Sidney Kimmel Medical College - Alumni Bulletin Fall 2015

The Bulletin FA L L 2 0 1 5

at Thomas Jefferson University

Doctors 'Right-Brained' Activities Enhance Medical School Curriculum Inside:

Design Programs Cultivate Creativity in Aspiring Physicians

Join Jefferson alumni to explore, learn and experience the world!

As part of our commitment to lifelong learning, the Jefferson Office of Alumni Relations is launching a new Alumni Travel Program.

A varied itinerary of destinations has been selected for 2016 to combine educational forums with excursions to places of historical and cultural interest. These trips offer the highest-quality experience through our partnerships with experienced travel providers.

HO

LL

A

Trips for 2016 Atolls & Islands of French Polynesia March 25–April 4

ND

Waterways & Canals of Holland & Belgium April 7–15 Sorrento, Italy June 1–9 National Parks & Lodges of the Old West July 6–15

S PA

IN

Majestic Alaskan Beauty July 15–25 Spain: Barcelona & San Sebastian September 25–October 4 Captivating Mediterranean October 8–16 Peru: Machu Picchu, Cusco & the Sacred Valley of the Incas October 31–November 5 Additional information on each of these destinations is available at Advancement.Jefferson.edu/AlumniTravel.

I TA

LY

If you would like an individual trip brochure for a specific destination, or if you have questions, please contact the Office of Alumni Relations at alumni@jefferson.edu or 215-955-7750.

We hope you will take advantage of these exciting travel opportunities!

Contents Features 8 The Empathy Factor: Humanities Coursework Nurtures Emotional Resilience, Improves Patient-Doctor Communication 15 Specialized Anesthesia Services Help Patients with Rare Disorder 16 Redesigning Healthcare: SKMC Program Fosters 'Out of the Box' Approach to Medicine

Departments 2 DEAN’S COLUMN 6 FINDINGS Photoactive Dye Could Prevent Infection During Bone-Repair Surgery

22 ADVANCING JEFFERSON 25 ON CAMPUS 26 FACULTY PROFILE Jeffrey L. Benovic, PhD

28 STUDENT Profile Beverly Shin

30 ALUMNUS Profile Gerald J. Marks, MD ’49

32 CLASS NOTES 34 IN MEMORIAM 37 BY THE NUMBERS

Jefferson Alumni Bulletin Fall 2015 Volume 64, Number 2 Executive Vice President: Elizabeth A. Dale, EdD Associate Vice President, Alumni Relations: Cristina A. Geso Senior Director, Communications: Mark P. Turbiville Editor: Karen L. Brooks Design: Jefferson Creative Services

CS 15-1403

Bulletin Committee William V. Harrer, MD ’62 Chair James Harrop, MD ’95 Cynthia Hill, MD ’87 Larry Kim, MD ’91 Phillip J. Marone, MD ’57, MS ’07 Joseph Sokolowski, MD ’62

Published continuously since 1922.

Address correspondence to: Editor, Alumni Bulletin Office of Institutional Advancement Thomas Jefferson University 125 S. 9th Street, Suite 700 Philadelphia, PA 19107-4216 215-955-6890 alumni@jefferson.edu Fax: 215-503-5084 Advancement.Jefferson.edu Alumni Relations: 215-955-7750 The Jefferson community and supporters are welcome to receive the Bulletin on a regular basis; please contact the address above. Postmaster: send address changes to the address above.

ISSN-0021-5821 Copyright© Thomas Jefferson University.

All Rights Reserved.

2 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

The Dean’s Column On May 28, 2015, SKMC Dean Mark Tykocinski, MD, shared the following comments with graduates at Jefferson’s 191st commencement ceremony. His remarks appear here in lieu of his usual column.

Class of 2015: Over these four years, you have been challenged to think contextually, critically and creatively — by now, all three fully ingrained. As you head off, my comments will touch on what preserving these modes of thinking means in a digital age, probing those dimensions that are uniquely human.

The long-running science-fiction series “Doctor Who” features a species of telepathic humanoids, the Ood, who live in the distant future, circa 42nd century. These enigmatic aliens have squid-like tentacles projecting from their lower faces and are evolutionarily equipped with two brains — first, a forebrain in their heads, and second, an umbilical cord-connected hindbrain they carry in their hands. A recent Economist article cleverly saw in the Ood a metaphor for us, for humans in the digital age. We too now carry parts of our brains externally, in the form of World Wide Web-linked smartphones — supercomputers glued to the palms of our hands.

But the Ood have a third brain as well — a planetary brain, via a telepathic connection to a giant Ood Brain on their home planet. We humans too have a third planetary brain — the World Wide Web, WiFi-connected to our handhelds.

One hot topic is the web’s social effects — does it bring people together or isolate them? I pose a different question: How does this planetary brain ensnare and tunnel our thinking? Yes, incoming digital streams do feed curiosity and do spark ideas. Yet this digital input inexorably channels our thinking. We Oods, with necks craned over our exterior handheld brains and our minds plugged into the World Wide Web, are uncannily, and often unknowingly, ever more constrained in our degrees of thinking freedom.

Class of 2015, preserve your thinking freedom. Ensure that your brain-in-the-head remains dominant, unfettered. No equal status for your three brains. Contextual,

critical and creative thinking reside in your own cranium, as do the initiatives that flow from them. Be vigilant of the threat the planetary brain poses — to your analytics, your synthetics and your curiosity-driven imagination.

The planetary brain is especially tricky.

Like the Roman god Janus, it is two-faced. On one hand it has a smiling face, which enables the free-flow of intelligence on a massive scale. It retains accumulated knowledge going back centuries, a comprehensive catalogue of bewildering proportions. It creates high-dimension collaborative opportunities that accelerate and democratize discovery and mobilize awesome creative energy by interconnecting myriad imaginations.

This Janus-like brain has a menacing face as well. Remember, the third-brain telepathy of the Oods was passive — they were controlled by a higher telepathic entity.

Similarly, human hyper-connectedness renders us controllable. Free think readily succumbs to simplified group think.

The Internet universe, while arraying limitless viewpoints, paradoxically locks us into a rigid few. The planetary brain lures us toward simplified viewpoints and reductionist interpretations. Faced with an endless parade of information, our minds almost beg for an easy way out. We crave simplification. Searching the web, we often find it far simpler to co-opt existing tunnels than to dig our own — tunnels that filter out nuances and cloak alternatives.

Like carriage horses in Central Park, we are fitted with blinders — subtle blinders — in the form of search engines, anticipatory web links, personalized Internet ads, biased blogs, narcissistic tweets. We passive Oods are led through an inscrutable collage of information and misinformation toward simplistic closures.

A number of years ago, a magazine ad caught my attention: “Keep it complex, stupid.” How wise — embrace complexity, that’s the magic formula. Complexity equals non-linear thinking, a predicate for creativity.

The brain-in-the-head is uniquely suited to this kind of thinking.

The Scottish-American naturalist John Muir stated, “The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.” It

is the complexity of the forest ecosystem that fosters, and is indeed a prerequisite, for ultimate clarity. Take it all in — the squirrels clamoring up the trees, the birds chattering perched on tree branches. Be open to all worldviews, all associations. Not one tree, but the tableaux of trees, the forest tapestry.

Wander through the forest wilderness; embrace its richness and complexity. Allow yourself to be tugged by curiosity, to be diverted off the main trail, to go down the circuitous path that leads to comprehension, to a clearing in the forest.

We are accustomed to celebrating simple, elegant, beautiful explanations. But the science of complexity is on the rise. And it is by delving into the complex, by absorbing the richness of the canvas, that you will find your way back to the simple unifying concept.

So first, resist the push of the web to oversimplify. A second piece of advice: Beware of the planetary brain’s assault on the subjective — your private experience of the world; your sensations; your mental life; your inner landscape. David Gelernter, a Yale computational scientist, warns against the nightmare of roboticism, or transhumanism — the merging of men and machines predicted by Google’s Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil believes that men implanting chips in their bodies and brains, and fine-tuning their own and their children’s genetic material, is simply our unavoidable future reality.

In the face of this Googleplectic assault, Gelernter champions a new subjectivist, humanist worldview: “We need science and scholarship and art and spiritual life to be fully human ... In the roboticist future, we will become what we believe ourselves to be: dogs with iPhones. The world needs a new subjectivist humanism now.”

I might add: Defending the subjective requires vigilant filtering of the data bits trickling through your Ood plug-in to the planetary brain. While you can’t decouple from it, it is you, the master controller, who plays with planetary brain information — not the planetary brain playing with your brain. Preserving subjectivity also means preserving emotivity — that is, the uniquely human ability to see the world and connect to others on an emotional level. According

FALL 2015 3

Be open to all worldviews, all associations. Wander through the forest wilderness; embrace its richness and complexity. Allow yourself to be tugged by curiosity, to be diverted off the main trail...

4 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

to the author of a provocative new book, Sapiens, it is this ability that enabled our species to triumph over its rival human species, the Neanderthal.

So embrace complexity. Cherish subjectivity. Nurture emotivity. These uniquely human skills, which inhere in your brain-in-the-head, are your bulwark against algorithmic manipulation and group think.

They foster the freedom of thought and human judgment essential to navigate the unexpected, the counterintuitive, the shades of grey.

Trolling the scientific literature just this past year, you can find all kinds of mindbending findings that do not fit neatly into pat textbook paradigms. Our own computational biologist, Isidore Rigoutsos, rocked the small RNA field this year, discovering a vast trove of additional human microRNAs that strikingly have no counterpart in other primates, let alone in mice. Just think for a moment what this paradigm-breaker means for the established biomedical research enterprise so pinned to mouse experimental models.

Once you allow yourself to question dogma, you open yourself up to pioneer in science-fiction mode, where the possibilities are electrifying. Within reach is the potential to rewrite an entire proteome using synthetic amino acids, making organisms virus-resistant, even perhaps us humans if mankind makes it to the 42nd century of the Oods.

I’m particularly intrigued by nature’s “Faustian bargains” — a subset of counterintuitive phenomena where bad is tolerated due to associated good. Nature seems to abound with such Faustian bargains. Good in one respect, but a price to be paid.

A dramatic example: Huntington’s disease. This devastating neurological disorder is caused by a strange genetic mutation named CAG triplet-repeat expansion. This is the very same molecular mechanism that has given us our bigger brains, our neurological complexity. Too many triplet-repeats in the huntingtin gene, let’s say 40 of them, and you’re sure to come down with Huntington’s disease. But within the normal range of triplet-repeats, let’s say nine to 35 — people are healthy.

The intriguing twist is that up to that limit

of 35, more is better. More repeats mean higher intelligence and better coordination of movement and thinking. An intriguing, still speculative, thought — is Huntington’s disease the price humanity pays for being clever?

We humans purposefully seek out our own “Faustian bargains” as we determinedly look for opportunities to usurp the bad for the good. Right here at Jefferson, Matthias Schnell, director of our vaccine center, is using one pathogen to fight another. His team received national attention for its clever strategy toward an Ebola vaccine — specifically, piggy-backing Ebola antigens onto a vaccine-ready formulation of the rabies virus. A purposeful Faustian bargain: take one of nature’s bad — rabies — and subvert it for the good.

A most controversial Faustian bargain I’ve saved for last, lifting it out of the headlines — targeted genome editing.

Bacteria, including bad ones, chew up their viral enemies using enzymatic machinery that goes by the obscure name of CRISPRCas9. In a remarkable twist, scientists have subverted this bacterial immunity to create a powerful genetic engineering technology, which, coincidentally, was introduced the very year you started medical school. Using CRISPR-Cas9, we can now edit genes, inside of cells, in real time. Think of it. We have the ability to cure sickle cell anemia by editing out the sickle mutation in the marrow stem cells that generate a patient’s blood cells.

Take it a step further. One could theoretically edit out this mutation from sperm, eggs or embryos of sickle cell patients — and now, you will have eliminated this genetic defect forever from that family’s genetic lineage. What are the ethical quagmires of that? And if genome editing should be applied to correcting disease genes, would it be warranted to enhance non-disease characteristics — say, height or basal ganglia size, beauty or intelligence?

Should we take control of our genetic destiny, and if so, should there be limits?

And then how far is that from Kurzweil’s transhumanism — Googleplectic roboticizing us with implantable electronics?

Targeted gene editing — at once, a blessing and a peril for humanity — part

of the complexity that we will need to face and embrace as we move into a hyper-tech future. Dealing with grey zones and Faustian bargains requires very human judgments, facilitated by unplugging from the planetary brain and applying human judgment. The challenge in so doing is captured in paired slogans of the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, spray-painted on Paris walls at the height of the student upheavals of May 1968: “Power to the imagination” and “Everyone is condemned to be free.”

Willingness to imagine and resistance to external mind control are what power our existential freedom. They might lead us to uncomfortable places in our mental spaces, as we part paths, at some peril, with prevailing group think. An embrace of freedom fueled by imagination may come at a personal cost, and so it is in this sense that we are condemned to such freedom.

In closing, my messages to you, Class of 2015: • Decouple from the web from time to time — don’t be automatons glued to networks, Oods telepathically controlled by the giant Ood Brain of the Internet.

Resist being things in the Internet of Things.

• Think freely, untethered from electronic webs. Consciously combat digital tunneling and the de facto mind control and group think that goes with it.

• Embrace those things that make you uniquely human: complexity, subjectivity, emotivity — these are the foundations of independent thought and clear human judgment — providing you with the means to reach clearings in the forest.

• Be open to shades of grey, prefer iridescence to simple colors, embrace a kaleidoscope of prime movers and causes and possibilities.

• Value the counter-intuitive, and be prepared to make Faustian bargains as you grapple with the medical ethical dilemmas of the digital age. Only nonOods, freed from external electronic control, can guide man’s electronic and genetic evolution.

Class of 2015, Thomas Jefferson spoke of “generational revolutions” — you are living

FALL 2015 5

through one now in this third machine age of the Internet, with its existential threat of algorithmic manipulation by neural networks and advanced artificial intelligence. Times of change demand independent thinking. Be willing to frame new possibilities, new mindsets, by thinking freely.

You are the first class to graduate under the banner of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Sidney Kimmel has been a visionary — first reimagining women’s retail, then naming two cancer centers to help craft a new future for combatting cancer and now endowing a medical school to pave the way for 21st-century

paradigms in medical training, discovery and care. He epitomizes the free thinking and resistance to dogma that I’ve showcased today.

As you now take the sacred Oath of Hippocrates, hear the profession’s ancient call to service, heed its admonitions and affirm your commitment to others, in the most professional and altruistic ways. And permit yourselves to think freely, decoupled from the narrowness of group think.

We salute all those who brought you to this point in life — your parents and family who nurtured and supported your passion for service and inquiry. As you cross this stage, it is indeed the dreams of all of us

here today that accompany you. You enter a long tradition that dates from Hippocrates, to McClellan and Gross, through Gibbon and now to you. It is your turn to join, to continue and to enhance Jefferson’s legacy of service, and to perpetuate that desire to make a difference that brought you to Jefferson four years ago.

Mark L. Tykocinski, MD Provost, Thomas Jefferson University Anthony F. and Gertrude M. DePalma Dean, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

66 Sidney Sidney Kimmel Kimmel Medical Medical College College Alumni Alumni Bulletin Bulletin

Findings Photoactive Dye Could Prevent Infection During Bone-Repair Surgery A team at Jefferson has discovered that a green dye that sticks to bone grafts becomes antimicrobial with the flick of a light switch and could help reduce the risk of infections during bonereconstruction surgeries.

When performing joint replacement or bone reconstructive surgeries for issues such as gunshot wounds or damage related to tumor removal, physicians follow extensive procedures to sterilize all bone fragments used. Despite these efforts, the rate of resulting infection remains around 5 percent and can reach 11 percent or even higher — and serious infections can require further surgery and threaten lives.

Jefferson researchers have demonstrated that an antimicrobial dye activated by light adheres to bone to prevent bacteria from growing on bone fragments used in reconstructive surgery and remove any bacteria that has already attached, thereby sterilizing the bone for surgery. The study was published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research.

“We used a class of chemicals called porphyrins that are tolerated very well by the body in the dark and appear to have excellent antimicrobial properties in the presence of light,” says Noreen Hickok, PhD, associate professor of

orthopaedic surgery. “These properties allow sterilization during surgical procedures, which occur in bright light.”

Surgeons often use bone chips or bone powder as a sort of putty during bone reconstruction to help areas of bone re-grow. Also, larger pieces of bone are used when a tumor or accident requires replacement of a large segment of bone. These bone materials can come from the patient or a donor and typically are sterilized with a series of methods including various detergents and high-pressure steam — but bacteria can still creep in once the material is handled again. “Bacteria love to hide and grow in the nooks and crannies of porous bone and bone fragments — it’s one of the most perfect surfaces for bacterial growth,” Hickok says.

The researchers took bone chips and treated them with a green dye called TAPP — which stands for 5,10,15,20-tetrakis-(4-aminophenyl)porphyrin. They showed that in the dark, TAPP is stable. But when the lights go on, TAPP becomes active, producing chemicals called reactive oxygen species, or ROS, that rapidly kill the bacteria. Hickok and colleagues first treated the bone putty with TAPP and then exposed those fragments to bacteria. As long as the lights were on,

bacteria were unable to attach and grow on the surface of the bone.

The researchers then showed that TAPP not only prevents bacterial growth but can also break up bacterial slime, or biofilms, already growing on the bone fragments. They demonstrated this by first allowing bacteria to colonize the bone and then treating with TAPP. Finally, they showed that the dye binds tightly to the bone without any trace of leaching out into surrounding fluid, suggesting that it could be safe and nontoxic to normal tissue once implanted.

In theory, says Hickok, the TAPP dye could be added to the currently used protocols for sterilizing the bone prior to surgery. “Sterilization could then occur in two steps — one that was achieved with a targeted illumination, and the other would be the continuation of the activation in the bright lights of the surgical suite so that the sterilizing effects of the ROS release could continue well into surgery and implantation,” she says. “We need to continue testing in conditions that more closely resemble the surgical suite, but we think that this could offer a more effective method to help improve patient outcomes by reducing infection rates.”

FALL 2015 7

A closer look at how the TAPP dye is stable in the absence of light.

Once light is present, the TAPP dye becomes activated and starts to produce a chemical called reactive oxygen species (ROS).

Once ROS is produced by the activated TAPP dye, it quickly begins to attack and kill nearby bacteria.

Sidney Kimmel Kimmel Medical Medical College College Alumni Alumni Bulletin Bulletin 88 Sidney

Portrait study from a live model, drawn by an SKMC student.

The notes and lines on the right represent warm-up exercises in closely observing the model's face.

Courtesy of Julia Clift.

SPRING FALL 2015 9

A new humanities requirement for first-year medical students draws on theater, drawing, poetry and dance to nurture emotional resilience and better doctor-patient communication.

By Sari Harrar

10 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Story Summary • Research, including studies that use the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, documents a significant decline in empathy during the third year of medical school. Other studies point to rising rates of physician and medical-student burnout.

• Starting in the 2014-15 academic year, first-year medical students must fulfill a humanities requirement by choosing from a wide variety of arts-related classes taught on- and off-campus. Salvatore Mangione, MD, an associate professor of medicine at SKMC and specialist in pulmonary medicine, led the initiative as a way to foster empathy.

• Early research suggests exposure to the arts, such as theater and reflective writing, can help support and increase empathy in medical students.

Mangione will review the results of student surveys taken before and after the classes to document benefits.

I

n a light-filled studio at Philadelphia’s Fleisher Art Memorial, Sidney Kimmel Medical College students lean over their drawing pads, pencils sketching a male model in the center of the room. “Slow down,” suggests instructor Julia Clift.

“Look deeply. Let your eyes travel over every edge of the form.”

Around campus and across Philadelphia, first-year SKMC students will shut their textbooks for a few hours each week this year and immerse themselves in the arts. They’ll salsa-dance in West Philadelphia. Write and act in plays under the direction of Philadelphia’s acclaimed Lantern Theater Company.

Craft verse with poet and professor of psychiatry Salman Akhtar, MD, and create personal essays with an accomplished medical writer. They’ll delve into mindfulness meditation, sketch bones and human figures — and more.

At a time when research is documenting a rise in burnout among healthcare providers and a faltering of medical students’ capacity to connect compassionately with

patients, these decidedly right-brained activities can help foster empathy and emotional resilience, says Salvatore Mangione, MD, an associate professor of medicine and specialist in pulmonary medicine, who has led the initiative to make the humanities part of the curriculum at SKMC. “When we send medical students to draw or write plays, they’re learning to become better physicians — not the next Shakespeare or Michelangelo,” Mangione notes. “The humanities offer a different way of thinking, seeing, feeling and engaging with the world. They teach us what it means to be fully human. For medical students, the goal is to nurture important traits so often lamented as absent from medicine today.”

The humanities program became a requirement during the 2014-15 academic year, with first-year students expected to add four arts-related credits of their choosing to schedules already jam-packed with classes in anatomy, physiology, neuroscience, biochemistry and clinical medicine. Mangione’s experiment has earned applause from students, faculty and administrators.

Now, the medical college plans to offer an expanded four-year Humanities Track as part of its “College within a College” program as early as the 2016-17 academic year, according to Steven Herrine, MD, vice dean for academic affairs/undergraduate medical education and a professor of medicine at SKMC. Herrine says more aspects of humanities training will be “baked into” the regular medical school curriculum in future years, such as by continuing a three-session anatomical drawing class to sharpen future physicians’ ability to look closely and notice important details.

The program can have profound benefits, Herrine notes. “The arts exist to deal with very intense and difficult-to-fathom human realities,” he says. “A humanities background allows doctors to accept ambiguity, improve observation skills, hone communication skills and develop an understanding of different cultures. It’s an important adjunct to the sciences that inform clinical care and research. The ultimate goal is better patient care.”

Students agree. In an evaluation of the theater program, one sent this encouraging note to Mangione: “We developed an emotional intimacy that would never have happened in the usual reserved professional medical environment. From hearing the stories and writings of fellow participants, I could feel my level of compassion growing, not only for others, but for myself as well.”

Closing the Empathy Gap Mangione’s crowded yet comfortable office in the university’s Dorrance H. Hamilton Building attests to his own commitment to science, art, relationships — and his Italian roots. His shelves tell stories. There’s a plastic model of the human lungs. A collection of medieval action figures. A clock decorated

FALL 2015 11

Student Mike Natter, who participated in the drawing class at Fleisher Art Memorial, is a prolific artist who uses illustrations to help himself retain information from lectures. Natter, who has type 1 diabetes, has created an educational comic book for children who receive the same diagnosis to help them understand their disease and its management.

with Rembrandt’s face. An espresso machine and miniature Vespa motorbike. Travel mementos. A model of the London double-decker bus Mangione used to bring asthma education to Philadelphia schoolchildren more than a decade ago. A photo of his 2006 senior portrait presentation picture — the first to show an SKMC professor not wearing a white coat. (“I never wear one. They create distance,” explains Mangione, who showed up in a sweater for sittings with painter Dean Larson.) And a reproduction of British artist Sir Luke Fildes’ iconic 1887 painting The Doctor, depicting a physician at the bedside of a sleeping child.

“That’s the doctor we all want caring for us,” Mangione says. “Intuitive, empathetic, wise. Absolutely, we need science and research and high-tech tests and treatments.

But along the way, we’ve lost this. We’ve lost empathy.”

Empathy, in the context of healthcare, is not easy to define. Mangione calls it “the ability to metabolize pain and suffering, so that a physician can be present with his or her patients.” SKMC researchers who developed the widely used Jefferson Scale of Empathy (Mangione was among them) define it as “an understanding of patients’ experiences, concerns and perspectives combined with a capacity to communicate this understanding. An intention to help by preventing and alleviating pain and suffering is an additional feature of empathy in the context of patient care.”

It’s the skill students will need in every interaction with patients, and their loved ones, throughout their medical careers.

But too often this skill (experts say it can be learned) dwindles before medical school ends. In a 2009 study of 229

“ The humanities offer a different way of thinking, seeing, feeling and engaging with the world. They teach us what it means to be fully human. For medical students, the goal is to nurture important traits so often lamented as absent from medicine today.”

— Salvatore Mangione, MD

12 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Jefferson medical students published in the journal Academic Medicine, a team led by Mohammadreza Hojat, PhD, research professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, found a “significant decline in empathy” during the third year of medical school. A crushing litany of factors explains the drop, the team wrote, including time pressures, academic demands, an “overreliance on computer-based diagnostic and therapeutic technology,” a “belief that a controlled clinical trial is the royal road to advances in medicine,” overly demanding patients, a lack of appreciation, malpractice issues and restrictions on caregivers’ autonomy imposed by institutions and insurance regulations.

To Mangione, whose childhood in Italy “had beauty, culture and art around every corner,” the antidote was obvious: Bring back the humanities. “Before 1910, medical education in the U.S. was inspired by the Franco-English model, with a basis in the humanities for most students. The Flexner Report of 1910 moved the curriculum to a German model, with an emphasis on the lab, the white coat, the supremacy of science.”

But can attending a drawing class or writing a play overcome the pressures that squash empathy? Research — and SKMC students — say yes.

The Lantern Project On Sunday nights during the 2014-15 academic year, medical student Yasmine Koukaz became a playwright and an actor.

The Lantern Project, a collaboration between the university and the Lantern Theater with funding from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession, was one way first-year students could fulfill their new humanities requirement — and it was open to the rest of the university community, too. The 15-week course met for two and a half hours a week and drew students, graduates and practicing physicians. Twenty-seven people participated, creating plays that tackle a wide variety of subjects. In one, a cadaver chats with “Death” about donating his body to science while students struggle with dissection.

A physician wonders whether to disclose personal information about a deceased patient to the family. A new doctor

2

1

discovers that one ill patient’s care is much messier than expected.

“I had no background in drama, but I wrote a play about a unicorn that was really about my own experiences in medical school — and it resonated with others in the group,” says Koukaz. “It was an outlet that helped relieve stress.”

The newly minted theater students performed classic acting exercises, including writing a monologue from the point of view of a person with whom they strongly disagree. “In theater you have to embrace people you don’t like and don’t think you can understand,” notes project co-leader Kittson O’Neill, an actor and dramaturg at the Lantern. “Otherwise no one could play Shakespeare’s Richard the Third! It’s a valuable skill, particularly for healthcare providers, to stop and try to see the world from the perspective of someone very much unlike yourself.”

Koukaz is applying the lesson in her own life. “The Lantern Project has allowed me to see people much more clearly as three-dimensional human beings,” she says. You’re put into the mind of someone else. You learn how to do that more fully. I get a completely different understanding now that I think will help me when I treat patients.”

3 These images are from drawing classes at Fleisher Art Memorial during winter 2015. Both a basic and a level-two class were specifically designed for SKMC students.

1.) Study of a human skull from two angles.

2.) D rawing of an individual with muscular dystrophy. During the class, students drew from two photographs of individual faces. Students were told that each individual had a medical condition but not what the condition was. At the end of class, the conditions were revealed, and students discussed what they observed in the faces through the process of drawing.

3.) Learning to see negative and positive shapes.

Students drew these images from photographs.

FALL 2015 13

A Look at the Jefferson Scale of Empathy Widely used by researchers, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy was developed by Mohammadreza Hojat, PhD, and his colleagues in SKMC’s Center for Research in Medical Education and Health Care to provide a psychometrically sound tool for measuring empathy in physicians, residents and medical students as well as in other healthcare professionals and students. It’s a 20-question survey that than can be completed in less than 10 minutes and focuses on three key components of empathy: seeing things from the patient’s perspective, compassionate care and the ability to step into the patient’s shoes.

The scale has been translated into 47 languages and used in more than 70 countries. More than 180 studies in which the scale has been used to provide support for psychometrics, to assess professional development of clinicians-in-training and in-practice and to examine group differences have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

These sample items from the scale measure empathy’s three components. Respondents indicate how much they agree or disagree with a statement using a 7-point scale — with “7” indicating “Strongly Agree” down to “1” for “Strongly Disagree.”

1. “Physicians’ understanding of the emotional status of their patients, as well as that of their families, is one important component of the physician-patient relationship.”

2. “ Attention to patients’ emotions is not important in history taking.”

3. “Because people are different, it is difficult to see things from patients’ perspectives.”

“Empirical findings — that empathy (measured by the Jefferson Scale of Empathy) tends to erode as students progress through medical school; that scores on the scale are significantly associated with assessments of clinical competence in medical school; and that physicians’ higher empathy scores can significantly predict more optimal patient outcomes in diabetic patients — suggest that empathy should be considered as an important component of overall physician competence,” Hojat says.

“It’s vital to assess and enhance empathy as part of the professional development of physicians-in-training and in-practice.”

Class members opened up about a wide range of experiences, including one long-established physician’s story of a medical mistake rarely shared with others, notes co-leader Craig Getting, the Lantern’s artistic and administrative associate. “Students also learned about effective story-telling,” he notes. “That can be useful when a doctor sits down with a patient and has to convey a treatment plan.”

Last May, several Lantern Project plays were presented on Jefferson’s campus in a reading by Lantern Theater actors and SKMC students. One, by student Kathryn Linder, dealt with a physician’s dilemma: Ask for help and risk looking weak or remain silent. “… you can keep tricking yourself into thinking you’re strong. That’s true — you’re very strong. You’re beautiful and fierce. But no one is strong forever, no one can be,” a colleague says in the play.

Linder told a reporter for Philadelphia radio station WHYY’s “The Pulse” that the project opened up an honest conversation. “We talked about faith in medicine in one person's story, we talked about loss, really nothing was off the table,” she said. “At least so far in first-year curriculum, we really don't have a platform for that, there's no avenue for that.”

Will the project preserve or enhance empathy? Participants took the empathyscale survey before and after; Mangione is analyzing the results. Research conducted at Virginia Commonwealth University suggests theater holds real benefits for physicians-in-training. In a 2007 study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, a theater program significantly increased measures of clinical empathy in internal medicine residents. As Mangione puts it, “theater is the ultimate laboratory for experiencing the human condition, building empathy, becoming comfortable with the gray areas of life.”

Deanna Nobleza, MD, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and director of student personal counseling at Jefferson says it can help. She attended Lantern Project sessions to provide support. “This project has so

14 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

The Power of Reflective Writing Jennifer Fisher Wilson, a former medical and science writer for the Annals of Internal Medicine, directs the Writing Center at Jefferson’s Center for Teaching and Learning. She also taught the humanities program’s reflective writing classes, for which students met every six to eight weeks to do what Wilson calls “journal writing with a purpose.”

Reflective writing is a “brain dump,” she says, in which you “write about a personal experience that really matters to you.” Early in their first year, many students chose to write about the dissection of their cadaver — “in essence, their first patient,” Wilson notes. The process is cathartic; in the general population, research shows it can relieve depression and even improved asthma and rheumatoid arthritis symptoms in one study.

For medical students, it may restore empathy. When University of British Columbia researchers reviewed the research on the topic recently, they found “a significant change in student empathy was observed in 100 percent of the studies” and that “reflective writing should be considered in any medical curriculum.”

Says Wilson, “Medicine can be such a grueling career in the long haul. Doctors who practice writing throughout their careers are less likely to burn out. It can be a great tool for gaining perspective.”

much potential for creating more empathetic doctor-patient relationships as well as more empathetic doctor-doctor peer relationships,” Nobleza says. “It could also help future doctors deal with a phenomenon called the ‘Second Victim’ — when a healthcare practitioner experiences an emotional impact following an adverse event with a patient. I think one of the biggest hurdles for medical culture is finding a way for physicians to increase empathy with each other.”

SKMC Dean Mark Tykocinski, MD, views this from an even broader perspective: “At graduation in May, I appealed to our students to cherish that which is most human, as they march forward in this digital age — with complexity, subjectivity and emotivity front-and-center. By increasing humanities immersion, we are cultivating these cornerstone human dimensions, in deliberate fashion.”

Drawing from Life

Jefferson hosted a Reader’s Theater performance May 3 featuring original short plays written by students and faculty. Photos by Roger Barone.

1.) Professional actors perform onstage.

2.) O ne of the plays was “Something Else about Khalil,” written by John M. Spandorfer, MD, the Roger B. Daniels Associate Dean of Professionalism in Medicine at SKMC. 3.) Salvatore Mangione, MD, left, with participants in Jefferson’s collaborative program with the Lantern Theater Company of Philadelphia.

The ability to look closely and fearlessly can help a physician make a diagnosis or intuit a patient’s emotional state, Mangione notes. So drawing classes became a part of the humanities curriculum — and a feature of anatomy classes, too. “Students sketched from bones for that one,” explains Clift, the Fleisher Art Memorial instructor, “while for drawing classes we often worked from the human form, with live models. Being able to really see people, their mood, how they’re feeling is valuable for artists and doctors. For one class, I asked the students to just look at the model for six minutes without sketching. It was an intense experience.”

Mike Natter, a second-year student from New York City, signed up for art class as a continuation of a pilot program begun during the 2013-14 academic year.

“Being able to observe closely is an important skill,” says Natter, who sketches his class notes instead of simply writing it all down in words. His work drew a national audience when the website BuzzFeed featured his clever cartoons in the spring of 2015. “You pick up subtle clues about a person,” Natter says. “And there’s something else. Drawing calms me down. You need a little downtime in medical school, to really think about things and see the connections. It’s not a stretch to say it makes me more human.” n

FALL 2015 15

Lindsay Ruiz, 22, with Zvi Grunwald, MD. Ruiz, who lives in a small town in New York, was diagnosed with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva a decade ago and came to Jefferson in June when physicians at her community hospital feared she needed surgery they did not have the expertise to perform. A multidisciplinary Jefferson team including general surgeons, neurological surgeons, gynecologists and radiologists managed her medically, averted surgery and discharged her the next morning.

“It was a relief to know someone as wonderful as Dr. Grunwald was there to check up on me while I was in the hospital,” Ruiz says.

Specialized Anesthesia Services Help Patients with Rare Disorder Patients will often travel far and wide to obtain care from renowned experts in specialties across the board: oncology, cardiology, neurology, surgery. Rarely, however, does a hospital become a destination because of its distinct anesthesia services.

Jefferson is one exception to that rule.

Thanks to the leadership of an anesthesiologist and multidisciplinary support team with expertise in the management of patients with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), a rare genetic disease of the connective tissue, Jefferson draws patients from around the world.

FOP, which occurs in approximately one of every 2 million people, causes soft tissues to transform into bone that grows abnormally in muscles, tendons and ligaments, forming bridges across joints and restricting movement — if not rendering it impossible. As the condition frequently affects the jaw, administering general anesthesia to these patients proves difficult.

“It is common during anesthesia to insert a breathing tube through the mouth to safely provide oxygen and control breathing. How do you accomplish this with patients who cannot open their mouths?” says Zvi Grunwald, MD, the James D. Wentzler, MD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and the world’s foremost expert in caring for FOP patients who require anesthesia.

Previously a faculty member at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Grunwald cared for children with various congenital anomalies and disorders. When he encountered patients with FOP, he became fascinated by the debilitating condition and began exploring and developing best practices for managing their anesthesia care, which usually involves nasal fiber-optic intubation since the oral cavity may not be accessible.

FOP creates hurdles in many treatment areas, not just anesthesia. The condition affects patients’ lives on many levels, so “managing them as a whole is a challenge. Ambulation, personal care and positioning are a few of the issues that must be addressed during the perioperative period. There is a need to take very special care at every step,” Grunwald says.

“At Jefferson, we have assembled a team of experts who join together to provide a continuum of care for these unique patients from admission through discharge.”

Patients with FOP have come to Jefferson from as far as South America, Europe and Asia. Grunwald also leads a team that has traveled outside the United States to treat patients on four continents. In 2008, they cared for an individual at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel, where Grunwald received his medical degree 33 years ago. “We successfully treated the patient and also taught the local team our methods in case other patients would need it,” he says.

— Karen L. Brooks

16 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Redesigning

HealthCare SKMC Program Fosters 'Out-of-the-Box' Approach to Medicine

By Sari Harrar

Story Summary • Jefferson has launched three “design thinking” initiatives aimed at introducing this creative problem-solving method to medical students, residents and faculty.

• Design thinking involves understanding a problem from the inside out, testing solutions in realworld situations and collaborating across disciplines. Proponents say it can help transform healthcare.

• In 2014–15, Jefferson launched the nation’s first four-year design program for medical students — the College within a College Design Track. The university also opened a design hub, MEDstudio@JEFF, and started the Innovation & Design Application (IDeA) Program @Sidney Kimmel Medical College, which offers early admission assurance to qualified Princeton University undergraduates pursuing fields of study not traditionally tied to medicine.

The average wait time in an American emergency room is a frustrating — and often scary — four and a half hours.

But Ludwig Koeneke-Hernandez, a Sidney Kimmel Medical College student and member of the college’s first-in-thenation, four-year Design Track program, has an app for that.

“I’ve always dreamed of inventing something that would make things better for people,” says Koeneke-Hernandez.

“When I heard about the ‘College within a College’ [CwiC] design program here, I dove in. I was looking for a place where I could tackle problems in a creative, unconventional way. I found it.”

The Design Track launched in February 2015 with 15 first-year students. The focus: applying design thinking — a “human-centered” method of problem-solving that’s as creative as it is practical— to medicine. “It’s like majoring in medicine and minoring in design,” explains CwiC-Design co-director Bon S. Ku, MD, associate professor in SKMC’s Department of Emergency Medicine. “Students will make medical devices and redesign healthcare systems, services and spaces.

They’ll look for fixes in fresh, new ways that focus on patients’ real needs.

To our knowledge, we’re the first medical school in the U.S. with a cohesive design curriculum that spans all four years of a student’s training.”

The program is one of three new Jefferson initiatives aimed at promoting design’s “out-of-the-box” point of view, moving the university to the leading edge as a growing number of medical schools, major medical centers and feisty start-ups explore the intersection of design and medicine in search of healthcare advances. The effort also includes: • MEDstudio@JEFF, which began in mid-2014 with a series of provocative lectures and workshops featuring experts in wearable technology, architecture and virtual healthcare.

“Great ideas come from collaborations between experts from fields that may seem totally unrelated — like medicine and architecture or textile design or even gardening,” says MEDstudio founder and director Peter Lloyd Jones, PhD, who is planning hands-on design workshops as well as thoughtprovoking talks for students and faculty this year and beyond. “Radical collaboration holds real promise for rapid advancement and change.”

FALL 2015 17

• The Innovation & Design Application (IDeA) Program @ Sidney Kimmel Medical College, which offers early assurance of admission to SKMC for qualified Princeton University undergraduates who are pursuing non-traditional “pre-med” majors.

The first IDeA scholars, from Princeton’s sophomore class, were selected in March 2015 and will begin medical school with an eight-week immersion in summer 2017. “We want to attract creative, ‘right-brained’ thinkers and encourage them to pursue intellectual interests such as engineering, architecture, computer science, design and the humanities as undergraduates,” notes Ku, who also directs IDeA. “These students can lead the way in problem-solving in healthcare for the 21st century. We want them to come to Jefferson.”

(Read more about IDeA on page 21.)

The ferment around “medicine + design” at Jefferson traces to SKMC Dean Mark Tykocinski, MD. As he frames it: “Cross-cutting knowledge domains and higher-order thinking skills will be what distinguishes the physician of the 21st century. Design thinking is one of those foundational elements that offer a route for purposefully cultivating creativity. Our unique CwiC-Design, IDeA and MEDstudio programs are vehicles to this end.”

A Lightbulb Moment For Design Track students, the city is their classroom. Last spring, the group met inside Jefferson’s bustling Center-City Philadelphia emergency department at the corner of 10th and Sansom streets for a workshop. “The ER is the front line of our healthcare system,” notes Design Track co-director Dimitrios Papanagnou, MD, vice chair

Genevieve Dion, director of the Shima Seiki Haute Laboratory at the ExCITe Center of Drexel University, demonstrates to SKMC Dean Mark Tykocinski a lightweight prototype glove called “Exoskin” — a softwarecontrolled, rapidly prototyped wearable technology that allows therapists and patients alike to control hand movement in a comfortable manner for rehabilitation purposes, including for issues arising from neurological damage. This type of project, which will be clinically tested in part as a collaboration between MEDstudio and Drexel’s student co-op program, is possible through the fusion of multiple fields including industrial and fashion design.

18 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Think Like a Designer Design thinking solves problems by focusing on people — their needs and their responses to potential solutions.

Here’s how the process works: Step 1: Empathize. The centerpiece of design thinking, empathy in this context means deeply understanding the problem at hand from the perspective of the people experiencing it. It’s also about understanding them in a broader, deeper way — their physical and emotional needs, values and habits. “In healthcare, design thinking isn’t patient-centered, it’s human-centered,” says Design Track co-director Dimitrios Papanagnou, MD. “We want to look at the whole person in order to find better solutions."

Step 2: Define. Outline the problem, based on knowledge from step 1.

Step 3: Ideate. Generate ideas, thinking broadly about potential solutions. The goal: Move beyond obvious answers to find unexpected and creative possibilities.

Step 4: Prototype. Build a quick mock-up of one or more promising solutions. It may just be a picture or a rough approximation of a device. The objective: Make something quickly that users can try out.

Step 5: Test. Have users try out one or more prototypes. Use their feedback to generate more ideas and prototypes to test. The process may repeat several times until a viable solution emerges.

for education, emergency medicine, and assistant dean for faculty development.

“We asked the class to talk with patients and staff, identify a challenge and propose a creative solution.”

A light bulb switched on for Koeneke-Hernandez.

“The pattern I saw in the ER is that patients can wait for hours, without knowing when they’ll be seen,” he says.

“Frustration, fear and worry build.

Almost nobody in the waiting room understands how triage decisions are

made. For ER staff, the tension can be a real source of concern. I thought, what if there were a free smartphone app that would show ER patients their estimated wait time and explain the process?”

He’s now working with the university’s Innovation Pillar team to develop the app for possible release.

That, Ku says, is exactly how design thinking works.

“People hear the word ‘design’ and think it’s about fashion or furniture or housewares. It’s really a way of

seeing the world based on empathy, creativity and practicality,” he says.

“Ludwig’s app is a great example of how even first-year medical students are creative problem solvers, when given the opportunity. There’s not much room for that in the conventional medical school curriculum.”

Design thinking is a specific process, a multi-step methodology that begins with deeply understanding a problem from the user’s perspective, Ku says. “In the second step, you use that information

FALL 2015 19

Friends of the Railpark (FOTR) directors Michael Garden and Liz Maillie take MEDstudio@ JEFF participants and collaborators on a tour of the abandoned Reading Railroad in North Philadelphia. If fully realized, this preliminary alliance between FOTR and MEDstudio will lead to Jefferson playing a vital role in the design of a unique three-mile elevated and subterranean park that will eventually weave its way through Philadelphia.

to brainstorm solutions. Finally, you implement the solution. There’s plenty of tweaking, collaborating, gathering new information from the people affected by the issue, striking out in new directions if one idea fails. You’re constantly testing, changing, collaborating and improving to find a solution that truly works for people.”

Hence the design world’s ubiquitous catch-phrase, “Fail Faster.”

“It’s about being creative and not attached to preconceptions,”

Papanagnou says. “This can be uncomfortable for medical students, who’ve been high-achievers taught not to fail since high school. We want to foster a new kind of healthcare provider — someone who’s ready and able to work with patients and colleagues to find real solutions.”

Extreme Collaboration Across the nation, medical institutions and innovative businesses are leaping into design thinking. The University of

20 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Texas at Austin will open its Design Institute for Health in 2016. Design workshops have cropped up at the University of Utah, the University of Michigan and the University of California San Francisco (among others); a North Carolina healthcare start-up called Smashing Boxes recently held design workshops for students from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Innovation teams at Tufts University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCSF and other schools are melding expertise in engineering, research, clinical medicine and other fields to redesign clinical trials, develop devices to combat global diseases and more.

It’s all about breaking down walls, sharing ideas and creating new languages. MEDstudio founder Jones has firsthand experience in this world.

Extreme collaborations furthered the work of architects and biomedical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, where beginning in 2006, he co-directed a multi-disciplinary research unit called LabStudio with experimental architect Jenny Sabin (LabStudio was launched under the

auspices of Dean Tykocinski, then chairman of Penn's Department of Pathology, of which Jones was a member). One of the many exciting outcomes that emerged from unlikely LabStudio pair-ups: Measurement systems used by digital architects helped researchers like Jones, then an associate tenured professor of pathology, track the three-dimensional movement of breast-cancer cell walls in exquisite detail. “Suddenly, we could document changes that were difficult to track and record before,” he says.

“We found that identical-looking breast cancer cells moved in unique ways. It was very exciting.”

In the spirit of extreme collaboration, MEDstudio@JEFF has hosted lectures by healthcare visionaries including Jay Parkinson, MD, founder of the virtual medical practice Sherpaa.com, and by textile designer Genevieve Dion, director of the Shima Seiki Haute Technology Laboratory at Drexel University — a high-tech knitting center.

In collaboration with Drexel ob/gyn researchers, Dion has created a belly band for pregnant women that tracks uterine contractions and fetal heart rate

in real time — knitted with electrically conductive thread.

“What I know from LabStudio is that developing a design mindset can take time. People know it’s powerful stuff that can change the world. Seeing the possibilities in collaboration, learning the process are exciting. That’s why it’s great we have the four-year CwiC-Design Track and why it’s great that we can draw on amazing talent from universities and firms throughout Philadelphia,” Jones says.

In summer 2015, Verena PaepckeHjeltness, assistant professor in Drexel’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, presented a MEDstudio workshop for emergency medicine residents focused on solving real-world healthcare challenges, including how architectural context may be re-designed in a way that is beneficial for staff and patients alike. PaepckeHjeltness, an industrial designer who will become MEDstudio’s first Designer in Residence, says she planned to introduce the use of not just deductive and inductive reasoning but also “adductive logic.” “This is geared toward finding newness through asking ‘what if…’ questions,” she explains.

SKMC students attend design workshops at Philadelphia University, just one of Jefferson’s many partners. During a workshop in April, participants assessed the pros and cons of standard emergency-room equipment and presented ideas on improving the equipment’s design. Here, Menachem Yondorf and Salam Peter Beah examine an asthma meter, and Kristen Adorno and Alison Grady evaluate a neck brace. Photos by Bill Cain.

FALL 2015 21

Medical Students as Designers On a warm April evening, Design Track students convened in an industrial design lab at Philadelphia University for a workshop on designing medical devices. In other parts of the building, machinery hummed in wood-working, model-making and weaving studios.

Meanwhile Michael Leonard, dean of Philadelphia University’s School of Engineering and Design, discussed his experiences designing a home cholesterol test for a client that went through dozens, if not hundreds, of design changes. “A device needs to be intuitive,” he noted. “It’s got to be easy to use.” The following week, students tried their hand at redesigning familiar medical devices. “I want to be able to use my hands-on experience with patients to generate ideas for better devices and systems, for better health,” says student Lorenzo Albala, who already has degrees in biomedical engineering. “I’ve always looked up to people who come up with great ideas.”

Student Pavitra Krishnamani says the CwiC-Design Track has given her skills and confidence that will help her learn more from her patients. “Design is human-centered. You have to ask questions. In our very first workshop, we were on the street asking Philadelphia residents about their experiences with Jefferson’s health system. I felt some anxiety, but got over it. I’m not afraid to connect now,” she says. Krishnamani isn’t afraid of collaboration now, either: She attended an MIT healthcare “hackathon” in April 2015 where engineers, medical students and others from several institutions joined forces to quickly solve a healthcare problem. She’s now part of a team of SKMC students planning a similar event in Philadelphia.

As one of SKMC’s College within a College offerings, Design Track students attend seminars and workshops outside normal class hours for their first two years. Workshops cover everything from fixing hospital discharge problems to finding health applications for wearable technology to hacking medical devices.

They will also complete two “capstone projects” that apply their new design thinking chops in the real world. At press time, class members were considering their first big project.

Krishnamani was thinking about applying design thinking to providing mental-health services for South Philadelphia’s Bhutanese refugee community, a group she works with as a volunteer. Student Salam Peter Beah was thinking about ways to apply design thinking to urban health outreach programs, especially for blood pressure control and smoking cessation.

“Design can teach us to be leaders in the healthcare field, to work with multidisciplinary teams and to think freely,” Beah says. “Most importantly, it’s teaching me to really look at what’s going on around me.” n Jefferson is seeking scholarship support for Design Track students.

A matching opportunity made possible by the Sidney Kimmel Foundation will double the value of new endowed scholarships through June 2016; learn more on page 24.

Students Steve Selverian and Graham Hale used Lego bricks and other tools to build prototypes of “waiting room pods.” Their designs included privacy, reclining chairs, retractable ceilings and charging stations for mobile devices — features they introduced with the patient experience in mind.

What a Great IDeA! Last spring, four Princeton University sophomores found out they’ll start med school at SKMC in 2017 — without having to take all the usual pre-med requirements or studying for the grueling MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) exam. They’re the first in the new Innovation & Design Application (IDeA)@ Sidney Kimmel Medical College program. While they’ll take basic science classes as Princeton undergrads, the program frees promising students’ schedules so they can pursue interests in everything from architecture and engineering to philosophy, sociology and English, says IDeA director Bon Ku, MD. Once at SKMC, IDeA students will also join the College within a College Design Track.

“We don’t think taking an enormous science load or studying for the MCAT will make them better doctors,” Ku says. “Their time is better invested following rightbrained interests that will prepare them to be more compassionate, creative physicians and more flexible problem-solvers. We’re already hearing that the program is giving them flexibility. One IDeA student, for example, will spend his junior year at Princeton exploring links between physics and classical philosophy.”

22 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Advancing Jefferson Catherine Rommel, MD ’80 and F. Michael Rommel, MD ’81

A Tradition of Giving — to Jefferson and to Each Other Cathy (Thomas) Rommel, MD ’80, and Mike Rommel, MD ’81, were both cramming for chemistry tests at West Virginia’s Bethany College when members of their respective study groups became convinced no one was going to pass the next day’s exams. Around 2 a.m., the students closed their books and headed to a nearby hangout where Cathy and Mike began commiserating over a beer — and ended up planning a date.

More than 40 years later, the couple is still going strong.

After finishing her bachelor’s degree, Cathy enrolled at Jefferson; a year later, Mike followed. Nurturing a relationship during medical school proved challenging at times, but a shared understanding of what the other’s schedule entailed kept the two aspiring physicians in sync.

They married in 1979, shortly before Cathy graduated and went on to serve an internship at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. After Mike’s graduation in 1981, they both completed residencies at Geisinger Medical Center — Mike in urology, Cathy in ophthalmology.

The couple ultimately settled in Lancaster, Pa., and raised sons Chris and James and daughter Bethany, MD ’14 (named for her parents’ undergraduate alma mater), currently an ophthalmology resident at West Virginia University.

The family’s ties to Jefferson also include Chris’ wife, Alex Starks, MD ’14, an orthopaedic surgery resident at Virginia Commonwealth University; and Cathy’s sister Cindy McMurtry, MD ’82, a geriatrician at Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Administration Medical Center in Richmond, Va. Photo courtesy of V&V Photography.

FALL 2015 23

Regional Scholarships Aim to Connect Students and Alumni Throughout more than three decades of managing busy medical practices in addition to their “at times hectic” home life, the Rommels have made philanthropy a priority. Giving to Jefferson became an annual tradition as soon as they graduated, and over the years they have supported many university initiatives, including naming an exam room in the Dr. Robert and Dorothy Rector Clinical Skills & Simulation Center in the Dorrance H. Hamilton Building at the heart of campus.

This year, Cathy and Mike built upon their history of giving by creating the Rommel Family Scholarship Fund, which will benefit two SKMC students annually. Knowing the vast majority of today’s medical students are forced to borrow large sums of money from federal or private loan programs inspired them to step forward and help.

“The debt that students are coming out of medical school with today is just unbelievable, and we hope that if we can help relieve that debt pressure, then maybe today’s students will be able to help in the same way in the future,” Mike says.

Cathy, who attended Jefferson with scholarship support, agrees, saying she wants to make sure all medical students have the same opportunities she did.

“If future generations of physicians have huge loans to repay, they might never have the same ability to give back that we have,” she says. “We give because we can, and because it’s the right thing to do.”

— Karen L. Brooks

"People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did.

But people will never forget how you made them feel."

The quote has been attributed to several historical figures, but regardless of its origins, its message rings true for many — among them Rob Sigal, MD ’85, a plastic surgeon in Oakton, Va. “What I remember about the surgeons I met at Jefferson is how distinguished they were, how kind they were and how strongly they believed in what they were doing. I might not remember exact words they said, but I remember how I felt around them — they were an inspiration,” Sigal says.

Fond memories of his mentors have helped spur Sigal’s ongoing support of Jefferson, which in recent years took an innovative turn in the form of a new type of regional scholarship fund. The concept is simple: alumni living in the same region pool together to establish a scholarship that benefits SKMC students from their area. Contributors go beyond pledging financial support, though; they also commit to supporting recipients on a personal level.

Sigal credits his wife, Stephanie, with designing the strategy. “She’s very creative in how she thinks and got the idea that we could create a kind of advisory board for students from nearby,” he says. “Students would get more than money, and it would be symbiotic. They could ask us questions and call on us for guidance, and as a result, alumni could remain more integrated into the Jefferson experience.”

In 2011, the Sigals stepped forward to initiate the Greater Washington, D.C., Regional Scholarship Fund, which has reached its funding goal through investments from seven different alumni. Similar scholarships have since been introduced in other regions, including the states of Delaware and North Carolina.

“If this model takes off, in the future this kind of regional scholarship could help with recruiting students all over the country,” says Susan McFadden, Jefferson’s director of financial aid. “Having a network of alumni in their hometowns could be invaluable for students.”

Sigal feels involvement in initiatives like this is particularly meaningful for alumni living outside Philadelphia. “Frankly, sometimes we can feel a little removed from what’s happening on campus, and this gives a new appreciation.”

He hopes to see more graduates collaborating to support Jefferson and its students. “I personally like this whole idea of a mentorship group, and that’s our way of going about it. But I’m sure with the creativity that exists in the Jefferson alumni community, other solutions to helping Jefferson will arise as more people consider different possibilities for giving back.”

For information about regional scholarships, contact Stephen Smith at 215-955-6456 or stephen.smith @jefferson.edu.

24 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Gratuitous Students A message from Elizabeth Dale Dear Jefferson Alumni: The 1824 charter for our medical college states that “10 indigent young men of talents … shall be annually received into the medical school — receive its instructions and be entitled to its honours without any charge.”

In those days, 10 students amounted to nearly half the class, if not more. Later, the 1832 Annual Announcement of Lectures by the Trustees and Professors continued to express concern about the importance of financial aid.

Some students, it noted, “having commenced the study of medicine, are, from the misfortunes of their families and their restricted pecuniary means, unable to purchase the necessary tickets to enable them to acquire a thorough knowledge of their profession and to graduate.” The students were called “gratuitous students,” those who received a Jefferson education — “a thorough knowledge of their profession” — through the graciousness and generosity of others.

From its founding, our medical college has recognized the need for financial assistance to students “of talents.” That philanthropic tradition has carried on to this day, especially through the gift of endowed scholarships.

The importance of scholarships cannot be overstated — for Jefferson, for our students and for the well-being of our society.

Our medical college is one of the oldest in the nation, with a long and distinguished legacy of educating pioneers in patient care and pathbreakers in biomedical research. Scholarships provide much-needed resources to students who aspire to be healers and enable Jefferson to prepare future generations of physicians unencumbered by the burden of excessive debt, hence free to pursue their dreams.

They also help us attract bright, diverse and engaged students who enrich the educational experience for their classmates.

Alumni of Sidney Kimmel Medical College have long given back by endowing scholarships so that new generations can benefit, as they did, from a Jefferson education. Right now is the perfect opportunity to double the impact of your generosity and broaden the reach of your vision. The Kimmel Matching Program for Endowed Scholarships will match, dollar-for-dollar, pledges of $100,000 or more to establish a new endowed scholarship fund. This special match is available until June 30, 2016, or until the pool of matching funds is depleted.

Go ahead: seize the moment; change a life; open a door. The young doctor who walks through just might discover an amazing cure or transform the future of healthcare or simply be a terrific physician “of talents.” And who knows how much suffering you will ease or

how many lives you will save just by making a scholarship gift — and by doing so, helping to make a Jefferson physician.

Elizabeth Dale, EdD Executive Vice President for Institutional Advancement

TWICE AS NICE The following benefactors, many of them alumni, have pledged a total of $1,425,000 in funding eligible for the Kimmel Endowed Scholarship Matching Program: William J. Antognoli, MD ’61: William J. Antognoli, MD ’61 Scholarship Amy Liss and Henry Liss, MD ’48 (deceased): Liss Scholarship Louis Vignati, MD ’70: Regina K. Branigan Scholarship John J. Park, MD ’94: John J. Park, MD ’94 Scholarship James D. and Mary Jo Danella: James D. and Mary Jo Danella Family Scholarship Alfred P. Spivack, MD ’54: Alfred P. Spivack, MD Scholarship Antoine and Nadia Moukarzel, Lea A. Moukarzel, MD ’14 and Jeffrey F. McMahon, MD ’14: Moukarzel Art in Medicine Scholarship Faculty and Friends: Dr. Karen Moss Glaser Memorial Scholarship (An additional donor who would like to remain anonymous has also established a new endowed scholarship.)

For more information or to establish a new scholarship using the Kimmel Match, contact Stephen Smith, Senior Vice President for Institutional Advancement, at 215-955-6456 or stephen.smith@jefferson.edu.

Did You Know? The Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Women’s Board operates the Penny Wise Thrift Shop, which has contributed nearly $4 million to support patient care programs at Jefferson. Located at 57-59 E. Lancaster Avenue in Ardmore, Pa., the shop is open Monday through Saturday. Consigned goods and donations are welcome. For more information, call 610-642-7239.

FALL 2015 25

OnCampus Knudsen Appointed SKCC Director Karen E. Knudsen, PhD, was named director of the NCI-designated Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center (SKCC) at Jefferson and chair of the Department of Cancer Biology in April 2015 after serving in those roles on an interim basis since January.

A leading expert in the molecular basis of hormone-dependent cancer development and progression, Knudsen focuses her work on developing new means to prevent or treat prostate cancer.

Her studies that identify tumor suppressor and hormone receptor alterations have uncovered new targets for treating advanced disease and have led to innovative, biomarker-driven clinical trials. She is the Hilary Koprowski Professor and Chair of the Department of Cancer Biology with joint appointments in the Departments of Urology, Radiation Oncology and Medical Oncology.

Knudsen, who joined Jefferson in 2007, previously served as the university’s first vice provost, overseeing and integrating basic and clinical research across the medical college and schools.

Dicker Named Chair-Elect Adam P. Dicker, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology, has been appointed chairelect of the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program’s Integration Panel (PCRP IP) and will become chair in February 2016. Members of the PCRP IP, which comprises some of the nation's top leaders in prostate cancer research and clinical care, serve as external advisers to recommend an appropriate vision, award mechanisms and investment strategy for the program; make funding recommendations on applications submitted; and guide program officers on policy development and other issues in prostate cancer research and clinical management.

Parks Wins AGS Award Susan Parks, MD, associate professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine and director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine & Palliative Care, received the American Geriatrics Society’s Outstanding Mid-Career Clinician Educator of the Year Award for 2015. The honor was announced at the AGS national meeting in National Harbor, Md., in May.

your profile on the leading social network for physicians

by December 4, 2015 By claiming your profile on Doximity.com you will be eligible to vote in U.S.News & World Report’s Best Hospitals Survey and impact Jefferson in a meaningful way.

As a Doximity.com member you can also: • Connect with your colleagues and alumni • Access CME resources • Learn about research within your specialty • Stay up-to-date through informative blog posts

Great for your career and a shout out for Jefferson!

Join us for the Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Annual Alumni and Faculty Winter CME! January 31 to February 4, 2016 | Hotel Madeline Telluride | Telluride, Colorado For more information, visit Advancement.Jefferson.edu/WinterCME or call the Office of Alumni Relations at 215-955-7750.

26 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Jefferson Faculty Jeffrey L. Benovic, PhD

Exploring the Basic Science of Disease Long before he had academic degree letters after his name, Jeff Benovic, PhD, says science always interested him. “My parents weren’t scientists, but as far back as third grade, I wanted a telescope and microscope — and when I got a little older, I asked for a chemistry set,” he remembers.

Benovic’s scientific interest grew unabated, taking him from a childhood in Erie, Pa., to a PhD in biochemistry at Duke University. There, he trained under Robert J. Lefkowitz, MD, recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In the Lefkowitz lab, Benovic worked on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), ultimately discovering a novel protein kinase that phosphorylates activated GPCRs. “I was fortunate to go to a lab where the amount of discovery going on in the 1980s was phenomenal. It was an incredible environment to train in and set the tone for my whole career in science,” says Benovic, the Thomas Eakins Professor and Chair of Jefferson’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Since he arrived at Jefferson in 1991, his research has included GPCR signaling and trafficking; receptor overexpression and cell migration in cancer; and the role of various proteins that regulate GPCR function.

Benovic has mentored about 40 trainees and authored or co-authored nearly 300 peer-reviewed publications and reviews.

He holds several patents and speaks often at conferences.

In recognition of his research contributions, leadership and mentorship, he was awarded the 2014 Julius Axelrod Award in Pharmacology by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Although he is credited with opening new research avenues, Benovic admits he’s less than adventurous outside his lab. “I’m very set in my ways,” he says. “If I go to a restaurant, once I figure out what I like there, when I go back, I will get that same meal every time.” By contrast, his wife, Lorie, a social worker, “always wants to try something new.” Their daughter teaches ESOL (English to Students of Other Languages) in Maryland; their son, a financial analyst, lives in Philadelphia.

What drew you into biochemistry?

I initially started in chemical engineering at Penn State as an undergraduate, but switched to biochemistry in my sophomore year. In senior year, you finally get to work in a lab. I would go to classes, then go to the lab and sometimes work all night. I just loved doing experiments.

Do you still have that sense of excitement in the laboratory?

I think that’s what’s always driven me. Some people like working at the bench. There’s thinking about what question to address and what experiments to do to answer it. Then actually going and doing the experiment, getting the result and testing

and retesting your hypothesis. When you get an exciting result, there’s nothing like it. It’s really like scoring a touchdown.

Why explore the mechanisms behind GPCR signaling?

Humans have about 800 different GPCRs. About half are olfactory receptors found in the nasal cilia, while the other half are expressed in various cells throughout your body. One receptor can be expressed in many different cells and, in some cases, respond to different hormones. We’re really only scratching the surface in understanding how GPCRs function, but they are involved in many physiological processes. They’re the targets of about 40 percent of pharmaceuticals on the market. The more mechanistic insight we get, the better we’ll become at developing drugs with lesser side effects that are more effective.

Our current focus is relevant to precision medicine, where we can try to target GPCRs more selectively.

How does your work in basic science translate to clinical treatment?

The most translationally relevant work we’re doing is in asthma, where we’re trying to develop compounds that function as biased agonists to interact with the receptor and give a more specific response than a normal agonist. If a person with asthma has an inhaler, it’s often a beta agonist. That opens up the airway, but also carries a black-box warning because it can cause a severe asthmatic attack and, in rare cases, death. We’re trying to develop a biased agonist that will interact with the receptor and promote airway smooth muscle relaxation without the side effects.

As a mentor and educator, what do you enjoy most?

One of the things that gives me the most satisfaction is seeing the people I’ve trained and how successful they are when they go out on their own. It’s kind of like raising your children. You want them to do well when they’re here in the lab but then do well on their own, too.

What’s the biggest challenge facing your field?

For academic science in general, the big problem now is funding. A lot of very good labs are not able to get grants renewed, so researchers might have to find other career opportunities. We’re also losing a whole generation of young people who aren’t going into science because of funding problems.

The long-term impact of that is not going to be good in terms of scientific understanding.

This country has historically been a leader in basic and translational science. But it’s incredibly expensive to do this work, and the National Institutes of Health budget hasn’t gone up in the last 10 years. Money is needed to support research.

There’s no way to get around that.

— Robin Warshaw

FALL FALL 2015 2015 27 27

Photo by Karen Kirchhoff.

28 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Student Profile

Photo by Kevin Monko.

Beverly Shin

Balancing Music with Medical School If asked what piece of music they’d want to stream while stranded on a desert island, few 30-somethings would name a string quartet by Beethoven. But the legendary composer’s five-movement “Opus 132” is Beverly Shin’s top choice, hands down.

“When you listen to it, you realize Beethoven saw something the rest of the world couldn’t see,” Shin says. “It’s cosmically beautiful.”

Shin, a third-year SKMC student, discovered her love of classical music — and particularly of the violin — at age 2 and a half, as she sat mesmerized by her

older brother Michael while he practiced at their family’s home in Chicago.

“I didn’t care when he practiced piano, but when he played his violin, I just had to be near him,” she remembers.

She begged her mother — a classically trained opera singer — to buy her lessons; Michael’s teacher hesitated to accept such a young student but became convinced of the toddler’s capabilities after a single half-hour trial.

Violin consumed Shin as she grew.

Weekly lessons turned into entire summers spent at intensive music festivals; practice sessions that lasted four hours

a day; and performances with orchestras and chamber groups across the country.

As a teenager, she was already earning an income through her talent.

“Music is like sports in that to really ‘do it,’ you have to start early. You build your career while you’re still a student,” she says.

As an adult, Shin immersed herself in music both educationally and professionally. She pursued master’s degrees in violin performance and Suzuki Pedagogy (a system for teaching young children to play the violin) at the Cleveland Institute of Music and a doctorate in

FALL 2015 29

“ My experience as a Schweitzer Fellow got me interested in the balance of being a healer and an artist and exploring how those roles can work together.” violin performance at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she performed with many chamber groups and also developed a passion for community outreach. Her final year in Boston, she became one of the first musicians to receive an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship.

Primarily students from health disciplines, Schweitzer Fellows partner with community organizations to implement year-long service projects that improve the wellness of underserved populations.

Shin’s project involved using storytelling as a part of healing; she also created interactive music programs in elementary schools throughout the city.

“The experience got me interested in the balance of being a healer and an artist and exploring how those roles can work together,” she says. “Most of the other fellows were medical students, nurses, occupational therapists — they were addressing healthcare disparities in really creative and inspiring ways. This community work was a sort of seed for my interest in medicine.”

Shin’s service work continued after she moved to Philadelphia, where she got a position in education and outreach with the Philadelphia Orchestra and also began teaching violin and chamber music at Penn. She performed with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra and traveled frequently to play with groups in Boston as well as other cities, most often New York and Memphis, Tenn.

Life was a juggling act of teaching jobs and performances, and constant travel began to take its toll. Repetitive stress injuries in her shoulder and back recurred, causing severe discomfort.

Freelancing as a musician meant being on the road so much that she sometimes didn’t bother to unpack and re-pack her suitcase between trips. She didn’t feel like she truly lived in Philly. She didn’t feel like she truly lived anywhere.

“I got itchy and started looking for a next step, but medicine was pretty far

down the list because I figured that ship had sailed. I thought medicine was like music — that you come out of the womb headed in that direction,” says Shin, whose assumptions were challenged by one of her students, a flute player who was also an allergist. The woman told Shin she had started out as a school teacher and didn’t go to medical school until age 30. She invited Shin to shadow her at work and explained the concept of post-baccalaureate programs, an option Shin had never considered.

Shin began shadowing additional physicians in her personal network and engaged in volunteer activities at local hospitals. An opportunity on a nursing unit at Pennsylvania Hospital enthralled her; she loved arriving at 6 a.m. to take breakfast to patients and getting to know them and their families. She also relished the collegiality of the healthcare team.

“Freelancing allowed me to play music with a lot of different groups, which was wonderful but very different from building a team that works together over time. I wanted that teamwork in my professional life and knew medicine would provide it. I thought, OK … I have to do this,” she recalls.

Since she was already teaching at Penn several nights a week, she registered for some math classes and realized she enjoyed them. Before she knew it, she was applying to Bryn Mawr College’s post-baccalaureate premedical program — a dense one-year whirlwind of general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics and biology capped off by the MCAT. Coursework was so demanding that she stopped playing her violin altogether, although she picked it back up after completing the program.

A year later, she arrived at Jefferson.

“After getting here, I realized there is a way to do both music and medicine,” she says. “Med school is challenging, but as long as I knew when exams and breaks were planned, I could accept offers

to perform.” Her rigorous academic schedule caused her to become more efficient at studying and practicing alike; having every minute of her day accounted for forced to stay focused and disciplined. During her second year, she even found time to combine her passions by collaborating with Brooke Worster, MD, medical director of Jefferson’s Palliative Care Service, to establish a partnership through which students from the Curtis Institute of Music come to play for Jefferson patients (palliative care is one of the specialties that appeals most to Shin; she is also interested in family and community medicine and psychiatry).

Throughout her first two years at SKMC, Shin was able to practice almost every day, even if only for 20 minutes.

“Taking time to play is a win-win situation; it keeps my chops up while also re-orienting my brain if I’m burning out from studying. It’s a rare occasion that stepping back and doing something totally different with my body doesn’t benefit me substantially. I refresh, I re-set,” she says.

As her third year at SKMC progresses, she has had to adjust her system of anticipating academic requirements ahead of time in order to commit to performances. Clinical rotations mean she may not know her schedule far enough in advance to accept freelance violin work.

“I will continue to play when I can, even if it has to be on a more casual basis,” she says. “There are days I can’t actually believe I have the opportunity to train to serve patients while still squeezing in performances here and there. Although my life has shifted toward medicine, I will always be a musician. How music and medicine will dance with each other down the road is an ever-evolving story.”

— Karen L. Brooks

30 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Alumnus Profile Gerald J. Marks, MD ’49

An Artist Inside and Outside the Operating Room “Without my patients, I am nothing.”

Since graduating from Jefferson 66 years ago, Gerald Marks, MD ’49, has forged an extraordinary career that has opened countless doors and taken him across the country and around the globe.

But no experience has fulfilled him as much as caring for and building relationships with his patients, which he calls “the most glorious opportunity in the world.”

Marks has done wonders for many of those patients, who have traveled from near and far for decades to obtain his care.

A renowned colorectal surgeon, he has pioneered techniques that forever changed standards for the diagnosis and management of rectal cancer — techniques that have drastically improved both survival rates and quality of life for those suffering with the disease.

Among his most groundbreaking surgical developments have been two procedures: combined abdominal transsacral resection of the rectum (CATS), introduced in 1960, and transanal abdominal/transanal radical proctosigmoidectomy with coloanal anastomosis (TATA), introduced in 1984. These methods have proved invaluable in that they enable the preservation of sphincter function following rectal surgery.

“The dominant issue for rectal cancer patients is psychological — the fear of having a permanent colostomy. They are so fearful that they will try to avoid the doctor altogether,” Marks says. “Seeing this during my residency made me want to find a way to preserve normal function for these patients. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I was going to figure it out.”

A Career Takes Shape Marks had plenty of exposure to rectal surgery through his experience as the private resident of Thomas A. Shallow, MD, the Samuel D. Gross Professor of Surgery at Jefferson and one of the most prolific surgeons in the Philadelphia region in the early 1950s. He completed his training

under the legendary John H. Gibbon, Jr., MD ’27, who was impressed by pulmonary physiology research Marks had conducted while serving in the U.S. Air Force during his internship — and therefore urged him to consider becoming Jefferson’s first anesthesiologist.

But Marks was committed to continuing surgery and following his passion of helping rectal cancer patients, a passion he realized as the result of what he refers to as “many happy accidents.” One early “accident” stemmed from his enlistment in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He completed one semester at Villanova University before turning 18 and leaving for boot camp, after which the Navy offered him the choice of enrolling in the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., or returning to Villanova for pre-medical studies. He chose the latter, and the Navy subsequently sent him to Jefferson.

“Had I been born a year sooner or later, perhaps I never would have been able to become a physician,” he says. “The Second World War and its timing made my career possible.”

Postgraduate training in Shallow’s operating room influenced Marks’ life personally as much as professionally; there, he worked side by side with Shallow’s “stunning” suture nurse, a 1947 graduate of the Jefferson School of Nursing named Barbara Ann Hendershot (who happened to be the grand-niece of J. Parsons Schaeffer, MD, PhD, iconic professor of anatomy and director of the Daniel Baugh Institute of Anatomy at Jefferson). Meeting Barbara was another event that led to good fortune; the couple fell in love and married in 1950.

A few years later, the arrival of Simon Kramer, MD, from London as the founding chair of Jefferson’s Department of Radiation Oncology further shaped Marks’ life and career.

“I was chief resident when Simon Kramer came over, and meeting him was

also a happy accident. Our friendship led me to develop pre-operative radiation for rectal cancer,” Marks says. One of the defining achievements of Marks’ career, his treatment of rectal cancer patients with high-dose neo-adjuvant radiation began in collaboration with Kramer and expanded through his work as a Jefferson faculty member. In 1976, Marks initiated the first program and study involving the use of high-dose pre-operative radiation in combination with his CATS method of sphincter preservation surgery, and “the data were striking,” showing drastically improved survival rates.

“Traditionally, surgeons were taught that rectal cancer would not respond to radiation. We proved them wrong,” Marks says. “The surgical community rejected this for many years, but we knew we had the goods.”

Beyond Surgery In parallel with his work to improve surgical protocols, Marks was becoming a frontrunner in uncovering the value of colonoscopy in the diagnosis and treatment of rectal disorders. Using his own savings (and keeping it a secret from his wife), in 1969 he purchased the first flexible model colonoscope in the United States.

“I saw this new flexible instrument and thought, ‘I have to have it to investigate radiation injuries of the colon,’” he remembers. “I didn’t immediately sense the clinical importance of colonoscopy.

Removing polyps during colonoscopy demonstrated the power of this instrument, which so changed my life.”

Under the auspices of the dean’s office at Jefferson, Marks co-chaired and directed the first-ever colonoscopy conference in 1974; he followed it with another successful symposium two years later. His influence extended nationally and internationally as he went on to serve as founding president of the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons

FALL 2015 31

Examples of Marks' watercolor paintings.

Top, Isola di Burano, Venice, Italy.

Bottom, Tigertail Beach, Marco Island, Fla.

(SAGES) — which became the largest general surgery society in the United States — and later as founding president of the International Federation of Societies of Endoscopic Surgeons (IFSES), a group representing more than 100,000 surgeons worldwide.

As he passed all of these milestones, Marks was simultaneously climbing the ranks to full professor at Jefferson. In the late 1960s, he was instrumental in forming the Jefferson Volunteer Faculty Association, which became a model for medical schools nationwide. Determined to build an official colorectal cancer program on campus, with the shared vision of Dean Joseph Gonnella, MD, he established a formal Division of Colorectal Surgery and colorectal surgery residency training program in 1984, the same year he created the Comprehensive Rectal Cancer Center, Jefferson’s first multidisciplinary cancer unit. He also nurtured a relationship between Jefferson and the University of Rome, a structured scientific and cultural partnership that led to collaborative training and meetings. In 1992, the Gerald J. Marks Professorship of Colorectal Surgery — the first such professorship — was established at Jefferson.

Marks also served as founding chief of the Section of Colorectal Surgery at Pennsylvania Hospital and subsequently

Photo by Bill Cain.

at Hahnemann University Hospital; he held full professorships at both Penn and Drexel. In 1998, he and his son and partner, John H Marks, MD ’89 — a colorectal surgeon and minimally invasive surgery expert who is now director of the Colorectal Surgery Center and chief of the Section of Colorectal Surgery for Main Line Health — established Marks Colorectal Surgical Associates at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood, Pa., where they continue to practice today. Their team, using its signature methods, boasts an 86 percent five-year survival rate and a 5.3 percent local recurrence rate for rectal cancer patients — figures significantly better than national averages. They also lead the Marks Colorectal Surgical Foundation, which supports colorectal surgical research and education.

The Ultimate Art Form Marks’ illustrious career has not prevented him from pursuing interests beyond the clinic. He and Barbara raised three sons: John as well as Richard M Marks, MD ’88, now an orthopaedic surgeon at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and James M Marks, who works in finance in suburban Philadelphia.

As children, the boys were all athletic, and Marks joined in many of their activities. At 90, he continues to play golf and

tennis; he and Richard have ranked in the National Super Senior Father and Son Tennis Championships. Time on the tennis court and the golf course has helped Marks cope with the passing of Barbara, who died in August 2013.

Perhaps his greatest gratification outside of patient care comes from watercolor painting. A recognized and published watercolorist, Marks has shown his work nationally and internationally. Currently, a combined exhibit with the oil paintings of his colleague Patricia Wong, MD, hangs in Lankenau’s Annenberg Center for Medical Education.

“Being an artist is a gift,” Marks says.

“It makes you look at the world differently.

When driving to work, most people see the road and the traffic. Me? I see the sun, the sky and the ever-changing forms and contrasts of color and light.”

Marks says he would consider himself an artist with or without his watercolor talent, for he feels surgery to be the ultimate visual and performance art form.

“The art of surgery combined with a true sense of fulfillment in caring for patients is truly a blessing beyond my wildest dreams.”

Photo

by Karen Kirchhoff — Karen L. Brooks

32 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

ClassNotes ’50

Richard L. Murtland lives in Carmel, Calif., and remains active at age 90, assisting in surgery three to four times per week.

’58

Roger H. Brodkin has retired from private practice and volunteers part time as a clinical professor of medicine in the dermatology division at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

He lives in Chatham, N.J.

’59

Ramon B. Molina retired from family practice in 1991 and from East Stroudsburg University Medical Center in 1999. He remains active in environmental issues and devotes much time to his church and family. He also still enjoys tennis and skiing.

’63

Walter D. Dalsimer II writes that he and his wife, Emma, moved into a retirement facility in West Lafayette, Ind., in 2013. They have three greatgrandchildren.

’64

Charles O. Thompson lives in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., and retired in June 2014 on his 77th birthday. He has developed an interest in 1960s automobiles and has restored two.

’65

Robert M. Cohen reports that he is retired and spending time with his wife, Dianne. The couple lives in Philadelphia.

’67

George E. Cimochowski is chief of cardiac surgery emeritus at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He writes that some of the greatest moments in his career have involved his teaching, clinical and fundraising efforts in Poland, where he has lectured and operated countless times over the past 23 years. In

the 1990s, Cimochowski was asked by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton to help start a new children's hospital in Warsaw; he soon found himself on the board for the Litewska Children's Hospital and has served as the board's chairman since 1997, leading a campaign to raise more than $50 million for a new hospital. This summer, he traveled to Poland once again for the hospital’s opening. He says he would like “to influence young doctors to go overseas, become involved and stay with it for long periods of time.”

Barry C. Dorn writes that he is still working at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is “trying to decide when to cut back.” He lives in in Winchester, Mass.

George Faries retired from practicing and teaching surgery in Harrisburg, Pa., at age 75.

He reports that retirement is more fun than working and that his sons are continuing the family medical tradition into the third generation. His son Peter is a professor of surgery and radiology at Mt. Sinai Medical School in New York City, where he is chief of vascular surgery and fellowship program director. His son Mark is director of the Donald Morton Melanoma Research Program at the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, Calif., and also is fellowship program director. He recently authored a landmark study on sentinel node biopsy in the New England Journal of Medicine, a publication his father “still has trouble understanding.”

’69

Walter Finnegan reports that he is “quasi-retired” and that his combination memoir-textbook, “Is There a Doctor in the [Court]House: A Compendium of Forensic Orthopedic Mysteries and Solutions,” was

published in May 2015. Finnegan and his wife, Diane, live in Allentown, Pa., and have seven children and 12 grandchildren.

They recently mourned the loss of a grandchild, a 28-year-old former U.S. Marine.

practicing gastroenterology. He lives in Carlisle, Pa., and writes that he is looking forward to seeing classmates at their upcoming 40th reunion.

’76

Dean Winslow has received the Legion of Merit in recognition of his service as State Air Surgeon James G. McBride continues with the Delaware Air National to practice ophthalmology but Guard. He also was awarded the is working fewer hours and no longer performs surgery. He lives Air Medal (second oak leaf cluster) and the Air Force Combat Action in Bethlehem, Pa., and enjoys Medal for participation in operspending time down the shore. ational missions outside the wire Edward B. Ruby received the during his most recent deployment Herbert S. Waxman Award for to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, in Outstanding Medical Educator 2011. In civilian life, Winslow is a from the Pennsylvania Chapter clinical professor of medicine at of the American College of the Stanford University School of Physicians. Ruby is an instructor Medicine. He and his partner, Julie of internal medicine for residents Parsonnet, MD, are resident fellows and students at Jefferson and at at an undergraduate dormitory on Mercy Catholic Medical Center. the Stanford campus.

He lives in Fort Washington, Pa.

’71

’72

Anna Marie D'Amico writes that she has been “reinvented with a new job.” Formerly an ob/ gyn, D’Amico is now medical director of a brand new medi-spa; she “went from deliveries and hysterectomies and Paps to Botox, fillers, peels, laser and other non-surgical rejuvenation.”

She reports that she is having fun doing something she loves, which is nice because her husband, Andy, has also “flunked retirement.” The couple lives in Wilmington, Del.

’74

John P. Lubicky lives in Morgantown, W.Va., and writes that he enjoyed his 40th class reunion weekend in fall 2014 and continues to work full time as a professor of orthopaedic surgery and pediatrics at West Virginia University. He now has a partner in practice so he is not on call every day anymore.

’75

Gregory L. Lewis retired in June 2014 after 34 years of

’79

Howard B. Cotler lives in Houston and launched Laser Health Spa in April 2014 after 30 years of solo private practice in orthopaedic surgery. The facility uses laser light to provide systematic, non-operative treatment for musculoskeletal pain.

’81

Guy A. Giordano recently returned from 11 weeks of working with Partners in Health at the Maforki Ebola Treatment Unit and the Government Hospital in Port Loko, Sierra Leone. Giordano practices family medicine with Susquehanna Health in Williamsport, Pa.

’83

Leonard I. Zon has received an honorary medical degree from the University of Murcia, Spain.

Zon lives in Wellesley, Mass., and is the Grousbeck Professor of Pediatric Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and founder/director of the Stem Cell Program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

FALL 2015 33

’84

Steven A. Katz reports that in May 2015 he was pleased to attend the wedding of Danielle Daitch (’14), daughter of his Jefferson classmate Jonathan Daitch (’84). Katz lives in Melrose Park, Pa.

’88

Christine S. Gerber has practiced obstetrics and gynecology in Georgetown County, S.C., for nearly 20 years. She is medical director of obstetrics at Tidelands Waccamaw Community Hospital and was instrumental in efforts at both Tidelands Waccamaw and Tidelands Georgetown Memorial Hospital to earn “Baby-Friendly” designation. She chaired the 2015 Georgetown County March of Dimes campaign and recently joined the Tidelands Health Board of Trustees.

’89

Theodore A. Nukes has sold his practice, Heartland Neurology, after 20 years. In addition to practicing neurology, Nukes is director of the sleep lab at St. Vincent Fishers Hospital in Fishers, Ind. He is an avid racing fan and enjoys his seats at the start/finish line of the Indianapolis 500.

’98

Patty A. Vitale has been appointed to the Academy of Master Medical Educators at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, where she is an assistant professor of emergency medicine and of pediatrics. The Academy serves to enhance education throughout the school; its members promote curricular and faculty development as well as new teaching, research and scholarship initiatives.

Vitale also received the 2015 Rutgers School of Public Health Excellence in Teaching Award.

She lives in Clementon, N.J.

’01

Nikolai A. Bildzukewicz is an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Southern California as well as associate program director for the general surgery residency and the minimally invasive surgery/ bariatric fellowship. He specializes in advanced laparoscopic foregut surgery and spends time equally between the USC campus and Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, Calif. He and his wife, Christina, live in Brea, Calif., and celebrated the birth of their third child, Sophia Belle, in February 2015.

They also have another daughter, Anastasia Marie, and a son, Zachary Grant.

Jamie Leigh Wells published a piece titled “A Pediatrician’s Thank-You Note to ‘Synthetic’ Children and Their ‘Nontraditional’ Families” in the Huffington Post in March 2015.

Wells’ essay addresses the controversy surrounding fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana after Dolce criticized gay couples’ use of fertility treatments; she writes in support of the use of in vitro fertilization by same-sex couples and anyone struggling with infertility. Wells practices pediatrics in New York City and has been a faculty member at NYU Langone and Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Centers since 2005.

Post-Graduate ’72

Samir K. Ballas, emeritus professor of medicine at Jefferson, was the 2015 recipient of the American Academy of Pain Medicine Patient Advocacy Award, which honors healthcare professionals who elevate the importance of pain medicine and advocate for appropriate evaluation and treatment of patients suffering from pain.

Ballas lives in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Alumni Association President’s Message The week of July 27 heralded orientation for the newest members of our Jefferson family, the Class of 2019. Two alumni and I shook hands with and presented a white coat to each of our 267 first-year students, a tradition that our medical school’s alumni association has been carrying out for several decades.

Also, for the first time in our history, the alumni association presented a stethoscope emblazoned with the Jefferson logo at the White Coat Ceremony to each first-year student.

At the White Coat Ceremony, attended by over 1,000 people, I asked the students to take out their stethoscopes and promise all those Jefferson physicians who had come before them — who at this very moment are treating the sick in the cities and small towns across our country and serving with our armed forces around the world — that every time they place this stethoscope on a patient, they will remember the honor bestowed upon them and that they will always profess, practice, defend and live those high ideals and principles that have and must always define the Jefferson physician.

These students will face a new age of medicine, of innovative doctor-patient communication interfaces as well as cutting-edge diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Medicine has also come under closer scrutiny and stricter regulations both by the government and by administrators. While all these changes have the potential to improve the overall delivery of healthcare, incursions by non-medical forces and measurements also have the potential to threaten the core component of medicine, the doctor-patient connection. Only the physician has taken the sacred Hippocratic Oath to care for the human patient; only the physician best understands that caring for and seeing first the person rise above all else.

We must all remember, as I asked the Class of 2019 to do, the honor bestowed upon us and that we must always profess, practice, defend and live those high ideals and principles that have and must always define the Jefferson physician.

Joseph F. Majdan, MD, CV '81 Associate Professor of Medicine Director of Professional Development President, Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Association joseph.majdan@jefferson.edu or 215-503-4226

34 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

In Memoriam ’44J

Robert P. Krall, of Eldred, Pa., died May 10, 2015. Krall practiced family medicine from 1946 to 1971 and occupational medicine from 1971 until his retirement in 1985. While studying at Jefferson, he met his wife, Anna, who graduated from the diploma nursing program in 1942. The couple celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary three weeks before Anna’s death and two months before James’ death. They are survived by two sons, James (’76) and Robert; three grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

’50

Erich A. Everts-Suarez, Sr., 89, of Cinnaminson, N.J., died Aug. 2, 2015.

Everts served as a U.S. Army physician at the former Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington from 1957 to 1959. He returned to the Philadelphia region to serve as chief of pathology at St. Mary’s Hospital when it was in the Fishtown neighborhood of the city and subsequently established the pathology department when it opened in Langhorne, Pa. He was a clinical associate professor of pathology and cell biology at Jefferson from the 1950s

until his retirement in 1991.

After retiring, he opened the pathology department at Mennonite General Hospital in his hometown of Aibonito, Puerto Rico, where he volunteered from 1992 to 1996.

Always grateful that a scholarship helped fund his medical education, in turn Everts generously established a scholarship for Sidney Kimmel Medical College students of Puerto Rican heritage. Gifts to the Erich A. Everts, MD Scholarship Fund can be made in his honor at Advancement.Jefferson.edu/ MemorialGiving.

Everts is survived by his wife of 64 years, Gilda; a son, Erich Jr. (’79); two daughters, Deborah (’78) and Leslie (’90); and five grandchildren.

’51

Verne L. Smith, Jr., 92, of Bedford, N.H., died May 16, 2015. A U.S. Navy veteran of World War II who served as an aerial navigator, Smith also was a longtime resident of Danvers, Mass., and Windham, N.H. He was a general practitioner in Danvers from 1952 to 1971. For the last 18 years of his career, he was a pioneer in the field of emergency medicine and worked in Lynn, Mass.

What’s New? To submit a class note or obituary for the Bulletin, contact the Office of Institutional Advancement: • By phone at 215-955-7751; • By email at alumni@jefferson.edu; or • By mail at 125 S. 9th St., Suite 700, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Correction: In the spring Bulletin, the wrong class year was listed for the late John Joseph McKeown, MD. His class year was 1947. The Bulletin regrets the error.

His favorite hobby was playing tournament-style contract bridge at local bridge clubs. In later years, he played online against (and beat) the authors of the how-to-play-bridge books. He was a Silver Life Master in the American Contract Bridge League and is still ranked 24th with the New Hampshire Bridge Association.

Smith is survived by three daughters, Bonnie, Virginia and Darlene; six grandchildren, Kristen, Paul, Andrea, Sarah, Alfred and Kathy; two step-grandchildren, Ethan and Amanda; and three great-grandchildren, Elysa, Lilidae and Orion. He was predeceased by his wife, Clara (“Nickie”), who died in 2000.

’54

Henry W. “Bud” Pletcher II, 87, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., died March 4, 2015. Pletcher served as a Captain in the U.S. Army as a surgeon for the 41st Armor Infantry Battalion in Mannheim, Germany. He then worked in private practice as an ob/ gyn in Poughkeepsie for 45 years. He was chief of ob/gyn at Vassar Brothers Medical Center and chief of staff at St. Francis Hospital for two years. He enjoyed golf and tennis was a former president of the Notre Dame Club of the Mid-Hudson Valley. He loved taking his grandchildren sailing on his Hobie catamaran and his O’Day sailboat. He was an official at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., and was a field-side physician at local high-school events. He was a founding member of Rehab Programs, Inc. (now Abilities First) and

past president of the New York State Division of the American Cancer Society.

Pletcher is survived by his wife, Teresita; two children, Thomas and Kathleen; a sister, Alma; five grandchildren, Melissa, Meghan (’07), Suzanne, Sarah and Alexandra; and four great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by a granddaughter, Katherine.

Harry Alexander (Alex) Smith, Jr., 88, of Dallas and Bear Lake, Pa., died April 25, 2015. Smith was a U.S. Navy veteran of World War II. He trained in orthopaedics at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts, then returned to Wyoming Valley in 1959 and began to practice with his father.

He retired from orthopedic surgery in 1998 but continued as a consultant at the WilkesBarre VA Medical Center until 2008. He loved fishing off the shores of Nantucket and gardening.

Smith is survived by his wife of 54 years, Lillian; three daughters, Rebecca, Amy and Terrell; three grandchildren, Alexandria, James and Nathan; a sister, Barbara; and a brother, Robert. He was preceded in death by a sister, Helen.

’55

George E. Lenyo, 85, of Tamaqua, Pa., died Jan. 10, 2015. Lenyo served two years as a physician in the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps and was stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base, Michigan, where he attained the rank of Captain. After honorable discharge, he opened a private family practice with offices in Hometown, Pa., and McAdoo, Pa., and was on staff at Coaldale Hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital and

FALL 2015 35

Hazleton General Hospital. In addition to family practice, he did 24-hour emergency room rotations and delivered many babies. A licensed private pilot, Lenyo loved to fly.

Lenyo is survived by his wife of 58 years, Nancy; three children, John, Mary Anne and Karen; eight grandchildren, Katie, Stephanie, Matthew, Evan, Connor, Daniel, Maura and Erin; a great-grandson, Easton; two sisters, Anna and Susan; and several nieces and nephews.

’56

Charles “Chuck” Hay Hemminger, of Northampton, Mass., died April 15, 2015.

Hemminger practiced urology at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton for 34 years before retiring in 1995.

His hobbies included travel, woodworking, ham radio and bicycling. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Janet; a son, Stephen; a daughter, Helen; and two grandchildren, Valerie and Daniel. He was predeceased by his sister, Julia.

’57

Arthur Nicholas DiNicola, 85, of Minersville, Pa., died May 27, 2015. DiNicola did an internship at the University of Pennsylvania and served in the U.S. Navy as a liaison officer to the Army, Marines and Air Force regarding atomic, biological and chemical warfare. After his honorable discharge as a Lieutenant, he returned to Minersville and began his family practice doing obstetrics, gynecology, minor surgery, geriatrics, orthopedics, psychiatry and pediatrics. He was president of the staff at the Pottsville Hospital, chairman of the Department of Family Practice for 25 years and was active in free medical care for “ward patients.” He was the plant

physician for Allied Signal, Exxon, Hexcel, the Reading Railroad and the Pottsville Box. He was the team physician for Minersville High School for 40 years.

DiNicola is survived by his wife of 60 years, Elizabeth (“Betty”); six children, Maribeth (’84), David, Arturo (’89), Camille, Gino and Michele (’95); 20 grandchildren, Katherine, Conor, Keara, Giacomo, Alexandra, Lisa, Jason, Francesca, Liam, Diedre, Luke, Esther, Ellie, Joshua, Gino, Cecelia, Nico, Roman, Juliette and Fernando; and a brother, Jerome. He was preceded in death by a daughter, Lisa.

Edwin U. Keates, 84, of Philadelphia, died May 7, 2015. Keates started an ophthalmology practice with his father and brother in Jenkintown, Pa. He was chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at Albert Einstein Medical Center from 1969 to 1995. He also led the Glaucoma Service at Jefferson from 1974 to 1979 and was a director of the Glaucoma Service at Scheie Eye Institute from 1980 to 1988. He was an international expert in the field of ocular drugs and served on the advisory board of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, authored 50 publications and lectured around the world about glaucoma and related eye disorders. He was a charter member of the American Glaucoma Society. He loved culture and held subscriptions to the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and theater groups.

Keates is survived by two daughters, Debra and Nancy; a son, Harry; seven grandchildren; a niece;

and a nephew. His former wife, Lois, also survives.

He was predeceased by his brother, Richard.

’58

Arthur M. Spiegleman, 81, of Cherry Hill, N.J., died April 5, 2015. Spiegleman enjoyed a long career as an eye surgeon in Philadelphia and South Jersey. As a U.S. Navy physician, he was stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital in the late 1960s. He simultaneously ran a private practice in Camden, N.J., and worked at the Naval Hospital during the day and in his own office at night. He eventually moved his practice from Camden to Cherry Hill to Voorhees before retiring in 1998. He also worked at Wills Eye Hospital starting in 1962, at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center starting in 1969 and at Virtua Marlton starting in 1973, serving concurrently at all centers until his retirement.

He was a member of the Camden County and New Jersey Medical Societies, the New Jersey and American Academies of Ophthalmology and the American Society of Contemporary Ophthalmology.

Spiegleman enjoyed acting and performed at community theaters. He is survived by his caregiver and former wife, Linda; a son, Ronald; five daughters, Marjorie, Laura, Nancy, Holly and Sara; and seven grandchildren.

’60

Marvin E. Jaffe, 79, of Sarasota, Fla., and Skillman, N.J., died unexpectedly June 23, 2015. Jaffe served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and completed a neurology residency at Jefferson. He was a neurologist at the former Philadelphia General Hospital, then a neurologist

and clinical associate professor of neurology at Jefferson. An expert in cerebral metabolism and pharmacology as well as the drug development process, Jaffe published extensively in the field of cerebrovascular diseases. He held numerous management positions at Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, including vice president of clinical research and senior vice president of medical affairs, and brought a number of first-in-class drugs, including Sinemet (for Parkinsonism) and Mevacor (for cholesterol), to market. He had an integral role in the Astra-Merck alliance, which resulted in the development of Prilosec. He later served as president of the R.W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute of the Johnson & Johnson Company from 1988 until his retirement in 1994. After retiring, he was a consultant and board member for several biopharmaceutical and biotech firms. During his career he served as president of the Royal Society of Medicine Foundation and a board member of the Society for Chronic Diseases, among others.

Jaffe is survived by his wife, Susan; three sons, Jonathan (’84), Matthew and Joshua; a daughter, Ondria; a sister, Elaine; and 10 grandchildren.

His wife of 56 years, Joan, died in 2013.

’61

James E. Herlocher, 79, of Petoskey, Mich., died May 27, 2015. Herlocher did his internship at the University of Michigan Hospital in 1962 and served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas. In 1964, he received the Commendation Medal and was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain. He returned to the University of

36 Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Bulletin

Howard L. Field, MD ’54 Michigan for a residency in thoracic surgery and later had a private practice in Ann Arbor before moving with his family to Petoskey, where he opened the heart center at the regional hospital and routinely performed openheart surgeries. He loved fishing, hunting, playing tennis and skiing.

Herlocher is survived by his wife of 21 years, Charlotte (“Sherry”); two sons, John and Steven; a daughter, Alyssa; four stepchildren, Kathleen, Rebecca, Jon, Charles; and 15 grandchildren, Steven, Johnathan, Joshua, Bona, Larin, Brittany, Bobby, Michael, Jon III, Charlie, Kora, Catie, Conor, Larin and Adam.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Louise.

’62

Joseph Honigman, 77, of Jacksonville, Fla., died March 10, 2015. Honigman began his career in the U.S. Navy as a general medical officer before doing a residency in dermatology. He was director of the Navy Medical Corps before assuming command of the Navy Regional Medical Center in Jacksonville. After retiring from the Navy in 1983, he became a professor of dermatology at UF Health Shands Jacksonville and a professor of community and family medicine at UF Health Shands Gainesville for the next seven years.

Honigman is survived by his wife, Wendy; two children, Andye and Michelle; four grandchildren, Jesse, Sarah, Samantha and Brianna; and a brother, Frederick.

’64

Ronald M. Burde died Feb. 23, 2015. Burde was retired from serving as chairman of ophthalmology at the Albert Einstein College of

Medicine and Montefiore Hospital, Bronx, N.Y. He previously served as director of neuro-ophthalmology at Washington University in St. Louis and chairman of the American Board of Ophthalmology. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Sharon; three sons, Howard, Brad; and Jeff; and his grandchildren.

’68

Steven Lefrak, 71, of Lincroft, N.J., died June 9, 2015. Lefrak did his residency at Monmouth Medical Center. From 1971 to 1974, he served in the U.S. Army and was chief of pediatrics at Patterson Army Hospital, Fort Monmouth, N.J. After his honorable discharge, he joined Monmouth Pediatric Group, where he practiced until 2004 — the year he founded Pediatric House Calls LLC. From 1971 until his passing, he was a clinical instructor at the former Hahnemann Medical College (now Drexel College of Medicine). He also was on the staff at Riverview Hospital, where he received the Physician’s Recognition Award in 2012, and was an attending in the Department of Pediatrics at Monmouth Medical Center. He taught at Jefferson from 2005 to 2014.

Lefrak volunteered at the Parker Family Health Center and served on its Board of Directors; was a pediatrics consultant for the United Cerebral Palsy of Monmouth & Ocean Counties; sat on the medical board of the National Foundation of the Monmouth County Chapter of the March of Dimes; and served on the New Jersey State Crippled Children’s Panel.

Lefrak is survived by his wife of 48 years, Phyllis; two daughters, Joanne and Karen;

Alumnus and Longtime Faculty Member

Howard L. Field, MD ’54, 86, of Philadelphia, a psychiatrist and a clinical professor of medicine at Jefferson for more than three decades, died suddenly March 4, 2015.

Field completed an internship at Jefferson and a residency at Norristown State Hospital before serving in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps from 1956 to 1958. He returned to Jefferson in 1960 as an instructor in psychiatry and climbed the ranks to professor of clinical psychiatry, a title he earned in 1975.

During his long career at Jefferson, Field directed inpatient psychiatry, residency training and consultation-liaison psychiatry.

He also held hospital appointments at Friends Hospital, the Coatesville Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Wills Eye Hospital and the Belmont Center for Comprehensive Care. Although he retired in 1995, he continued to serve as an active member of Jefferson’s volunteer faculty until his death. In 2005, he was co-chair of his 50th Class Reunion.

Colleagues said he brought compassion, wisdom and clinical expertise not only to those suffering from psychiatric disorders, but also to patients experiencing the emotional implications of diseases such as hemophilia, AIDS, cancer, organ failure and multiple sclerosis, as well as those facing organ transplants and neurosurgery.

“Dr. Field was an invaluable mentor for me and many faculty in our department,” says Elisabeth Kunkel, MD, vice chair for clinical affairs in Jefferson’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior.

“Over the years he served many leadership roles, but more importantly, he was the source of infinite wisdom and sage advice. He was able to put his finger on a kernel of clarity and truth in complicated clinical situations.”

An avid gardener, Field also enjoyed reading, dancing and cooking.

He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Maxine; three children, Daniel, Emily and Deborah; a sister, Barbara; and six grandchildren.

a granddaughter, Laurel; and his sister, Bonnie.

Post-Graduate ’85

Kenneth Najarian, 60, of Charlotte, Vt., died June 17, 2015, after being struck by a car while riding his bike.

Najarian was a radiologist at the University of Vermont Medical Center and a professor at the UVM College of Medicine, where he started the interventional radiology fellowship program in 1995.

When Najarian joined UVM 30 years ago, the hospital

had a nascent section of interventional radiology, with 10 to 15 procedures performed.

Thanks to Najarian’s expertise, the number of different procedures and techniques used in the section more than tripled. His hobbies included drumming, kite-boarding, snowboarding, boating and bicycling. He played in a band called Titled Filter, which he named in reference to a medical device used for treating people with blood clots in their legs.

Najarian is survived by his wife, Krissi, and two stepchildren, Jared and Shannon.

Fall 2014 37

The

By Numbers Class of 2019: At a Glance Every year, the students who enroll at SKMC bring with them a wildly varied set of backgrounds and experiences. Our newest cohort of medical students is no different.

Among the 267 aspiring physicians who participated in the White Coat Ceremony on July 31 are: • A Wall Street Journal op-ed editor and Pulitzer Prize finalist; • A wedding singer; • A cemetery groundskeeper; • A decorated combat veteran; • A high-school Latin teacher; and • Athletes in almost every sport imaginable, including a professional ballet dancer, a ski instructor, a fencer and a member of Harvard University’s polo team.

The Class of 2019 also includes a student who was delivered by Jefferson President and CEO Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, a longtime obstetrician!

Here are some additional facts:

Students applied:

Students accepted:

Students enrolled:

11,289

446

267

Number of women:

Number of men:

134

133

Average MCATS:

Average GPA:

(national average: 30)

(national average: 3.6)

32

3.7

Legacy students:

41

Students from the tri-state area:

76 42 21

from Pennsylvania

Youngest first-year student:

Oldest first-year student:

19

42

from New Jersey

from Delaware

Number in the Penn State BS/MD program:

24

Non-Profit Org. US Postage PAID Permit #276 Philadelphia, PA 125 S. 9th Street, Suite 700 Philadelphia, PA 19107 Change Service Requested

Printed on FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified paper, which supports the growth of responsible forest management worldwide through its international standards.

Stay Connected!

Available Now! The Office of Alumni Relations has launched the Jefferson Alumni Network app, powered by EverTrue, for your mobile device!

Alumni Connections Made Easy Get exclusive access to the Jefferson Alumni Network through a password-protected alumni directory searchable by name, class year, college, specialty, industry and company, and a map that shows where alumni live near your current location.

Sync with LinkedIn Connect your app profile with your LinkedIn account for expanded networking capabilities.

Get Social Join the conversation on Jefferson’s social channels and stay current on Jefferson news.

The Jefferson Alumni Network app is free, available for iPhone and Android, and offered exclusively for Jefferson alumni! For more information on downloading the app, please visit Jefferson.edu/Alumni or you can contact us at 215-955-7750 or alumni@jefferson.edu.