Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Case Statement

SUPPORTING FRONTLINE MEDICINE

EXCELLENCE, INNOVATION, COMPASSION, INCLUSION

WE WORK HERE.

(AND HERE.)

WE BRING HEALTHCARE TO OUR COMMUNITY IN UNEXPECTED WAYS.

ALL AROUND THE WORLD.

In 2022, the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine opened its Team-based Learning Center—an airy, 12,000-square-foot space specifically designed to support the innovative pedagogy of the school’s pioneering new curriculum. The space places an emphasis on teamwork; faculty move around, check in with student learning teams, and share group projects around the room. It has numerous screens with excellent sightlines, microphones and speakers, and mobile technology so that instructors can easily “walk and talk.” Because of the center, students spend less time listening—in fact, the “flipped classroom” curriculum means that most watch lecture content recordings at home in advance of class sessions—and much more time solving problems, collaborating, and receiving guidance in particularly challenging or complex areas.

LETTER FROM THE DEAN What does it mean to be on the front line of medicine?

Frontline medicine is speaking 70 different languages in the care of patients and meeting people where they are—in rural villages, on street corners, in community health centers, and at our teaching hospital affiliates, including Boston Medical Center.

Frontline medicine is direct engagement with complex and even controversial problems—chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), Ebola, Zika, addiction, PTSD, and COVID-19—and a relentless investment in basic science, because the next treatment (or even the next cure) might lie in a gene sequence or test tube.

In frontline medicine, the stakes are high—high when our predecessor school graduated the first Black woman physician, and high when we took responsibility for the Framingham Heart Study, one of the great longitudinal research programs in the history of medicine. And the stakes are high every day for the people we serve—often those most at risk of falling through the cracks.

Working on the front lines of medicine is what distinguishes the faculty and students of the Chobanian & Avedisian School. We cannot do it without your support. Your giving can launch or sustain critical programs or keep a world-class education affordable for aspiring physicians and scientists. You can help a team of physicians and scientists make an important discovery in an area of medicine important to you or your family.

You can honor a loved one or recognize a peerless teacher. We will connect you with the right opportunity, one to which you are as deeply committed as we are.

Please come meet our faculty, staff, and students, see our campus, and hear our stories. Please join us on the front line of medicine.

Karen H. Antman, MD Dean, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Provost, Medical Campus

SUPPORTING SCHOLARSHIPS It’s a well-known fact: Medical school is expensive.

Today, annual tuition at the Chobanian & Avedisian School exceeds $68,000—a sum that sounds high but is comparable to peer schools and far less than the true cost of the education we provide. To offset tuition, we maximize scholarships, partnering with our donor community to provide about $7 million in need-based financial aid each year.

But many still have to borrow, and our graduates’ average debt load is $222,000. Also, since we proactively recruit medical students with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds—representative of the communities they will go on to serve—our students’ average need is high.

“Scholarships have to be one of our highest priorities,” explains Dean Antman, “because many very qualified applicants who would be the best physicians—who would have the most empathy with patients and be able to relate to them—can’t go to medical school because they can’t afford it.”

primary care somewhat less. Donors can help us achieve this by endowing scholarships for loan forgiveness, awarded after a student matches for a residency in pediatrics or primary care.

Undoubtedly, donors have helped us make tremendous progress. We have doubled our endowment for scholarships in the past five years. And following the landmark $100 million gift from the late Edward Avedisian (CFA’59,’61, Hon.’22) that renamed our school in 2022 and gave us a new $50 million scholarship endowment, we will be able to meet more need, for more students. But even this remarkable gift will not enable us to meet the full need of our entering classes.

To meet the full financial need of our current four classes, we estimate that we would require an additional $335 million in scholarship endowment. There is a long way to go, but the benefits are clear—at the school, and in communities. We ask for your strong support.

High debt loads are particularly challenging for graduates who choose careers in primary care rather than in more lucrative specialties. We want general scholarships for people who would make great doctors but come from families that can’t afford it. And we also want, at the last minute, to make the debt of those who are going into

SUPPORTING TOP PEDIATRICIANS Stephen R. Karp (CAS’63) In 2013, Stephen R. Karp established the Karp Family Scholarship, an endowment that has since provided debt relief to more than 26 extraordinary pediatricians.

The program is an unequivocal success and has three distinct effects. First, it helps graduating students and their families, enabling them to pay off debt sooner and pursue other meaningful goals, such as buying a home and starting a family. It makes the Chobanian & Avedisian School a more appealing option for aspiring pediatricians. And it helps society by incentivizing young people to become pediatricians. In 2022, the Karp Scholarship Fund forgave $110,000 in loan debt—$22,000 each for five pediatrics graduates, including three who matched at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Stephen R. Karp

More than 1,700 students come to the Chobanian & Avedisian School from different backgrounds and plan distinctive pathways forward in their medical careers, but they share their training in Boston. When asked about what sets the school apart, some highlight the commitment to serving the under-resourced; others reflect on the warmth and engagement of the faculty. All speak of the strength of the community. And while donors make major contributions to facilities, professorships, and research, the students who receive the direct support of scholarships personally understand the value of a gift. Removing the stress of excessive debt enables these students to focus on their studies and become better physician-scientists. In many cases, these scholarships are their only means to afford medical school. Pictured left to right, above, are four scholarship recipients at the Chobanian & Avedisian School: Austin Snyder (CAMED’23), Dominic Tran (CAMED’23), Tatyana Dunn (CAMED’26), and Yoel Benarroch (CAMED’23).

ON THE FRONT LINE: NEUROLOGY AND TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIES Professional sports leagues are dramatically changing how they respond to concussions on the field.

Parents are reconsidering what sports their children should play, and when. A paradigm shift is underway about how we think about brain injury, and the Chobanian & Avedisian School is indisputably leading that conversation. Drs. Robert Stern and Ann McKee—Chobanian & Avedisian School professors widely recognized for their work relating to Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases—were pioneers in the field of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive, degenerative brain disease most commonly caused by repetitive brain trauma. One challenge? At this point, CTE can only be diagnosed after death. This might change, thanks to the work of our CTE Center, where teams are focused on identifying in vivo biomarkers for CTE and clinical diagnostic criteria. Their work is already changing the rules of the games—and also has important implications for active-duty soldiers, veterans, and others doing dangerous, physical work around the world.

SUPPORTING FACULTY You’ll see our faculty on television, hear them on the radio, read their op-eds, and see them giving counsel to government officials. Because so much of their research has direct relevance to people’s lives and struggles, the press want to report on their findings that are important to the health of the American public. People turn to Boston University to learn about Alzheimer’s disease, brain trauma, military medicine, addiction science, and infectious diseases—all fields in which we are doing pioneering work. And while our faculty are doing important research and caring for patients, they are also committed day in and day out to our medical and graduate students.

Support for faculty, then, is a direct investment in advancing our understanding of disease and developing new approaches and treatments. But medicine and medical sciences—particularly in Boston—are very competitive, and hiring and retaining the very best at all levels take significant resources, which we cannot depend on tuition to provide. Here, too, philanthropic support is critical.

to apply for much larger federal funding. An endowed fund to support junior faculty can provide them with the time, equipment, and supplies to validate their ideas, position them to secure long-term funding, and launch their research and teaching careers.

Steady support for faculty at all stages of their careers helps in recruiting, as those considering joining us will see the Chobanian & Avedisian School as a place to stay and grow. Stability also means that the school retains a critical mass of scholars who foster a long-term culture of excellence. The virtuous circle of recruitment and retention improves the quality of student learning and the patient experience, as well.

Today an urgent priority is support for assistant professors—junior faculty, many of whom have original creative ideas with tremendous potential but who do not yet have access to resources and predictable grant-funding streams. Philanthropy provides small pilot grant funding for young faculty to get preliminary data that they can then use

SUPPORTING RESEARCH AND JUNIOR FACULTY Shamim (CGS’76, CAS’78, CAMED’87) and Ashraf Dahod Shamim and Ashraf Dahod stand among the Chobanian & Avedisian School’s most generous supporters. In 2008, they gave $10.5 million to establish the Shamim and Ashraf Dahod Breast Cancer Research Center, a gift that included support for outstanding assistant professors. The 2021 Dahod Assistant Professor, Dennis Jones, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, is working to identify immunosuppressive molecules contained in cancer cell-derived exosomes and investigate their impact on T cells, a type of immune cell that can recognize and kill breast cancer cells.

Blocking such immunosuppressive mechanisms may promote the antitumor activity of T cells, enhancing their ability to eliminate breast cancers.

Shamim and Ashraf Dahod

SUPPORTING RESEARCH Why is support for research a constant and continuing priority? Because research is the Chobanian & Avedisian School’s very foundation. Without research, treatments for patients will never improve.

We are a recognized research powerhouse. Our strength lies in both our numbers and in our interdisciplinary approach. Take cancer—an enemy we fight on many fronts.

Research finds the molecular biomarkers that signal the presence of disease. Research tracks remissions across years and across populations. Research sifts through billions of lines of genetic code to find the A, C, U, or G that is out of place.

We have physicians and scientists working from all of these angles and many, many more. Furthermore, we provide an environment—in this case, the BU-BMC Cancer Center— that facilitates collaboration, moving research findings more quickly into our clinics and classrooms.

Another example is addiction. Many of our faculty provide care to and advocacy on behalf of people living with addiction in our local communities. At the same time, they are looking for ways to treat chronic pain. To name just one example: Venetia (Vanna) Zachariou, PhD, the chair of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics and physiology and biophysics, is working to understand intracellular adaptations to peripheral nerve injury and/ or prolonged opioid exposure, in order to develop novel therapeutics for chronic pain conditions and pain/addiction comorbidities.

Discovery is an essential part of medicine—but it is not free. A breakthrough in the lab might take decades to translate into a marketable drug. Because government support is unpredictable, philanthropy is increasingly essential. Our efforts, helped in part by strong donor support, have led to the Chobanian & Avedisian School being ranked 32nd among research medical schools in the 2023 U.S. News & World Report.

In 2022, Nancy J. Sullivan, a nationally renowned infectious diseases expert and chief of the Biodefense Research Section at the federal government’s Vaccine Research Center, was named the new director of BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), a leading academic research center that allows scientists to study infectious diseases and pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, Ebola, and Zika, in a Nancy J. Sullivan protected environment.

The NEIDL holds a prominent position in BU’s Strategic Plan for 2030, given its importance to understanding and developing coordinated responses to emerging threats from infectious diseases. Sullivan’s longtime focus has been the fight against Ebola, Marburg, and other hemorrhagic fever viruses. She was recently named as the inaugural holder of an Edward Avedisian Professorship.

LEVERAGING A PERSONAL STRUGGLE FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD Richard Shipley (Questrom’68,’72, Hon.’22) When BU Trustee Emeritus Richard Shipley was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he did what anyone would do: he started researching his options. But he found that it was nearly impossible to obtain a full list, much less accurate pros and cons, of the diagnostic and treatment options available. The data that was available was often biased, poorly organized, and written in language that required a medical degree to understand. In 2016, the Shipley Foundation acted on its mission of improving the diagnosis and treatment of disease by creating the Shipley Prostate Cancer Research Center at the Chobanian & Avedisian School, which explores new prostate cancer treatments and generates information to help educate men about the breadth of available options so they can, with their healthcare team, find the treatment that works best for them.

Richard Shipley

ON THE FRONT LINE: CANCER

GOALS AND PRIORITIES The BU-BMC Cancer Center brings together a diverse group of researchers from across the BU community who are involved in cancer research, broadly defined—ranging from basic laboratory science to patient care to population-based studies. The Center embodies BU’s tradition of collaborative, interdisciplinary research, including inquiries focused on understanding the molecular events associated with cancer initiation and progression in high-risk populations, and the direct translation of these findings into the clinical realm. The Center also draws upon the richly diverse patient population of Boston Medical Center to ask and answer questions about cancer in new ways. For example: How can revolutionary new cancer therapies that have only been tested on small, selected groups of patients be made available to much larger populations—and thereby reduce disparities in health outcomes? Pictured left to right, below, are the Center’s three codirectors: Julie Palmer (SON’80, SPH’85), Matthew Kulke, and Gerald V. Denis.

SUPPORTING FACILITIES THAT SUPPORT EDUCATION Within the crowded, expensive confines of our Boston neighborhood, the Chobanian & Avedisian School works hard to provide appropriate facilities to support medical education, in terms of both living and learning. With the help of our donors, we invest strategically in the spaces and places that promise practical benefits to our community.

In 2012, for example, thanks in large part to philanthropic support, we opened our Medical Student Residence (MSR)—a state-of-the-art, nine-story building that today houses more than 200 students. Safe, convenient, and attractive, it is a vibrant hub of student life on the Medical Campus. Our students save meaningful sums they otherwise would likely have had to borrow, since the rent is significantly below market rates. The MSR has had such a transformative effect on our campus and our community that we aspire to create more space just like it, as our students’ need for affordable housing remains urgently high.

More remains to be done to upgrade our living, learning, and study areas, and more philanthropic support is welcome. Such gifts—which the school recognizes through prominent naming opportunities—help us modernize the school. They enable us to reduce our commitment of operating dollars to bricks and mortar and instead direct those funds to other areas of pressing need—scholarships, research, and other investments.

A top priority today is to create more and better space for our Clinical Skills and Simulation Center, which will help perpetuate our proud tradition of educating doctors who are particularly humanistic and caring. Today we have 12 small examining rooms—not nearly enough space for the 400 students using the facilities each year—as well as dated simulation technology and a lack of team learning space. This is a place where students can practice basic procedures safely—safe for their learning and their patients.

Expanding and upgrading it is a key need.

More recently, again with help from our donors, we have made substantial improvements to the Gross Anatomy Lab. A generous estate gift from the Miselis family supported the renovation of the Alumni Medical Library, including the creation of extensive new study areas for students.

AN ESSENTIAL TEACHING AND LEARNING SPACE, UPGRADED Recent and generous donor support has brought many enhancements to the school’s Gross Anatomy Lab, including LED lighting, improved ventilation systems, and several state-of-the-art teaching tools. An ultrasound system enables teaching on both live subjects and cadavers, and a virtual dissection table lets students visualize human anatomy without the chemicals and other drawbacks of traditional cadavers. “Taken together, the enhancements to the Gross Anatomy Lab made possible by this very generous gift will greatly facilitate medical education across all four years of education,” says Waterhouse Professor and Anatomy & Neurobiology Chair Jennifer I. Luebke, PhD (GRS’90).

Above and facing page: the Gross Anatomy Lab

BRIDGING THE FUNDING DIVIDE Peter Paul (Questrom’71) found his philanthropic calling at Boston University in creating Career Development Professorships in support of junior faculty across the University—many of them at the Chobanian & Avedisian School.

Awarded to the most promising assistant professors, these professorships provide funding when time invested in research is most critical. With this invaluable boost, they are “bridged” on their way to acquiring careertransforming funding (from the National Institutes of Health, for instance) for their longer-term research projects. Some use their funding from the professorship to temporarily opt out of teaching to spend more time in the lab and hire research assistants.

Peter Paul at an annual dinner celebrating Career Development Professors

From Paul’s perspective, these professorships allow him to direct his giving where it’s most needed. “Incremental giving on the margins can make a big impact,” he says. He’s also happy to build relationships with recipients. One of the first Peter Paul Career Development Professors was John H. Connor, a current associate professor of microbiology at Boston University. Paul continues to follow his career and even joined Connor for a tour of the NEIDL facility. For nearly two decades, Paul has celebrated new cohorts of recipients with a dinner party and the sharing of wine from his own label.

Though Paul gives generously within Boston University and elsewhere, he says he has a special place in his heart for the medical school Career Development Professorships, in part because recipients tend to stay and develop their careers here, and because BU—in his words and informed by his past service on the Board of Trustees—“has really launched itself in the world.” The recipients of his generous giving have also had the opportunity to do just that.

A DEBT OF GRATITUDE In 1954, when Lou Sullivan arrived from Georgia as a student at BU’s medical school, it was his first experience in a nonsegregated environment. Would his classmates see him as a peer? But he quickly bonded with others—soon friends—and three weeks in, received one of the class’s highest grades on his first exam. By his second year, he was class president. Boston University opened the door, but Lou Sullivan walked through it prepared.

Dr. Sabrina Assoumou and Dr. Lou Sullivan

In Georgia, Dr. Sullivan had seen health inequality firsthand—where the only doctor willing to see African American patients for miles around was among his first heroes.

In his nearly 65 years in medicine, academia, and public service since receiving his BU degree, Dr. Sullivan (CAMED’58, Hon.’90) has never forgotten his wish to bring equity to healthcare. His storied career includes founding the Boston University hematology lab, founding the Morehouse School of Medicine, serving on George H.W. Bush’s cabinet as Health & Human Services secretary, and much more. He continues to be an influential advocate for equitable healthcare in this country.

Dr. Sullivan has given back to Boston University in what he calls “paying down a debt of gratitude.” With his gift, and additional support, the Chobanian & Avedisian School endowed the Louis W. Sullivan, MD, Professorship in Medicine and named Dr. Sabrina Assoumou as its inaugural incumbent. Dr. Assoumou was moved that Boston University thought to set up the professorship in honor of Dr. Sullivan. “It is an honor to be named after someone who is so transformational,” she says.

Dr. Assoumou is a clinician-investigator who conducts research at the Chobanian & Avedisian School and cares for patients at the Boston Medical Center for Infectious Diseases. She says the professorship has allowed her to be more creative in her research—toward which she now devotes 75% of her time while also on an NIH career development award. Endowing a professorship, she says, “enables support critical to the development of researchers and the freedom to explore uncharted territory.” One of her larger goals, she adds, is “to open doors for people who look like me.” She remembers those first semesters as a student observing a physician at work and knowing, “I want to be just like you.”

Dr. Assoumou carries forward Dr. Sullivan’s legacy in her clinical work, her teaching, and her research—all advanced by generous gifts.

WHAT’S IN A NAME? The late Edward Avedisian (CFA’59’61, Hon.’22) marked his $100 million gift to BU’s medical school in a way that honored his lifelong friendship with renowned cardiologist and BU’s ninth president, Aram V. Chobanian (Hon.’06), who navigated the merger of Boston City Hospital with Boston University Medical Center Hospital. Today, both men’s names are forever linked in the newly designated Boston University Aram V. Chobanian & Edward Avedisian School of Medicine.

In fact, this naming was a “grand compromise” BU President Robert A. Brown helped them reach when, in humility, both men demurred the honor. Avedisian’s connections to Boston University run deep—from studying clarinet, and later teaching it, at the College of Fine Arts, and a 20-year history of philanthropic giving. His career in music included playing for both the Boston Pops and the Boston Ballet Orchestra, and his philanthropy included gifts to the College of Fine Arts and several Armenian causes.

The import of Avedisian’s gift cannot be overstated. Dean Karen Antman says it will do no less than “transform the medical school.” The endowed fund will include $50 million to support scholarships for medical students and $25 million to support endowed professorships, one of which honors Richard K. Babayan, professor and chair emeritus of urology and former chief of urology at Boston Medical Center. An additional $25 million will endow the Avedisian Fund for Excellence to keep the school at the forefront of research and teaching. Pictured left to right, below, are Edward Avedisian and Aram Chobanian at the School of Medicine naming ceremony.

JOIN US As we look to the future, we know that some things will never change.

We have always treated, and will always treat, the underserved. We have always championed, and will always champion, diversity and inclusion. And we have always provided, and will always provide, a rich education to the physicians and scientists of tomorrow.

Our values and principles are constant. Yet our work changes every day, because medicine does, too. Frontline medicine means being ambitious and flexible—and it requires resources.

The BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine has always done more with less.

But now we are raising our sights. We seek to make strategic investments in our long-term future—in research, education, faculty, and facilities. Our donors share our passion and our purpose. Together, we’ve done great things—but there is more to do.

We hope that you, too, will join us at the front line of medicine.

© 2023 by the Trustees of Boston University.

All rights reserved.

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