he enrolled at PCOM.
While earning his D.O. degree, he completed an additional year in OMM as an undergraduate teaching fellow. Prior to beginning his residency training, Dr. Laboy also completed a traditional osteopathic rotating internship at Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill, PA.
Lillian E, Cohn, MD is a partner at Ninth Street Internal Medicine Associates, an independent primary care practice in Center City Philadelphia. The practice was established in 1989 and has grown from a 4 physician group to a 10 provider group which includes 2 nurse practitioners, and provides care to approximately 25,000 patients. It has been recognized as a Patient Centered Medical Home and has received NCQA level III certification. The office has been fully electronic since 2006, and has a web enabled EMR.
Dr. Cohn completed her BA in Psychology at SUNY Buffalo in 1972, and her MD at Boston University School of Medicine in 1978. She did her Internal Medicine internship and residency at Pennsylvania Hospital, our nation’s first hospital. In her early years in practice she ran a solo office in Internal Medicine, and was Medical Director of the Public Health Department’s City Health District #6, a clinic which serves multicultural indigent patients. She has helped grow her practice from a solo practice to a large independent single specialty physician group which has participated in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chronic Care Initiative.
Dr. Cohn is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania as well as an Adjunct Professor in Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and mentors medical students, serves as a preceptor for nurse practitioner students and medicine residents. She and her partners admit and care for patients at both Pennsylvania Hospital and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
She is the mother of four sons, and has always worked full time. She is excited about primary care and the richness of the experience it has provided her throughout her career. Her topic “A sneak peak into the life of a PCP” will be an interactive discussion and look at what’s new in primary care, what’s old in primary care, and what makes it all so exciting and special.
Dr. Ingle will be presenting on behalf of the Committee for Interns and Residents. The Committee of Interns and Residents was founded in 1957 and is the largest housetsaff union in the country. Residents in CIR hospitals have the ability to engage in collective bargaining, which gives physicians a voice in determining their salary, benefits, and working conditions. CIR and AMSA were at the forefront of work hours reform, eventually resulting in the 80-hour work week. Since 1997, CIR has been affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Recent CIR initiatives include health care reform, continued work with residency work hours, and patient safety.
Conrad Fischer is currently the Associate Chief of Medicine for Educational and Academic Activities at Nassau University Medical Center on Long Island. He is an Attending Physician at the University Hospital of Brooklyn as well as at King’s County Hospital Center. In the past, Dr. Fischer was the Residency Program Director at Flushing Hospital and before that was the Residency Director at Maimonides Medical Center. Dr. Fischer completed a Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of Cornell University.
Dr. Fischer is most appropriately described as a ‘change agent’ or ‘turnaround specialist” for institutions, most especially the department of medicine. Dr. Fischer currently also serves as the Chairman of the Operations Committee for the Department of Medicine. In this capacity he oversees the smooth operation of nursing, ancillary and medical house staff in the Department of Medicine across the hospital.
In addition to his Residency and Medical School roles, Dr Fischer is a leader in medical education as both a lecturer and author. Dr. Fischer has authored ten books on medical education and study materials for students, residents and attendings in both board certification and recertification. He teaches both in live lectures and as multimedia study resources. His lecture series is screened in 160 sites in 20 countries including the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Korea and Italy.
Dr Fischer speaks regularly on medical education as a part of Grand Rounds, faculty development and both student and “resident as teacher” educational programs. He is most known for his ability to inspire and encourage the medical community to be passionate about the art of medical practice and learning. His favorite subject is providing evidence for “The Art of Engagement.” In this role, he has been a keynote speaker at the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) for over five years.
This year saw a new direction for Dr Fischer in the area of the philosophy and history of medicine. Dr Fisher is the author of the Foreword to: “The Corpus” by Hippocrates; “The Complete writings of Pasteur and Lister” and “The Evolution of Modern Medicine” By Sir William Osler. Dr. Fischer’s first medical book for the general public titled “Routine Miracles: Restoring Hope in Medicine” has just been released, which rediscovers the advances in medical practice in the past 25 years and explores the etiology of increasing physician dissatisfaction despite increasing medical abilities as a profession. Dr Fischer is currently filming a documentary film on the subject of this new book.
Dr Fischer is also an experienced lobbyist at the state and federal level. This is both for financial issues for institutions, as well as for legislative policy issues in HIV and education. As such he meets regularly at the Department of Health and is an appointee of the Governor of the State of New York.
Dr. Stephanie H Ward, M.D., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Temple University School of Medicine, and has a secondary appointment in the Department of Public Health at Temple University. Trained as a General Internist, Dr. Ward now spends a significant portion of her clinical work, research and educational efforts focused on obesity prevention and treatment particularly among African Americans. She Co-Directs the Fresh Start to a Healthy Weight Program in Temple’s outpatient Internal Medicine Practice which is designed to promote healthy behaviors and treat adult obesity through individual medical weight management. She has presented both locally and nationally to physicians about brief counseling strategies related to nutrition and physical activity for use during office visits. Dr. Ward has also completed and published a qualitative study examining African Americans’ perceptions of obesity and physician efforts at counseling on weight loss.
Dr. Ward received a B.S. in zoology from North Carolina State University, followed by a Masters of Public Health from the George Washington University. She then received her M.D. from Jefferson Medical College, and completed residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. After joining the faculty at Temple in 2005, Dr. Ward began collaborating with colleagues in the Department of Public Health on a project designed to enhance communication regarding colorectal cancer screening in African American patients with limited literacy. With internal funding from the Department of Medicine Faculty Development Research Award, she turned her research focus towards elucidating perceptions of obesity and weight loss among African Americans. Dr. Ward hopes to use this information to enhance communication with patients regarding obesity and to develop behavioral interventions for weight loss targeted toward African Americans.
Check Back to See Our Updated List of Speakers with more pictures and biographies to come!
Dr. Ronald Barg
Ronald Barg MD, FACP is currently the executive director of Clinical Care Associates (CCA) of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. CCA is a not for profit corporation owned by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. It is the community based practice network for Penn Medicine with 40 sites distributed throughout the five counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania and three counties in Southern New Jersey. CCA currently employs approximately 155 physicians in Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics and a number of other specialties. The current focus of the organization is to aggregate practices into larger, well branded sites where patients can access integrated care across multiple specialties in a coordinated fashion. Utilizing advanced health information technology patients receive efficient and effective care with a focus on high quality care, superior patient outcomes and a positive patient experience. CCA currently has revenues of approximately $85 Million annually and 700,000 annual patient encounters.
Dr. Barg has been the Executive Director of CCA since 2005. Prior to that serving in a variety of administrative roles within Penn Medicine including Senior Medical Director of CCA, Regional Medical Director of CCA, Interim Chief Medical Officer-Phoenixville Hospital and Chair of the Cardiovascular Service Line. Dr. Barg is board certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics practicing in Suburban Philadelphia for twelve years prior to joining Penn in 2005. He continues to see patients one day per week in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Dr. Barg is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the Philadelphia College of Physicians. He remains active in Medical Student Education at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and precepts medical students regularly at a student run free clinic in West Philadelphia.
Dr. Barg is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Mathematics and MD Degree. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Hahnemann University Hospital. He has three grown children, Jason, Robert and Paula and resides in the Merion, Pennsylvania with his wife Debbie.
KEYNOTE
Dr. John Daly
An internationally renowned oncologic surgeon, author, researcher and academician, John M. Daly, MD, FACS, FRCPS (Hon. Glasg.) became Dean of Temple University School of Medicine in 2002. Prior to joining Temple, he was the Lewis Atterbury Stimson Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Surgeon-in-Chief. Before that, he was the Jonathan E. Rhoads Professor of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as an invited lecturer and visiting professor at Harvard, the Royal Academy of Medicine, and other leading academic medical centers around the globe.
A prolific researcher and author, Dr. Daly has 368 publications to his credit, including dozens of book chapters and several books, such as the Atlas of Surgical Oncology (Daly and Cady, J.B., Lippincott, 1993) and Surgical Oncology, Contemporary Principles & Practices (Bland, Daly, Karakousis, McGraw-Hill, 2001). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Surgery, as Editor of Current Surgery, and is a past editor and/or current editorial board member of Cancer, Surgery, and a dozen other leading journals. He has served as principal investigator on numerous research grants from the National Institutes of Health and holds a U. S. Patent Pending for the “Use of COX-2 inhibitors to treat/ameliorate sepsis and septic complications.”
An expert in clinical nutrition and parenteral hyperalimentation, Dr. Daly is a past president of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (1985-1986). He is also a former President of the Society of Surgical Oncology 2002-2003); the New York Surgical Society (1998-1999); and the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Cancer Society (1992-1993). Moreover, he has served on governance boards and in leadership capacities for the American Board of Colon and Rectal Surgery, the American Board of Surgery, the American College of Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, the Association for Academic Surgery, the Association of American Medical Colleges and a dozen other professional associations. His areas of expertise include physician competency and liability, credentialing and board certification, surgical education and research, public policy and long-range planning, and technology assessment.
Dr. Daly has received numerous honors and awards for teaching, research and practice, including Sam E. Roberts Nutrition Foundation Medal of the University of Kansas (1981) and the Elliot Hochstein Medical Student Teaching Award of Cornell University (1995). Over the years, he has appeared in some two dozen “best” lists (Best Doctors in Philadelphia, Best Doctors in America, Best Doctors in New York, Top Cancer Doctors in New York City, Best Doctors in New York, The 318 Top Cancer Specialists for Women, etc.).
A native Philadelphian, Dr. Daly received his undergraduate degree form LaSalle University and his MD from Temple University School of Medicine in 1973. He completed an internship and residency at the University of Texas Medical School (Houston) and received his certification from the American Board of Surgery in 1979.
Dr. Lara Weinstein
Lara Carson Weinstein, MD is a family physician and faculty member in the Department of Family and Community Medicine of Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Weinstein completed her undergraduate degree in with a major in Philosophy at Georgetown University. During her years of medical school at Jefferson Medical College, she was part of a core group of students who founded Jeff HOPE, a medical students run shelter based medical clinic for homeless individuals. Over the past 17 years, Jeff HOPE has greatly expanded to 5 weekly outreach clinics, which involves over 600 students in providing 1500 client visits annually.
At the end of her residency, Dr. Weinstein co-founded the St. Elizabeth’s Health Center of Project HOME with her mentor and partner, Dr. James Plumb. The mission of St. Elizabeth’s is to provide low demand access to primary care services and the larger health care system to those whose lives have been complicated by experiences of homelessness, mental illness, addiction, abuse, poverty, and violence, and who have been marginalized by the existing system. Plans are underway to expand the services of the St. Elizabeth’s Center into an integrated neighborhood health and wellness center.
In the Department of Family and Community Medicine Residency Program, Dr. Weinstein coordinates community oriented primary care and population health activities. One highly successful outcome of these activities has been the establishment of a weekly family medicine resident run medical outreach team in partnership with the Project HOME street outreach team.
After 10 years of providing direct clinical service and education, Dr. Weinstein felt drawn to more rigorously consider the larger issues and outcomes of the vulnerable populations she served. In September 2008, she became a primary care research fellow in the DFCM and began the Master’s in Public Health Program at the John’s Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. In November 2008, she partnered with Pathways to Housing Philadelphia, a non profit agency with the mission of ending homelessness for people with psychiatric disability by providing housing first and giving support and treatment for recovery and community integration. Her area of research interest is in improving chronic illness care systems and health outcomes through community based participatory research to support recovery and healing alongside people with psychiatric disability and histories of chronic homelessness.
Dr. Anuradha Paranjape, MPH
Dr. Paranjape is Associate Professor in the Section of General Internal Medicine at Temple University School of Medicine with a secondary appointment in the Department of Public Health of the College of Health Professions at Temple University. She is a general internist, practicing Primary Care, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Paranjape grew up in India, where she completed medical school and obtained an additional degree in Internal Medicine, graduating from Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College at the University of Poona, Pune, India. She did her internal medicine residency in the Primary Care program in Internal Medicine of the University of Rochester. Following residency, she did a two-year general medicine fellowship at Boston University, where she obtained her Masters in Public Health.
She joined Temple University in 2006, after six years on faculty at Emory University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on health disparities, with her most recent studies occurring at the nexus of family violence, patient perceptions of health, and aging in urban minority female patients. She is has authored numerous papers related to family violence and health and has served as a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging. Her work is recognized locally and nationally; recently she was the recipient of the 2008 Healthcare Advocate Award by the Philadelphia Coalition of Victims Service Providers. In addition to her own research, she mentors students, post doctoral trainees and junior faculty colleagues in their scholarly efforts and serves as an advisor to Temple medical students through Temple’s four year long Doctoring course. In her spare time, she maintains personal wellness through cycling, gardening, travel and family trips. She is looking forward to speaking at this year’s AMSA conference and appreciates the opportunity to talk about an important problem that touches people from all walks of life.
Dr. David Himmelstein
David U. Himmelstein M.D. is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and practices primary care internal medicine and serves as Chief of the Division of Social and Community Medicine at Cambridge Hospital. He graduated from Columbia Univerity’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, completed a medical residency at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California, and a fellowship in General Internal Medicine at Harvard.
He has authored or co-authored more than 100 journal articles and three books, including widely-cited studies of medical bankruptcy and the high administrative costs of the U.S. health care system. His 1984 study of patient dumping led to the enactment of EMTALA, the law that banned that practice. He co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program.
Dr. Sam Parrish
Sam Parrish serves as Senior Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Admissions at Drexel University College of Medicine. A South Carolina native, Sam received his undergraduate education at the College of Charleston and graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina. Sam took residency training in Child Health at the University of Missouri where he was also Chief Resident. Sam completed fellowship training in Adolescent Medicine at Long Island Jewish-Hillside Medical Center and joined the faculty of the Medical College of Pennsylvania following his fellowship. Sam established the Division of Adolescent Medicine at MCP and served as Chief until 1992 when he became Residency Director for the Department of Pediatrics at East Carolina University. Sam subsequently served as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University until he joined Drexel University College of Medicine as Associate Dean for Student Affairs in January of 2001. Sam became the Dean for Admissions at Drexel University College of Medicine in February of 2009.
Sam currently serves as the National Chairperson of the Committee on Student Affairs of the AAMC. He is also a member of the Visiting Student Application Service Oversight Committee and the Mental Health Working Group of the Group on Student Affairs of the AAMC. Sam’s areas of interest include LGBT student issues, Mental Health Concerns affecting medical professionals, substance abuse issues affecting medical professionals as well as the holistic review of medical school applicants.
Dr. Manish Garg, FAAEM
Dr. Garg is the current Associate Residency Program Director in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Temple University Hospital. Dr. Garg graduated from Wayne State University School of Medicine in 2001 and was an active member of his local AMSA chapter concentrating on medical student wellness. He subsequently completed his Emergency Medicine Residency at Detroit Receiving Hospital in 2004. Since that time, Dr. Garg has been on faculty at Temple University Hospital and has developed a niche in the area of wellness.
He is currently a member of the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine Graduate Medical Education subcommittee on resident wellness. This subcommittee is charged with shaping the education of resident wellness in Emergency Medicine residency programs across the country. Additionally, Dr. Garg is one of the faculty supervisors for the annual Citywide Resident Symposium hosted by Temple University Hospital. This symposium annually is attended by residents from all departments within the hospital in addition to all of the Emergency Medicine programs in the Philadelphia area. At the last symposium, he had the honor of presenting, “How We Deal With Death,” a talk on the toll of death-telling on health care professionals. Dr. Garg is excited to speak with you on “Wellness from A Student’s Perspective” and he appreciates the opportunity to share with you in this truly important topic.
Dr. Jim Withers
Dr. Jim Withers was raised in rural Pennsylvania where he made house calls with his father, a Family Practitioner. Dr. Withers received his undergraduate degree at Haverford College, and completed his medical school training at the University of Pittsburgh in 1984. His interest in service oriented medicine grew through medical trips to Central America and India.After finishing his medicine and chief residencies at The Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh, he joined their full time teaching faculty in the Department of Internal Medicine. His areas of special interest have been Domestic Violence, International Medicine and Homeless Health Care. In 1992, he founded Operation Safety Net (OSN), the first full time, comprehensive medical service of its’ kind for the unsheltered homeless. Medical care is delivered directly on the streets, along the river banks and in the abandoned buildings of Pittsburgh, with full social service and housing follow-up.
OSN has been recognized internationally and is being replicated or studied by cities throughout the world. In 2005, Dr. Withers established the annual International Street Medicine Symposia (with current partners in North America, South and Central America, Europe and Asia) to foster collaboration in the care of those sleeping on the streets. In 2008, Dr. Withers created the Street Medicine Institute to focus on helping communities establish Street Medicine programs, improve existing practice and create a student fellowship in Street Medicine. Dr. Withers enjoys numerous volunteer activities, Board memberships, and medical teaching appointments. He is most proud of the many students who have gone on to careers in service oriented medicine.
Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya
Trained as a scientist, international public health specialist, and primary care clinician before gaining skills as a holistic healer, Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya practices and teaches holistic medicine in New York City. Bhaswati became interested in holistic & alternative medicines from her family ancestry of Ayurvedic and Sanskrit scholars, a biomedically-trained father, a clinician, scientist, and veterinarian, and herbalist mother. Bhaswati has been working in complementary medical education for 20 years. A licensed primary care physician practicing in New York, she is board-certified in holistic medicine and preventive medicine. Bhaswati serves as Director of the Dinacharya Institute for Wise Medicine, teaching workshops, seminars, and a training program for Ayurvedic Health Coaches. She is the former Director of Research and director of the Division of Complementary & Alternative Medicines and is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.Her academic training includes a baccalaureate (BA) in the Biological Basis of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania; masters degree in pharmacology and neuroscience from Columbia University with 6 years of graduate work in biotechnology, biomedical sciences and laboratory work toward a PhD; a masters degree in international public health (MPH) from Harvard University; and a medical doctorate (MD) from Rush Medical College in Chicago. Her residency training in family practice at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital; and in community & preventive medicine at Mount Sinai, have inspired her to work with the underserved. In addition, she has several certifications in the healing arts. Bhaswati’s holistic training comes through numerous formal courses and the traditional apprenticeship format known as gurukala still practiced by traditional healers in Tibet, India, China, Nepal, Brazil, Nigeria, and El Salvador. Her management skills evolved prior to medical school, through ten years of biomedical research, active international public health work and consulting projects in medical education, biotechnology, medical publishing, and management on Wall Street with an investment bank.
Alongside formal schooling, Bhaswati has maintained the ongoing pursuit of knowledge in traditional medicines, studying formally under Drs.Ted Kaptchuk, David Eisenberg, Rachel Naomi Remen, Ben Kligler, Ellen Tattelman, Jeffrey Bland, Norman Farnsworth, Deepak Chopra, PR Krishnakumar, Joseph Helms, Vivek Shanbhag, Aparna Bapat, and her mentor, the late human rights activist Jonathan Mann. Bhaswati accepted the vows of vidyaarambham, the traditional acceptance into ayurvedic apprenticeship from the great VaidyaBhooshanam Raghavan Thirumulpad in 2001, and goes to India annually to study. She incorporates traditional medical systems into her clinical practices, where she provides holistic medical care for the underserved as well as for insured patients, using herbs, nutrition, exercise counseling, ayurveda, energywork, mind-body medicine, homeopathy, yoga, and aromatherapy.
Bhaswati is the recipient of a 1998 American Holistic Medical Association national award. Bhaswati worked at the Office of Alternative Medicine in 1994. She was selected to the NIH Advisory Panel of the Complementary Medical Education Task Force in 1996. From 1995 until 1998, she served as the national co-coordinator of the Humanistic Medicine task force of AMSA. She was selected from 4000+ graduates as the Commencement Graduate Orator at Harvard University in 1993. She received international coverage for her outspoken views alongside then Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell in a speech on blind traditions and the need for insightful healing as we shape policies. She was awarded the 2004 AMA Leadership Award for her work in holistic medicine and international health. She received the 2008 award for Outstanding Services in Global Ayurveda from the Arogyadham Institute in India.
Bhaswati has written several creative and technical works in textbooks and journals and magazines focusing on educating and healing the healers. She is currently creating a visual journey in holistic medicine through her filmmaking company, Betel Nut Productions. She served as the founding medical director of InnerDoorway, the premier publishing company for peer-reviewed medical journals in alternative medicines. She served as author and founding co-Principal Investigator and co-author of EDCAM, a NIH-funded grant to AMSA that successfully created a curriculum with 96 experts integrating holistic medicine into medical schools in the US. Bhaswati served for 5 years on the Board of Trustees of the American Holistic Medical Association. She has served as the CAM expert as a contributor to Dorland’s Medical Dictionary and as the chair of the CAM Advisory Council of the Elsevier medical publishing group. She was the Education Director at Kerala Ayurveda Academy in 2006-7. Her work has been featured in a documentary called Healers: Journey into Ayurveda, that premiered worldwide in July 2003 on The Discovery Channel. She continues to serve the holistic community by actively lecturing and providing workshops internationally
Dr. Calvin Johnson, MPH
Calvin B. Johnson, M.D., M.P.H., joined Temple University Health System on October 13, 2008 as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer. As Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Johnson is responsible for providing vision and leadership for the development and implementation of quality initiatives at all Health System hospitals and facilities. This includes assuming system-wide responsibility for all patient-safety, infection control/prevention, and other key programs and initiatives that have an impact on clinical outcomes and patient-satisfaction.
Johnson also works to promote, in collaboration with Temple’s medical faculty, increased community outreach and public-health programs and initiatives. Prior to joining Temple, Dr. Johnson served as the 24th Secretary of Health for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was appointed to this role in April 2003 by Governor Edward G. Rendell. In that capacity, Johnson directed the health-services and regulatory functions of Pennsylvania’s Department of Health, an agency with more than 1,500 employees and a budget of nearly $900 million, which serves Pennsylvania’s 12.5 million residents.
During his five-year tenure as Secretary, Dr. Johnson successfully advanced the mission and effectiveness of the Department of Health by initiating and implementing several key strategies and programs – including the allocation of more than $350 million to research projects in the fields of vaccine development, regenerative medicine, and antibiotic resistance; increasing state funding by $3 million for targeted HIV/AIDS prevention and early detection; and establishing a data-driven management system to improve performance management, resource allocation, and outcome measurement. Of note, in 2003, shortly after his appointment as Secretary, Dr. Johnson led Pennsylvania’s successful management of the largest Hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history.
As Secretary of Health, Dr. Johnson also successfully implemented key components of the Governor’s health-care reform plan, including hospital-acquired infection control and health-disparity reduction. Other priority initiatives included the creation of a surveillance and intervention pilot program to reduce youth violence, and the management of more than $50 million, annually, in federal appropriations for bioterrorism and public-health preparedness. At the time of his nomination for Secretary of Health, Dr. Johnson was an assistant professor of pediatrics at Temple University School of Medicine and a practicing pediatrician on the medical staff of Temple University Children’s Medical Center. Before becoming Temple faculty and a member of the medical staff, Dr. Johnson was medical director for Family Health Services at the New York City Department of Health. Johnson is a member of several professional organizations and societies, including the National Medical Association, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (alumni).
His national leadership in a variety of medical, medical-research, and social-science fields is evidenced by his many past and present Board and/or Committee memberships, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Advisory Committee, the National Adoption Center, and the Pennsylvania Life Sciences Greenhouses. A sought after presenter and public speaker, Johnson has shared his expertise and perspective at local, national, and international meetings and seminars. Some of his most recent presentations included Driving Public Health Performance: Sustaining Success and Results in Public Health Practices (Taiwan Ministry of Health Symposium, in Taipei, Taiwan); Public Health Planning and Vaccination Policy Decisions: In the Shadow of Pandemic Influenza (Pediatric Academic Societies meeting, in Toronto, Canada); and Eliminating Health Disparities by Focusing on Quality (AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals’ State of our Health Forum, in Conshohocken, PA).
Dr. Johnson graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, with a degree in chemistry. He earned his medical degree in 1993 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He completed his training in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Johnson is married and has four children.
Dr. Dina Silverman
Dina Goldstein Silverman, Ph.D., is currently Associate Director of the Student Counseling Center on the Drexel University Center City Hahnemann Campus, where she frequently works with medical students, allied health professions students and other aspiring healthcare professionals on managing stress and relationships in individual psychotherapy and psychoeducational workshops. She is also an adjunct faculty member of the Drexel University Department of Psychology and the Continuing Education Department of the Drexel University College of Medicine.
She received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001 and her M.A. and Ed.M. - both in Psychological Counseling, from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City in 2003. Dr. Goldstein Silverman received her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at Temple University in 2007. Her pre-Masters and predoctoral practica were completed among other institutions at the New York Uni versity Bellevue Hospital Center, the Columbia University Center for Educational and Psychological Services, the Temple University Counseling Psychology Clinic, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the Drexel University Student Counseling Center - Center City Hahnemann Campus. She completed her pre-doctoral internship in clinical psychology at the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in Trenton, NJ in 2007 with an outpatient rotation at The College of New Jersey Student Counseling Center and her postdoctoral residency in clinical health psychology at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, CT, and the Yale University School of Medicine.
In her spare time, she is frantically studying for the psychology licensing exam. On a personal note, Dr. Goldstein Silverman has a very good reason for being passionate about supporting physicians and physicians in training, as she is married to a Hahnemann cardiology fellow.
Nicole Patience, MS, RD, LDN, CDE
Nicole Patience works at Temple University Student Health Services as a Clinical Dietitian. Over the past two years she has counseled students using motivational interviewing that focuses on behavior change, primarily in weight management and eating disorders. She believes college is a pivotal time for young adults to lay the foundations of healthy food choices that will carry into their lives and professional careers. Her additional programming on campus includes a dorm room cooking workshop, nutrition for dancers, tips for low-cost healthy eating in college and sports nutrition outreach with the gym and Temple athletics.Before joining Temple University, Ms. Patience worked as a Bilingual Diabetes Educator, Research Dietitian at Drexel University, and in the hospital setting as a Clinical Dietitian. Ms. Patience completed her Masters degree at Penn State in the Human Ingestive Behavior Laboratory in the department of Nutrition. She earned her undergraduate degree with a double major in Food Science and Nutritional Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and trained at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago as part of her Loyola University Dietetic Internship.
In her spare time, Ms. Patience teaches as a Certified Diabetes Educator at Montgomery Hospital. She is a Pilates instructor, an active member of the Latinos and Hispanics in Dietetics and Nutrition group of the American Dietetic Association. She enjoys swimming, running outdoors and experimenting with new recipes.
Dr. Vikram Kambampati
Vikram Kambampati is a psychiatrist at a federal prison in Massachusetts, where he has committed to serve as a National Health Service Corps Scholar. He graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2001, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2005. In June, he completed his residency in psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center. As a medical student, he received a David E. Rogers Fellowship from the New York Academy of Medicine to study user adoption of a community-based health service for veterans. He is also honored to have received a Minority Fellowship from the American Psychiatric Association as a resident, which allowed him to organize an increase in psychiatric staffing at the Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland and to add educational programming in cultural psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University.
Dr. Kambampati has been interested in issues of health service delivery, particularly primary care and mental health collaboration, as well as medical homes. He is a member of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists and the American Psychiatric Association, where he currently serves on the Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing.
Dr. Sharon Herring
Dr. Sharon J. Herring, M.D., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Temple University. Trained as a General Internist, Dr. Herring now spends the majority of her clinical work and research focused on obesity prevention and treatment. She Co-Directs the “Fresh Start to a Healthy Weight Program” in Temple’s Outpatient Internal Medicine Practice, designed to promote healthy behaviors — such as physical activity and better food choices — and prevent and treat adult obesity through one-on-one counseling. She has presented both locally and nationally to physicians about counseling strategies related to nutrition and physical activity for use during brief office visits. Herring has also authored and co-authored several papers examining the predictors and sequelae of excess peripartum weight gain, given its links to obesity and chronic disease in women.
Dr. Herring received a B.S. in nutrition from the Pennsylvania State University in 1997 and her M.D. from Temple University in 2002. After completing residency training in Internal Medicine at New York University in 2006, Dr. Herring moved to Boston to pursue her master’s degree in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her public health work has predominately focused on obesity prevention in childbearing women. After joining the faculty at Temple in 2008, Herring received internal funding to study predictors of peripartum weight change in urban, minority women. She hopes to use this data to develop an obesity prevention intervention among childbearing women in North Philadelphia.
As Dr. Herring most enjoys her time teaching medical students about weight management and behavior change counseling, she is very much looking forward to speaking at this year’s AMSA conference.
Dr. Oliver Fein
Dr. Fein is a practicing general internist with experience in health policy and a commitment to access to care for vulnerable populations, health system reform and global health education. He is currently Professor of Clinical Medicine and Clinical Public Health and Associate Dean at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. As Associate Dean, he is responsible for Weill Cornell’s domestic affiliations and the Office of Global Health Education. He also coordinates the David Rogers Health Policy Colloquium, a weekly interdisciplinary health policy forum at Weill Cornell. He is President of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Chair of the New York Metro Chapter of PNHP, and immediate past Vice President for the United States of the American Public Health Association (APHA). He also is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and serves on the Health Policy Committee of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM). He is on the Editorial Board of the journal Medical Care. In 1993-94, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in the office of U.S. Senate Majority Leader, George Mitchell.
His recent writings include a chapter (with Joanne Landy) on the feasibility of fundamental health reform in the new book 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care (2008); an editorial (with Charlotte Phillips) in Medical Care titled “Evidence-based health policy supports single-payer health insurance reform” (January 2008); an article titled "US health care reform and the Presidential candidates” in Journal Health Services Research and Policy (July 2008); an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer titled “For-profit health insurance has outlived its usefulness” (August 31, 2008); and an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution titled “There is a cure available for the current plan” (December 14, 2008).
Dr. Keith Gumery
Keith Gumery is a teacher and administrator at Temple University in Philadelphia. Originally from the UK, he has lived in Philadelphia for fifteen years. His MA in English (Creative Writing) and PhD (English) are from Temple U. His literary field is "technically" American Literature post-1865, but he teach a variety of other things, too. Relevant to this conference is the work he has done with literature and medicine, and creative writing workshops he has organized with medical students.
He works with his own medical doctor Dr. Paul Lyons, who also teaches at Temple's Medical School, on projects that integrate literature and medicine. They have team-taught a class on literature and medicine where students read material by doctors who write, and writers who doctor, as well as writers who have made medical practice central to their work. Participants in the class wrote medical narratives in the form of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as a final paper based on the experience of joining Dr. Lyons for rounds at the hospital. They see this as a working toward further integration of the humanities into the regular program of a medical school education.
Dr. Kenneth Certa
Dr. Certa is the psychiatry residency training director at Thomas Jefferson University and the director of the medical student personal counseling center. He has spent nearly all of his career at Jefferson, as medical student, resident, and faculty.
Caryn Babaian, MS
Caryn Babaian has a B.S. in Biology, a Master's in Science Education, and has completed 30 hours of graduate coursework in ecological biology, general biology, and scientific illustration. She has taught biology, anatomy, and related courses at the community college and 2-year college level for 15 years. She has aso taught and designed several integrated biology courses and currently is set to teach a unique course entitled, "The Art of Science and Nature," at Bucks County Community College that combines plant chemistry, biophilia, nature writing and drawing, and advocacy work for the planet.
Ms. Babaian received 2nd place in the NSF/Science Visualization challange in 2006, has exhibitioned at the NSF on chalkboard drawings, at BCCC on microbiophilia, and is current exhibitioning at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia on aquatic and marine organisms. Her areas of interest are ethnobotanical medicine, the application of scientific drawing to teaching the life sciences and medicine, creativity and cognition, the concept and application of biophilia to teaching. Ms. Babaian is currently enrolled in a graduate biology class to keep herself up-to-date.
Dr. Paul Lyons
Paul Lyons, MD is Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Temple University School of Medicine where he serves a variety of educational and mentoring roles for medical students and residents. He also serves as the President of Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility. Building on his personal and professional experiences Dr Lyons has developed a strong interest in the many elements that contribute to well physicians including personal assessment, self critique, professional challenge, interpersonal dialogue and social engagement.
In 2004, he began what would become an extended and very fruitful collaboration with Dr Keith Gumery, exploring the intersection of literature and medicine from the perspective of writers, patients, students and physicians. The results of this collaboration include a Narrative Medicine elective for 1st/2nd year medical students, a clinically related elective for 4th year medical students, a reflective writing exercise for graduating medical students, a writing intensive course for Temple undergraduate students and a collaborative course for the undergraduate Honors program. In 2008 Dr Lyons was awarded the AMSA National Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence.
Dr. Marc Altshuler
Marc Altshuler, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Jefferson Medical College. Dr. Altshuler also serves as an Attending Physician and the Associate Resident Director for the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. In 2004 Dr. Altshuler was awarded the Jeff HOPE Achievement award for his “Outstanding Contribution to Serving the Needs of the Underserved.” Dr. Altshuler’s volunteer work continues today with his involvement in Jeff HOPE, Jefferson Medical College’s free student-run clinic serving the homeless community of Philadelphia. Dr. Altshuler’s passion for the underserved community’s health has expanded beyond the homeless population to the refugee population. Recently Dr. Altshuler started and is now serving as the Director of the Jefferson Center for Refugee Health wherein he works with refugee resettlement programs in Philadelphia to initiate health screens and provide other much-needed services for refugees in Philadelphia. Moving forward, Dr. Altshuler is interested in improving immigrant access to healthcare as well as educating the healthcare community on cultural competency
Dr. Michael Baime
Michael Baime, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, is the Director of the Penn Program for Stress Management and the Director of Mind-Body Programs for the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. The Penn mindfulness-based stress management program has enrolled more than 5,000 individuals in a structured eight-week meditation-based training course since its inception in 1992. Dr. Baime graduated from Haverford College in 1977 and from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1981. He completed post-graduate training in internal medicine at The Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia in 1984, and served an additional year as chief resident. He is currently a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Baime was the recipient of The Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. He was also awarded the Appel award for student work in psychiatry in 1981.
Under his direction, the Penn Program for Stress Management has provided training in several local and regional school districts, for both teachers and students. He has also, under the auspices of the City of Philadelphia Department of Human Services provided training for foster parents, social workers, and department staff, for all of the staff and officers of the University City Police District. He has also worked in prisons, hospitals, drug rehabilitation centers, businesses, churches, and hospices locally and nationally.
At Penn, Dr Baime teaches a mindfulness-bases stress management course, “Mind-Body Medicine and Mindfulness Meditation: Theory and Practice” to medical and nursing students, a full-time one-month meditation-based elective for medical students, "Spirituality and Medicine", a Graduate School of Education course called “Enriching our Learning Communities” offered through the Penn Literacy Network, an undergraduate Department of Psychology course, “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Meditation”, and an annual CME/CEU course for health care providers called “Healing the Heart and Mind”.
He is engaged in research on the impact of mindfulness meditation on empathy, burnout and patient care in the hospital setting, the use of meditation for the treatment of obesity, ADHD, tobacco addiction, cancer, insomnia, and multiple sclerosis, the behavioral and neural changes associated with meditation practice and a mindfulness-based training interventions and workshops for caregivers at numerous sites across the nation.
Dianne Butera, MSW
Associate Director for Student Affairs at Temple University's School of Medicine and serves as the Temple University coordinator for a Philadelphia collaborative community health internship program, Bridging the Gaps. She also is as an adjunct faculty member at Widener University’s Center for Social Work Education, teaching courses in socio-cultural issues, social policy and community development. Her experience includes facilitating community based learning experiences for doctors in training, participating in a range of grassroots collaborations; managing youth counseling services, coordinating community arts programming; and assessing “participatory action research” conducted in the Philippines and Thailand for the Canada Asia Partnership Project.
Dr. Kathleen Reeves
Kathleen Reeves, MD, is Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Temple University School of Medicine. Dr. Reeves completed her pediatric residency at University of Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital, attended medical school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and received a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in philosophy and religious studies from Juniata College in Pennsylvania. She was the first program director of the Crozer Pediatric Residency Program, where she worked for eight years. Her experience as a pediatrician has contributed to a strong commitment to community health issues. She is also dedicated to providing a comprehensive and compassionate education throughout a medical school curriculum. It is only the physicians who concentrate on their own wellness who are truly able to concentrate on the wellness of their patients.
Dr. Lucy Tuton
Lucy Wolf Tuton, PhD, is Executive Director of the Bridging the Gaps Program. BTG is a program that links the interdisciplinary training of health and social service professionals with the provision of health-related service in underserved communities. Dr. Tuton is representing the BTG Network, comprised of faculty/staff from academic health centers in Philadelphia, Erie, Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as well as in New Jersey. The BTG Network collaborates with over 100 community organizations serving vulnerable populations. Joining Dr. Tuton is an interdisciplinary group of students who have recently completed the BTG Community Health Internship Program: Katy Baker-Cohen (nursing); Megan Basham (social work); Justin Bosley (medicine); Stephanie Hoffmann (law); and, Padma Sundaram (dentistry).
At the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Dr. Tuton is Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Prevention and Population Health in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, and Director of Program Development in Community Health in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is a core faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program in both the community and leadership curricular components. Dr. Tuton is also Director of Professional Development for FOCUS on Health & Leadership for Women, a program that promotes advocacy, education, and research in women's health and supports the advancement of women in academic medicine.
Dr. Harry Morris
Harry J. Morris, DO, MPH is professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM). Dr. Morris graduated from and completed his residency in family medicine at PCOM. He practiced family medicine in rural Chester county and was a residency director in Orlando, Florida. He has been chair at PCOM since 1995.
Dr. Morris has works closely with students and residents and teaches “Primary Care Skills” to PCOM students. In addition, he directs four inner city healthcare centers which are clinical training sites for fourth year students and which provide primary care to populations with access to medical care barriers.
Dr. Francisco Laboy
Francisco Laboy III, D.O. is currently Chief Resident in Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine/ Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine at The Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Originally, from Bronx, N.Y. Dr. Laboy received his B.S. in Biology from The City College of New York, CUNY. After eight years as a fitness professional and post rehabilitation specialist, he enrolled at PCOM.
While earning his D.O. degree, he completed an additional year in OMM as an undergraduate teaching fellow. Prior to beginning his residency training, Dr. Laboy also completed a traditional osteopathic rotating internship at Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill, PA.
Dr. Lillian Cohn
Lillian E, Cohn, MD is a partner at Ninth Street Internal Medicine Associates, an independent primary care practice in Center City Philadelphia. The practice was established in 1989 and has grown from a 4 physician group to a 10 provider group which includes 2 nurse practitioners, and provides care to approximately 25,000 patients. It has been recognized as a Patient Centered Medical Home and has received NCQA level III certification. The office has been fully electronic since 2006, and has a web enabled EMR.
Dr. Cohn completed her BA in Psychology at SUNY Buffalo in 1972, and her MD at Boston University School of Medicine in 1978. She did her Internal Medicine internship and residency at Pennsylvania Hospital, our nation’s first hospital. In her early years in practice she ran a solo office in Internal Medicine, and was Medical Director of the Public Health Department’s City Health District #6, a clinic which serves multicultural indigent patients. She has helped grow her practice from a solo practice to a large independent single specialty physician group which has participated in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chronic Care Initiative.
Dr. Cohn is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania as well as an Adjunct Professor in Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and mentors medical students, serves as a preceptor for nurse practitioner students and medicine residents. She and her partners admit and care for patients at both Pennsylvania Hospital and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
She is the mother of four sons, and has always worked full time. She is excited about primary care and the richness of the experience it has provided her throughout her career. Her topic “A sneak peak into the life of a PCP” will be an interactive discussion and look at what’s new in primary care, what’s old in primary care, and what makes it all so exciting and special.
Dr. John Ingle
Dr. John Ingle graduated from Boston University Medical School. He is currently a PGY-4 resident in Otolaryngology at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, NM, and the Regional Vice President for New Mexico for the Committee of Interns and Residents/SEIU Healthcare.Dr. Ingle will be presenting on behalf of the Committee for Interns and Residents. The Committee of Interns and Residents was founded in 1957 and is the largest housetsaff union in the country. Residents in CIR hospitals have the ability to engage in collective bargaining, which gives physicians a voice in determining their salary, benefits, and working conditions. CIR and AMSA were at the forefront of work hours reform, eventually resulting in the 80-hour work week. Since 1997, CIR has been affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Recent CIR initiatives include health care reform, continued work with residency work hours, and patient safety.
Dr. Conrad Fischer
Conrad Fischer is currently the Associate Chief of Medicine for Educational and Academic Activities at Nassau University Medical Center on Long Island. He is an Attending Physician at the University Hospital of Brooklyn as well as at King’s County Hospital Center. In the past, Dr. Fischer was the Residency Program Director at Flushing Hospital and before that was the Residency Director at Maimonides Medical Center. Dr. Fischer completed a Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of Cornell University.
Dr. Fischer is most appropriately described as a ‘change agent’ or ‘turnaround specialist” for institutions, most especially the department of medicine. Dr. Fischer currently also serves as the Chairman of the Operations Committee for the Department of Medicine. In this capacity he oversees the smooth operation of nursing, ancillary and medical house staff in the Department of Medicine across the hospital.
In addition to his Residency and Medical School roles, Dr Fischer is a leader in medical education as both a lecturer and author. Dr. Fischer has authored ten books on medical education and study materials for students, residents and attendings in both board certification and recertification. He teaches both in live lectures and as multimedia study resources. His lecture series is screened in 160 sites in 20 countries including the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Korea and Italy.
Dr Fischer speaks regularly on medical education as a part of Grand Rounds, faculty development and both student and “resident as teacher” educational programs. He is most known for his ability to inspire and encourage the medical community to be passionate about the art of medical practice and learning. His favorite subject is providing evidence for “The Art of Engagement.” In this role, he has been a keynote speaker at the Student National Medical Association (SNMA) for over five years.
This year saw a new direction for Dr Fischer in the area of the philosophy and history of medicine. Dr Fisher is the author of the Foreword to: “The Corpus” by Hippocrates; “The Complete writings of Pasteur and Lister” and “The Evolution of Modern Medicine” By Sir William Osler. Dr. Fischer’s first medical book for the general public titled “Routine Miracles: Restoring Hope in Medicine” has just been released, which rediscovers the advances in medical practice in the past 25 years and explores the etiology of increasing physician dissatisfaction despite increasing medical abilities as a profession. Dr Fischer is currently filming a documentary film on the subject of this new book.
Dr Fischer is also an experienced lobbyist at the state and federal level. This is both for financial issues for institutions, as well as for legislative policy issues in HIV and education. As such he meets regularly at the Department of Health and is an appointee of the Governor of the State of New York.
Dr. Stephanie Ward
Dr. Stephanie H Ward, M.D., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Temple University School of Medicine, and has a secondary appointment in the Department of Public Health at Temple University. Trained as a General Internist, Dr. Ward now spends a significant portion of her clinical work, research and educational efforts focused on obesity prevention and treatment particularly among African Americans. She Co-Directs the Fresh Start to a Healthy Weight Program in Temple’s outpatient Internal Medicine Practice which is designed to promote healthy behaviors and treat adult obesity through individual medical weight management. She has presented both locally and nationally to physicians about brief counseling strategies related to nutrition and physical activity for use during office visits. Dr. Ward has also completed and published a qualitative study examining African Americans’ perceptions of obesity and physician efforts at counseling on weight loss.
Dr. Ward received a B.S. in zoology from North Carolina State University, followed by a Masters of Public Health from the George Washington University. She then received her M.D. from Jefferson Medical College, and completed residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. After joining the faculty at Temple in 2005, Dr. Ward began collaborating with colleagues in the Department of Public Health on a project designed to enhance communication regarding colorectal cancer screening in African American patients with limited literacy. With internal funding from the Department of Medicine Faculty Development Research Award, she turned her research focus towards elucidating perceptions of obesity and weight loss among African Americans. Dr. Ward hopes to use this information to enhance communication with patients regarding obesity and to develop behavioral interventions for weight loss targeted toward African Americans.
Check Back to See Our Updated List of Speakers with more pictures and biographies to come!