Georgetown Health Summer 2022

Summer 2022

Community

Health

Working together to help people and communities thrive

SUMMER 2022

Community Health

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Care with a community focus

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Bridging the opportunity gap

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New nursing dean seeks partnerships, leans into challenges

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Community health in the nation’s capital

Fighting both the pandemic and the stress of the pandemic

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Photo: Georgetown University Special Collections

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News & Research

On Campus Bookshelf Alumni Connections Reflections on Health Lori Wilson, MD (C’88, M’94)

From the Archives Outreach to D.C.-area schools has long been an integral part of a Georgetown University education. In this photo, students from the School of Dentistry visit a local classroom. Do you know the people shown here?

If so reach out to us at healthmagazine@georgetown.edu to let us know the whole story.

A reader remembers the old hospital The winter issue of Georgetown Health, which I finally had time to look at after Christmas, jumped off the pages when I saw the archives photo on the inside cover. I recognized not only the old hospital, which became my homeaway-from-home two years after that picture was taken, but people in the picture. Where in the world did you find it?

John Gillespie, in the forefront behind the nurse, later became Chief of Surgery and was probably a resident at the time. Mike Lapadula had to be a med student. Two of the student nurses were seniors when our class “went on the floor.” Both men were good friends and colleagues of my future husband Charles E. Hannan, whom I met when he was a resident.

All the above are now deceased. I am a late bloomer, so I am still here. I got married at 30, had the last of my six children at 46, went back to work at 60 (after a refresher course at Georgetown), and worked until age 85 when my OB/GYN boss closed the practice.

With time to do my thing, I began to write. I am now writing my fourth book, a sequel to the last one, In the Light of Winter, which takes place mostly in Georgetown as the protagonist is a professor there. It is a love story for older people. My current book takes the same couple along the winter of their lives, while trying to resolve the issue of whether two people who love each other can be compatible if they do not have the same belief system regarding the next life.

The article introducing the new medical dean Lee Jones, MD, and his husband, Bill Flynn, MD, was heartwarming as I have a gay son, who is well-educated and a joy to be around.

Thanks for doing a tremendous job with the magazine. I enjoy reading all of it.

Best wishes, Nancy Moore Hannan (NHS’52)

Office of Advancement R. Bartley Moore (SFS’87) Vice President for Advancement Amy Levin Associate Vice President for Communications Erin Greene Assistant Vice President of Creative

Georgetown Magazine Staff Camille Scarborough, Editorial Team Lead Jane Varner Malhotra (G’21), Features Editor Elisa Morsch (G’20), Creative Director

Editorial Team Heidi Atlas, Karen Doss Bowman, Kate Colwell (G’20), Michael Miller, Patti North, Sara Piccini, Bhriana Smith, Karen Teber, Lauren Wolkoff (G’13), Kat Zambon

Design Team Wanda Felsenhardt, Shikha Savdas

Project Manager Hilary Koss

University Photographer Phil Humnicky Georgetown Health Magazine 2115 Wisconsin Ave., NW, Suite 400 Washington, DC 20007-1253 Feedback and story ideas: healthmagazine@georgetown.edu Address changes: alumnirecords@georgetown.edu Summer 2022 | Georgetown Health Magazine Georgetown Health Magazine is distributed free of charge to alumni, parents, faculty, and staff. The diverse views in the magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or official policies of the university.

The “From the Archives” from Fall/Winter 2021 showed patients being moved from the old Georgetown Hospital at 35th and N Streets NW to the new facility on Reservoir Road.

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Georgetown University provides equal opportunity in employment for all persons, and prohibits unlawful discrimination and harassment in all aspects of employment because of age, color, disability, family responsibilities, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, matriculation, national origin, personal appearance, political affiliation, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran’s status, or any other factor prohibited by law. Additionally, the university will use good-faith efforts to achieve ethnic and gender diversity throughout the workforce. The university emphasizes recruitment of women, minority members, disabled individuals, and veterans. Inquiries regarding Georgetown University’s nondiscrimination policy may be addressed to the Director of Affirmative Action Programs, Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action, 37th and O Sts. NW, Suite M36, Darnall Hall, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, or call 202-687-4798. © 2022 Georgetown University

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Photo: Courtesty of Caleb McKinney, PhD, MS

Building diversity in biomedical science n n In early January 2022, Georgetown University received a highly competitive and prestigious training grant from the National Institutes of Health intended to invigorate the workforce and inspire students from diverse backgrounds to pursue doctoral degrees in biomedical sciences.

The new program, known as the Georgetown University Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD), will train a diverse, multidisciplinary group of graduate students, targeting enrollment of individuals underrepresented in biomedical research. The five-year program officially commenced in February 2022 and will enroll its first trainees in July. In total, the program will train 20 doctoral students, far more than other training grants.

This initiative brings together 61 faculty members from seven graduate programs and Prior to the pandemic, McKinney (far right) invited Dr. Poorva Dharkar (fourth from right) to departments across Georgetown. The three campus to meet with Georgetown’s Women in Science & Education student group leaders. main-campus departments include Biology, At the time Dharkar was president of the Association for Women in Science, Bethesda Chemistry, and Physics. The four Biomedical Chapter. She and the students discussed ways to support gender equity in science.

Graduate Education (BGE) programs are Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular A sense of belonging Biology; the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience; One common thread among all of these training activities is Pharmacology & Physiology; and Tumor Biology, where the integration of different forms of mentorship. All trainee the IMSD program is managed administratively. and faculty mentors in the IMSD will be required to undergo “Building upon our success in graduate professional formal training to maximize inclusive and effective practices development and identity formation, we are providing in mentorship, as well as evidence-informed teaching. our trainees with a professional toolkit and a community Students in the program also have the opportunity to of resources to maximize their career success,” says mentor undergraduate and master’s students from diverse Caleb McKinney, PhD, MPS, assistant professor of backgrounds as they consider plans for graduate school and rehabilitation medicine and assistant dean of BGE’s future careers in science. training and development.

“We’re hoping to create a sense of belonging for the McKinney is one of the principal investigators, along trainees, certainly within the community of scientists with Kathleen Maguire-Zeiss, PhD, professor and chair as the first circle, but then extending vertically,” Rolfes of neuroscience, and Ronda Rolfes, PhD, professor and says. “We want to support students, especially those from director of graduate studies in the department of biology. underrepresented groups, even as first-year undergraduates, To maximize student well-being, the program so that they can connect and imagine a world where they incorporates protocols to monitor progress, individualized move through graduate education and beyond.” development plans, tailored learning support structures, Ultimately, these efforts will reduce the isolation that wellness workshops, and financial assistance as needed. many trainees have felt in the past. By forming a tightly knit Trainees and faculty also learn from and support community with their peers and faculty, these students can each other through POP (Power of Peers) Circles, an carry those alliances forward in their careers. externally facilitated coaching program to build resilience, “We will provide these trainees with the support necessary accountability, and well-being. to build a cohort that we hope will become lifelong colleagues,” says Maguire-Zeiss. n

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Reversing stress damage

MRI makes a difference

n n Researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center recently found that aging cells can be an underlying cause of kidney damage. Working with mice, they studied stress and tissue damage initiated by angiotensin II, a molecule that is known to increase blood pressure and stiffening in the linings of blood vessels.

Results showed cellular senescence, a process by which a cell ages and permanently stops dividing but does not die. Importantly, when the researchers eliminated senescent cells from the mice, tissues returned to a normal state in spite of a continued infusion of angiotensin II. The researchers chose angiotensin II as the tool to best induce chronic stress because they could regulate its administration and induce a measured stress level similar to that seen in people who see a slow rise in blood pressure over a lifetime.

“There is a pressing need to address the serious systemic effects of high blood pressure and come up with novel treatments to avoid or reverse damage to the kidneys,” says Anton Wellstein, MD, PhD, professor of oncology and pharmacology at Georgetown Lombardi and corresponding author for the article published last December in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.

Wellstein explains that people can be given angiotensin-lowering drugs to treat their high blood pressure, but they have to be given continuously for a lifetime and may need to be combined with other drugs to improve their efficacy.

“Essentially, we’re building the biological basis for a new therapeutic approach to address the senescence aspect of disease that has mostly been unexplored and untreated,” he says. “Eliminating senescent cells with a tolerable, short-term therapy could potentially alleviate chronic cardiovascular disease and reduce the need for a lifetime of therapy.”

The researchers don’t think anti-senescence drugs are going to be the fountain of youth, but they hope to be able to reverse some premature tissue damage. n

n n A recently published modeling analysis provides a clear direction for physicians attempting to advise women with ATM, CHEK2, and PALB2 genes, which increase risk of breast cancer and are collectively as prevalent as the much-reported BRCA1/2 gene mutations.

For women with these genetic changes, annual MRI screenings starting at ages 30 to 35 may reduce breast cancer mortality by more than 50%.

Researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center collaborated with the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET), the Cancer Risk Estimates Related to Susceptibility (CARRIERS) consortium, and the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium.

Using established simulation models, the researchers input age-specific risk estimates provided by CARRIERS and recently published data involving more than 32,000 breast cancer patients and a similar number of patients without cancer.

“Modeling is a powerful tool to synthesize and extend clinical trial and national cohort data to estimate the benefits and harms of different cancer control strategies at population levels,” said Jeanne Mandelblatt, MD, MPH, a professor at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and a senior author of the paper published earlier this year in JAMA Oncology.

To realize the benefit of cancer screening guidelines based on genetic susceptibility, a woman would need to know she carries an implicated gene variant before receiving a disease diagnosis. More often it’s the case that a genetic test panel is administered after someone tests positive for cancer—too late to be of preventive value for the patient, but potentially lifesaving for blood relatives who could seek genetic testing. n

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Photo: iStock / Image: Dr. Steven Harmes. Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas Texas

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Artificial intelligence helps profile virus hosts Where should we be looking for the next SARS? That’s the question being asked by Colin Carlson, PhD, an assistant research professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology and a member of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Carlson and his team recently published a study in Lancet Microbe demonstrating that artificial intelligence can help predict which viruses could infect humans— like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that led to the COVID-19 pandemic—as well as which animals host them, and where they could emerge.

“If you want to find these viruses, you have to start by profiling their hosts: their ecology, their evolution, even the shape of their wings,” explains Carlson. “Artificial intelligence lets us take data on bats and turn it into concrete predictions.”

In the first quarter of 2020, the Georgetown-based research team, in collaboration with 12 other universities and the American Museum of Natural History, developed eight different statistical models that predicted which kinds of animals could host betacoronaviruses. Over the course of 18 months, the team tracked the discovery of 40 new bat hosts of betacoronaviruses to validate initial predictions and dynamically update their models. nn

The researchers found that models harnessing data on bat ecology and evolution performed extremely well at predicting new hosts. In contrast, cutting-edge models from network science that used high-level mathematics—but less biological data—performed roughly as well or worse than expected at random.

“If we spend less money, resources, and time looking for these viruses, we can put all of those resources into the things that actually save lives down the road. We can invest in building universal vaccines to target those viruses, or monitoring for spillover in people that live near bats,” says Carlson. “It’s a win-win for science and public health.” n

Imagining a new system In February 2022, Rev. Michael Rozier, S.J., the School of Nursing & Health Studies’ first Visiting Jesuit Chair in the Department of Health Systems Administration, spoke at the Values Based Lecture, held via Zoom. He pointed out that people in the U.S. are not entitled to primary health care, but they are guaranteed medical treatment when faced with a lifethreatening situation.

“This creates a tragic situation where someone who wants to get preventative care for their diabetes might not have access to regular checkups or insulin, but once their foot is ready to be amputated, we will provide access,” Rozier

Image: iStock

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said. “My hope is that we can imagine a system that reminds everyone who enters it that they are sacred, worthy of dignity, a system that brings us together around a common purpose, a system that widely uses the many gifts we have been entrusted with.”

The Values Based Lecture was sponsored by the School of Nursing & Health Studies Committee on Mission and Values as part of the celebration of the Ignatian Year, commemorating 500 years since the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius of Loyola, had his conversion experience. n

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Community Health 6

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Musings on circles and contexts

W

hen I was a young girl, I used to love finding hidden ponds where I could quietly skip rocks. I enjoyed the challenge of searching for a perfectly flat rock, practicing how to flick my wrist as I tossed it, and counting the number of times it skipped along the surface. But it was the aftermath that always captivated me. I remember standing still, watching the ripples they made. I loved the way each concentric ring radiated outward, eventually reaching the far distant end of the pond.

I thought about those moments of zen often as the stories for this issue came together. We decided to focus on Georgetown’s efforts in community health, an area of focus where the university draws from many strengths. For me, the concentric circles at that pond visually reflect the work that radiates outward from Georgetown.

One article from Preventive Medicine defines community health as “a multisector and multi-disciplinary collaborative enterprise that uses public health science, evidence-based strategies, and other approaches to engage and partner with communities, in a culturally appropriate manner, to optimize the health and quality of life of all persons who live, work, or are otherwise active there.”

The alumni, students, staff, faculty members, and leaders introduced in this issue are integral parts of these “collaborative enterprises,” these intersecting, ever-widening circles—like my circles at the pond. They are meeting people where they are, asking the hard questions, and taking the incremental steps that will make a difference in the long term. Many are also changing the future by bringing greater diversity and an equity-oriented mindset into the health care field.

Of course, as Dean Healton shared in our planning meeting for this issue, we must acknowledge that we don’t know what all the right answers are. “But as a university, we can provide a multi-pronged approach. We can be a sustained presence in our local communities.”

Dean Jones stressed the importance of listening. “Successful programs let the community lead the decision-making. To improve health disparities, we need to really engage and listen.”

Our newest school leader, Dean Waite, is attending D.C. community meetings even before she relocates from Philadelphia, her home for most of her education and career. As part of her work at Drexel, she served as executive director of the Stephen and Sandra Sheller 11th Street Family Health Services, operated in partnership with The Family Practice and Counseling Network. A model for comprehensive care, it’s designed to “serve people in the context of their community, family, and culture.”

I think the word “context” is at the heart of what we seek to do at Georgetown.

We are trying to understand the big picture so that we can truly be people for others.

Reading these stories, I’m reminded that the things we do for a person can have a greater effect than we realize. We are all connected. We are all ripples in that pond. n

Photo: iStock

—Camille Scarborough, Editorial Team Lead

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“With fewer resources you have to be creative as the provider in how you’re able to advocate and facilitate care for your patients, so it takes a lot of initiative, mental effort, and courage.”

—Mutsa Nyakabau, MD, MPH (M’15)

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Care with a community focus: alumni in the field

By Jane Varner Malhotra and Bhriana Smith

With community health so closely tied to Georgetown’s emphasis on cura personalis, or care for the whole person, Georgetown alumni are well-represented in the field, approaching health care with an eye toward social factors, the environment, and overall population health.

Photo: Courtesy of Mutsa Nyakabau

Here we tell the stories of just three of the thousands of Georgetown alumni in the community health field, making an impact in different ways to meet patients where they are.

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Creating a medical home For pediatrician Mutsa Nyakabau, MD, MPH (M’15), a passion for community health grew out of his experiences living in Zimbabwe, his home country.

“The socioeconomic environment back home is very challenging, so I’ve always been oriented towards an approach to health care that incorporates not just an individual’s health but the public health element, too,” he says. Today he offers holistic care that considers the social determinants of health for his patients and their families.

He practices at Family Healthcare of Hagerstown, Maryland, a mid-sized town in a semi-rural area about an hour and half from Washington, D.C. The federally qualified health center serves a population that is underresourced, with many on Medicaid and some uninsured.

The patients include a large number of struggling immigrant families facing serious economic hardship. The center offers family medicine and pediatric care under one roof, including pediatric psychiatry and dentistry.

“We try to provide a medical home for underserved communities in the Hagerstown area,” says Nyakabau.

“It was my job to start the pediatric practice. It’s been a gradual evolution, but we’ve brought in this spectrum of care and we’re seeing the benefits for our patients and the population.”

Both in the pediatric and the adult patient community, he sees a persistent need for mental health care due to adverse childhood experiences.

“I see a lot of depression and suicidality, a lot of ADHD and autism spectrum disorders,” he notes, adding that certain afflictions occur in the perinatal history or developmental phases of a child’s life, which can exacerbate these issues. By offering one centralized medical home for a person’s diverse health needs, the providers foster whole patient care. “That’s why it’s essential that you have all these things in place— primary care, mental health,

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and dentistry—because if one is missing, it eventually leads to a lapse in effective delivery of care to our patients.”

For him, community health integrates the individual aspect of patient care with the health of the population at large.

“Community health is a perspective and a delivery of health care that takes into account the many challenges that an individual faces within their respective community, so it is not just a static way of looking at health. It’s a fluid and dynamic perspective that adapts to the changing environment that an individual lives in. It is meeting the health care needs of an individual where they are.”

Nyakabau completed his undergraduate degree at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, then applied to medical schools. He got into Georgetown but planned to

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turn down the offer and study in Malawi instead because he could not afford the tuition. Then he received an email that would change the course of his life: he had been awarded a Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Scholarship for Peace, which would cover his Georgetown tuition.

Senior Associate Dean of International Programs Irma Frank, DDS, had nominated him for the scholarship, which enables international students with financial need, especially those from socially conflicted areas of the world, to attend Georgetown. “That was a life-changing moment for me, and speaks to Georgetown’s commitment to individuals who desire the opportunity to be an influence in the world for the better,” Nyakabau says.

He continues to pay this generosity forward. “You never can truly appreciate how an act of kindness, however small, might have an impact in a multiplicative fashion,” he says.

“I encourage all my alumni colleagues who, even in the throes of COVID-19 might feel their work is insignificant, to continue to embody what we learned at Georgetown.

Because ultimately, who knows—you might be helping a young individual like myself from a disadvantaged population achieve their goal, whether it’s a patient who just needs that kind or gentle word, or a colleague who is disheartened and thinking about quitting the profession.

These small acts of kindness go a long way towards being life-changing for others.”

He hopes to entice more individuals to be interested in community health, noting the challenges of recruiting into the field. “We serve a challenging population both from a medical standpoint and from a social standpoint,” he explains. “With fewer resources you have to be creative as the provider in how you’re able to advocate and facilitate care for your patients, so it takes a lot of initiative, mental effort, and courage.

“It’s a vocation within your practice of medicine to care for individuals where they’re needed most,” he says, adding that he hopes to see more Georgetown alumni in the field. “The best and the brightest!”

Advocating for community support

“Community health takes a bird’s eye view on health and health care, to help us think about the multifactorial influences on health.”

Photo: Courtesy of Juliette Carr

—Juliette Carr (G’21)

When Juliette Carr (G’21) wanted to find a master’s program that could encompass her passion for social justice work as it relates to health and health care access, she decided on the online Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program with Georgetown’s School of Nursing & Health Studies.

“Georgetown was a good fit,” says Carr. “The program’s emphasis on social justice in health care is a big part of how I see my role, not just as a family nurse practitioner but specifically my role in my rural Vermont community that serves primarily lower socioeconomic and marginalized people.”

The online master’s program at Georgetown allowed Carr to remain in her community to continue providing care and advocating for improvements to the system. At the time, she worked in labor, delivery, and postpartum and newborn nurseries in varying health centers and critical access hospitals in Vermont.

“It’s really satisfying work,” says Carr. “You’re often present for the most important moments in people’s lives.”

Carr notes that community health care requires a truly holistic approach.

“Community health takes a bird’s eye view on health and health care, to help us think about the multifactorial

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influences on health,” she says. “Not just your medical diagnoses and ‘How is your body working today?’ but psychologically, psychosocially, evaluating emotional health and determining access to essential resources.”

Social determinants of health are the variety of influences that make a person healthy, she says. In her rural area, people face financial challenges and many are elderly— factors that influence the health of the wider community.

“And it’s not just income and age. It’s also transportation and access to heat. The temperature can get to negative 20 degrees in Vermont,” says Carr.

“Working at a rural health center is an incredible privilege to help fill these gaps. It feels like community service at times. It’s health care, but it’s also all of the psychosocial support and resource knowledge. I have to be really on top of my community’s resources, knowing who can help, but the fact of the matter is that we don’t have a lot of community resources. We don’t have medical specialists. We have very few psychiatric providers. We are very limited.”

She also uses appointments to connect patients who have critical needs with support services.

“I recently referred a patient to a food bank via one of my personal connections,” she says. “This is stuff that I do as part of an annual physical, because the food insecurity is bad enough, and there is a transportation barrier that prevents the patient from physically going to the food bank.”

This kind of care is what community health is all about, she says.

In addition to her nursing, Carr is a dedicated herbalist, and her farm is a registered Botanical Sanctuary through United Plant Savers, an organization that works to protect at-risk plants, especially medicinal plants. She maintains teaching gardens, and has obtained grant funding to restore the forest habitat and protect endangered plants in Vermont.

She sees a real synchronicity between her work with plants and her work with people, noting that “nursing makes me a much better herbalist, and herbalism makes me a much better nurse.”

Reflecting on her time at Georgetown, Carr names two professors who particularly influenced her path: Lois Wessel (G’97) and Tracy Zvenyach.

“They were so engaged and committed to their topics. Dr. Zvenyach taught my Health Care Policy & Advocacy class,” says Carr. “She completely changed my understanding of what my impact could be at the state level. Because of her class, I am now a co-chair of the Legislative Advocacy Committee of the American Nurses Association in Vermont,

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and I wrote a bill that is currently being reviewed in the state legislature.

“Dr. Wessel is very committed to justice in health care and health care access. Seeing someone at her level able to hold that commitment and teach about it showed me how to channel my passion.”

In addition to providing care, Carr advocates for policy change to help her patients. Her small town in Vermont used to have more critical access hospitals and other federally funded facilities in the area, but their numbers are shrinking, she says. She also cites reform of the health insurance system and autonomy for nurse practitioners as critical policy issues to address. “Nurse practitioners are widely recognized as providing high-quality health care at a low price point,” she notes.

Providing high-quality, low-cost care Carl Whittaker, MD (M’04) is a family physician who practices full spectrum family medicine and obstetrics at the Central City Clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah, part of a group of federally qualified community health centers in the region.

He grew up in Corona, California, a smaller city in the southern part of the state. The son of a family physician, he knew from an early age that he wanted to practice medicine.

After college at Brigham Young University, where he was an American Studies major, he came to Georgetown to study medicine.

“I really enjoyed surgery and other specialties, but I came back to the idea, probably from my dad, of focusing on prevention. I wanted to take care of people in a family setting and not be limited to one specific part of the body,” he says.

He did his residency at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, drawn to its unique blend of offering all the specialties of an academic center but with much of the inpatient work taking place at a community hospital.

“A lot of places are either academic or community-based, but this was kind of a hybrid, which I found pretty attractive because there were benefits to both programs,” he says. “The community health center clinics are very interesting. They have a lot of diseases that you may not see in a university setting and a great population to work with, not just the patients but also other physicians and mentors in family medicine.”

He went on to complete an obstetrics fellowship at the University of Utah, and now cares for OB patients with higher risks including C-section deliveries. For the past 12 years, he has been the family medicine OB fellowship

“We try to make it affordable, caring for the higher risk, marginalized population that would otherwise not have anywhere else to go.”

Photo: Courtesy of Carl Whittaker

—Carl Whittaker, MD (M’04)

director at the University of Utah through a partnership between the university and Community Health Centers, Inc. “The concept of community health centers began as a movement over 50 years ago as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty,” says Whittaker. “The idea was to give good health care—evidence-based, cost effective care— to everybody. These centers often care for those who are uninsured or underinsured and marginalized by society.”

His clinic serves this population in urban Salt Lake City, where many patients are either uninsured or on Medicaid.

“Our motto is that we’re here to take care of patients, regardless of their ability to pay,” he says, noting that “It’s a really low-cost facility. A normal visit, for whatever reason, would be $35 with us and that covers everything—the visit,

labs, any imaging. We try to make it affordable, caring for the higher risk, marginalized population that would otherwise not have anywhere else to go.”

Whittaker sees a close connection between his work today and the values that were part of his medical education at Georgetown. He remembers the collegiality he felt with his classmates, and gets together with a group of them once a year in Utah to reconnect.

“The Jesuit foundation and the idea of cura personalis— caring for the whole person—comes through at Georgetown.

It sneaks in and seems to permeate everywhere. In community health we try to take care of the whole person and take care of society. Even though it’s hard work and some days exhausting, it’s rewarding.” n

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New nursing dean seeks partnerships, leans into challenges

By Camille Scarborough

A fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the Academy of Nurse Education of the National League for Nursing, Waite joins Georgetown from Drexel University, where she is a professor of nursing and executive director of the university’s Stephen and Sandra Sheller 11th Street Family Health Services—a nurse-managed, community-based organization that serves diverse and vulnerable populations and public housing residents.

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Photo: Mike DeRario

On July 1, Dr. Roberta Waite will begin service as dean of the newly reconceptualized and standalone Georgetown University School of Nursing—one that continues a nearly 120-year history of nursing education at Georgetown and will grow from the current School of Nursing & Health Studies. The School of Nursing & Health Studies will sunset with the July 1 launch of the School of Nursing and the School of Health, to be led by Dr. Christopher J. King

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What attracted you to the Georgetown role?

I’m at a point in my career where I am ready for a multifaceted challenge and the opportunity to have a greater impact on the nursing profession. Georgetown’s stated values align with mine, and I was heartened by faculty’s focus with an emphasis on health equity and social justice. I was really excited to learn more.

I felt welcomed into the community even as a candidate.

The search team really wanted to get to know me, to find out what inspires me. When I walked onto campus for the first time, I felt this sense of belonging. It really touched my soulspace in a way I wasn’t expecting. I’m a native of Philly, including my college years. I’ve never strayed far from the area. But this position is worth the uprooting.

With the separation of the schools, there is an immense opportunity to develop something special for the nursing profession, which is quite timely given the vast healthrelated issues our country is confronting. Preparing nurses across roles to envision what’s needed to optimize health and realize what’s needed to create a just society is critical.

Leveraging Georgetown’s ethos to propel this work for our students is foundational.

What do you want the Georgetown community to know about you?

Relationships are everything to me. I love getting to know people and having them get to know me. I also like to work with a mission and engaging everyone to be part of it. I think the mission of Georgetown’s School of Nursing is important for not just the students and faculty, but also the staff and alumni. Engaging alumni to be part of our growth and evolution is vital. Also, our partners at MedStar play a pivotal role with endeavors of the School of Nursing.

Together, we can have a positive impact on the university community and the D.C. area.

Do you have a vision for the student experience at Georgetown?

I want students to take a healthy dose of Vitamin C—that is, Vitamin Courage. To me courage means thinking differently, leaning into discomfort. I know we have phenomenal students at Georgetown, but I don’t want them to be complacent. I want them to expand on their gifts, to experience places and ideas that make them look at things in a new way.

There are so many ways that nurses can impact health.

They can heal but also improve and optimize well-being.

In academia we have so many resources. We need to recognize that many of the people seeking health care are not thriving because they don’t have resources, with intentional disinvestment. Also, present-day structural systems infuse and sustain barriers inhibiting their ability to thrive giving rise

to social influencers of health and pervasive health inequities.

Students need to obtain structural competency in order to recognize those challenges first-hand, even if it makes them uncomfortable. In fact, they should be uncomfortable—that is how you learn. I want the School of Nursing to be a learning space, individually and collectively. To get there, students, staff, and faculty may need to lean into vulnerability.

What are you looking forward to doing in your first few months on the Hilltop?

I’m excited to get to know more people at the School of Nursing as well as my fellow deans and our partners at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. What drives them? What inspires them? What are their aspirations? I also want to engage with the key leaders in the community so I can set up partnerships that will be mutually beneficial.

I’ll ask what they need and consider what we can offer.

It’s important to me to get a sense of all the voices, especially those that have been intentionally disenfranchised.

I know there are groups who feel invisible. I will attend some events related to racial justice in D.C. even before I settle into the Hilltop. I want the community to know about Georgetown nursing so that we can create a pipeline for students who might not see themselves in that role. We need to mentor those who don’t understand the coursework or application process because the world needs more nurses and more diversity in nursing. To get there, we must be proactive and intentional with our actions and resources.

“It’s important to me to get a sense of all the voices, especially those that have been intentionally disenfranchised. I know there are groups who feel invisible.”

What would surprise readers about you?

I’m a mom to two fur babies: Imani and Layla, two mixed breed dogs I got from a shelter. I’ve always been a dog lover— and in fact, there was a time that I wanted to be a vet.

I believe that people should work hard and play hard, so I love to travel every chance I can get. I love exploring new locations, especially family vacations.

But most weekends you will find me in my garden. My husband focuses on the vegetables, and I focus on the flowers.

It’s so fulfilling to create something beautiful. n

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Community health in the nation’s capital

By Lauren Wolkoff

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COMMUNITY HEALTH

I

f COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that health is local—and extremely personal.

As the pandemic soared across the country, so raged nationwide debates on mask requirements, vaccine mandates, and school closures. And yet the picture that has emerged over the past two years is highly localized, demonstrating the need to tailor health strategies to specific contexts and to listen to what people in the community say they want and need.

Community health scholars and practitioners have long understood that you cannot apply a uniform lens to solving health issues. Each community has its own unique context and needs that must be factored in when shaping public health policies and interventions. And within each community, each person has a unique story to tell that will impact their health outcomes.

Yet this is not how health systems currently operate, according to experts.

“There are many opportunities for improvement. We often have this mindset that we know what a community needs, so we build it and expect them to come,” says Christopher J. King, PhD, MHSc, FACHE, chair of the Department of Health Systems Administration at Georgetown’s School of Nursing & Health Studies, dean select of the new School of Health. “Instead, we have to partner with the community, humble ourselves, and recognize we don’t know all the answers. We can learn from the community.”

Photos: iStock / Paul B. Jones

No magic bullet

While the concept of community health has many definitions and interpretations, at its core it can be understood as where community needs and priorities intersect with science and evidence. It is also where multiple disciplines come together around a set of shared goals to improve the health and quality of life of those who live and work in a given community.

The very nature of community health defies easy categorization and oversimplification, according to Derek Griffith, PhD, a founding co-director of Georgetown’s Racial Justice Institute, founding director of the Center for Men’s Health Equity, and a professor in the Department of Health Systems Administration in the School of Nursing & Health Studies.

“There’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all singular solution—a magic bullet, if you will—to solve every problem.

We need to cobble together different pieces that operate together and allow us to take one bite at a time,” Griffith says.

Acknowledging how the ideas should flow is half the battle, he adds. When academics try to “export” their ideas to communities, they don’t know if they will work in that particular local context.

“If the ideas come from the community to academics, they usually have already resolved a lot of the local ecological, contextual issues, and we know that they at least fit culturally and resource-wise,” Griffith says. If sequenced properly, an institution like Georgetown can then add great value to the process by bringing additional and complementary scholarship and academic rigor to community-identified issues.

Race and place

When it comes to health outcomes, the District of Columbia is home to some of the largest racial and ethnic gaps in the country. While the overall health profile of the city is high, a different picture emerges when health indicators are broken down by race.

Disparities in life expectancy are deep and persistent, with Black men and women in D.C. living 12 to 17 years less than their white counterparts, respectively, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Nature. The percentage of Black residents living with diabetes is nearly six times higher than white residents, the percentages of those living with high blood pressure and dying from heart disease are

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“Even if I were to go back to my old street where I grew up and say, ‘Let me lead this,’ that’s not right. People who are living there now should lead us.”—Lucile Adams-Campbell, PhD

more than two times higher, and the infant mortality rate is nearly five times higher in Black infants than white infants, according to DC Health Matters.

Far from having emerged in a vacuum, these disparities are part of a much broader story of inequity that has taken root in D.C. over generations.

In the recently published Health Affairs article “Race, Place, and Structural Racism: A Review of Health and History in Washington, DC,” King, Griffith, and other colleagues examine the history of local and federal policies that have disproportionately impacted the health and well-being of Black residents from the District’s founding in 1790 through today. (Bryan O. Buckley, DrPH, MPH, adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown and a research fellow at MedStar Health’s Institute for Quality and Safety, and undergraduate student Riya Maheshwari also contributed to the piece.)

The article outlines how racially significant historic events such as urban renewal and “white flight,” along with nowoutlawed housing policies such as redlining, have all led to health disparities by what the authors term “race and place.”

In addition, Washington’s lack of statehood and federal representation has uniquely spurred an imbalance in power and resources.

One example is the District’s Barry Farm, a thriving community of Black intellectuals and entrepreneurs in Anacostia, including Frederick Douglass, that emerged after the Civil War. By the early 1940s, the community was destroyed when the government used eminent domain to seize 34 acres and demolished homes and businesses to make way for Suitland Parkway.

Understanding the history of structural racism is an important precursor to understanding health disparities today.

“When you have an entire generation stripped of their homes and ability to accumulate wealth, they are not able to pass on assets or generational wealth to their family members,” King says. “Over time, there is a cumulative effect on Black residents’ health because of where they live, their job opportunities, even the air they breathe.”

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Journey to cultural and linguistic competence While history can offer important context for D.C.’s health disparities between Black and white residents, it is important to look at a range of demographic factors when seeking to engage in community-based research.

Researchers must gain a holistic understanding of the demographic makeup of the city in order to ascertain who is most at risk for certain conditions, according to Tawara Goode, MA, associate professor of pediatrics and director of Georgetown’s National Center for Cultural Competence.

“We must ask, ‘Are there disparities based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity and expression, disability, or language spoken?’” Goode says. “Then you begin to get a good sense of who might be the population groups that are at risk, and who within those populations do we really need to focus on based on these multiple intersecting demographic factors.”

Goode is part of a federally funded collaboration known as the Georgetown-Howard Universities Center for Clinical and Translational Science (GHUCCTS) that has as one of its primary aims to strengthen and support communityengaged research in D.C. She says researchers will sometimes balk at engaging underserved populations in research, claiming it will cost too much or be too time-consuming. But by not being more inclusive, these researchers are missing an important opportunity.

“So certain populations are written out of the opportunity to participate in research, and then we don’t get the broad pool of folks that we actually need to be involved for our research to mean something,” Goode says.

Goode notes that people who do not speak English as their primary language, for example, or people with disabilities are routinely left out of health research studies. Researchers lack

Photos: iStock / Rafael Suanes / Library of Congress

the knowledge and capacity to include them and because of the time and resources it takes to establish relationships within these communities and build trust.

Bias is another issue that can cloud researchers’ and providers’ understanding of individuals’ health issues.

Lucile Adams-Campbell, PhD, is a cancer epidemiologist with the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center who has spent her entire career doing communitybased research and addressing disparities—well before it became a popular area of exploration. She encounters many scientists and others who use the term “minority” as synonymous with poor and low-education level.

“There are people who have low levels of health literacy across all socioeconomic statuses. A Black person with a high income might have poor health outcomes because maybe they don’t have anyone talking to them about their disease and providing the care that is needed due to insurance issues.”

Academic and health care institutions must avoid the pitfall of overgeneralization—assuming that just because they think they understand a culture that they can apply those generalizations to an individual.

Through the School of Nursing & Health Studies, Georgetown has played a key role in developing a new educational module on implicit bias that is being offered

by the D.C. Department of Health. The module, “Implicit Bias: A Practical Guide for Healthcare Settings,” offers continuing education credit for any employee in the health care setting, including providers and staff, engaging participants in self-reflection about their personal biases and institutional biases.

King, who is a faculty expert for the virtual course, says that even well-intentioned health care professionals may be doing more harm than they realize.

“In the past, many mandatory cultural competency trainings were designed to put people in categories. This oversimplified approach can perpetuate bias and stereotypes,” King says.

Instead, people in the academic and medical communities can be more impactful by doing more listening, and less assuming.

“I call it the journey from cultural competency to cultural humility,” King says.

Goode notes that work in cultural competency has evolved considerably since the early days. Rather than lumping groups together, scholars contributing to this space differentiate interventions based on granular characteristics and not broad categories. This reflects the nuance and complexity that comes from listening to communities of individuals.

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Further, she says while cultural humility is centered on individuals, cultural competence goes beyond that to address systemic barriers, such as those within an organization’s policies, structures, practices, behaviors, and attitudes.

Give and take

Experts are quick to point out that community-based research must remain reciprocal, and not transactional.

Information must flow from the community to the researcher, and then back again, in a continual dialogue.

“Academic medical centers can’t do this work alone, as communities know their own needs,” Goode says. “They also know their interests, they know themselves.”

The principle of reciprocity is equally important when it comes to resources, especially when academic centers receive research funding for their community work.

“If you get a large grant, who do you hire from the community? How do those financial resources make their way in a meaningful manner into those communities? Community engagement should really result in a reciprocal transfer of knowledge, skills, and resources among all collaborators and partners,” Goode adds.

To maintain this spirit of reciprocity, the GHUCCTS center that Goode is part of convenes a community advisory

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board consisting of diverse constituents largely representing community-based organizations, as well as a participant advisory board consisting of individuals who participate in clinical research trials.

Likewise, Georgetown Lombardi’s Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities Research, overseen by AdamsCampbell, relies on a community advisory council. Even though she grew up in the District, Adams-Campbell says she does not pretend to understand what people in her old neighborhood in Ward 7 might need now.

“Even if I were to go back to my old street where I grew up and say, ‘Let me lead this,’ that’s not right. People who are living there now should lead us,” says Adams-Campbell.

The Office of Minority Health oversees community grants to fund activities the advisory council identifies as important, including recent projects related to COVID-19. For example, when a local Vietnamese organization said they did not have any pandemic information materials written in Vietnamese, Adams-Campbell’s office issued them a grant to develop materials in Vietnamese about the importance of vaccines.

Other activities on the horizon for her office are a new Men’s Health Initiative to engage more Black men in the community in clinical trials, and a forthcoming initiative on spirituality and cancer proposed by a minister who serves on the community advisory council.

COMMUNITY HEALTH

“It’s not that people are voiceless—it’s that no one has been listening to them.”—Vicki Girard, JD

Griffith also has plans to promote Black men’s health through a project called Mighty Men, which seeks to reduce Black men’s cancer risk by working with churches to promote weight loss and healthy lifestyle changes.

Above all, respect for the whole person must govern every interaction with community members. People are more than what they can offer to researchers.

“When researchers need a sample of blood, urine, or DNA for a study, where does one think they come from? They come from the community, they come from people,” AdamsCampbell says. “For every sample that is stored in a freezer, I think about how many steps, how many people, how many hours did it take to gain that person’s trust so they would donate the blood or urine or cells from their mouth.”

Photos: iStock / Rafael Suanes / Paul B. Jones

Beyond the classroom

Georgetown students have ample opportunity to get out of the classroom and work directly with D.C. populations on health-related issues.

The HOYA (Health Outreach for Youth and Adults) Clinic, for example, is one of the most coveted real-world experiences for Georgetown medical students to take part in. For nearly 15 years, the clinic has provided free, nonemergent medical services to District residents experiencing homelessness. In recent years, the HOYA Clinic has expanded its operations to include a range of other activities, including providing health education, flu vaccinations, autism screenings, and even a sports camp for children of clients they serve.

The clinic also partners with the Latino Medical Student Association and CURA Medical Spanish Volunteer Corps, both housed at the School of Medicine, to provide Spanish and English translation support.

In these ways, the growth of the clinic’s operations and focus reflects how students are listening to community members’ interests and needs.

Another example is the Health Justice Alliance (HJA), a unique medical-legal partnership between Georgetown University Medical Center and the Law Center that is training the next generation of health, law, and policy leaders to work together in pursuit of health justice. The premise of the HJA is that one’s health outlook is deeply rooted in daily challenges such as poor housing conditions, food insecurity,

lack of insurance, education, employment, and other issues that often require legal advocacy to overcome.

Medical students and MedStar providers who partner with the HJA add legal services to their patient care toolkit.

That might mean working with new or expectant mothers in the D.C. area who are confronting legal issues related to their pregnancy and employment, or learning how to recognize when patients living with mold, mildew, or lead need a lawyer to enforce their rights against a landlord.

Eileen Moore, MD, associate professor in the Department of Medicine and Family Medicine at Georgetown’s School of Medicine, serves as HJA’s medical director.

Access to the HJA means that once they have identified patients who are confronting legal issues that might be directly or more tangentially related to their health issues, they can rely on HJA lawyers or law students for help.

Through specific cases, the medical and legal students learn how to view the delivery of health care through the legal lens.

HJA is currently using a planning grant to design a new fellowship at Georgetown that would be the first medical-legal fellowship in the country, according to Vicki Girard, JD, a professor at Georgetown Law and faculty director of the HJA. The HJA also brings medical and law students together through the Health Justice Scholars program, which prepares second-year medical students to conduct advocacy on Capitol Hill for health justice issues. In this way, medical students learn how to take what they have learned from the community about its priorities and channel that information into advocacy.

Girard says the popular advocacy experience reveals to students how much they have to learn from members of the community who may not have the same platform.

“It’s not that people are voiceless—it’s that no one has been listening to them,” Girard says.

Girard and the HJA team always advise students to approach their work with humility and with the goal of co-creating with people in the community.

“It’s about understanding that we don’t have all the answers and that we are learning from the people that we want to stand beside,” Girard says. “We’re just another piece of the very complicated Washington, D.C., puzzle.” n

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Bridging the opportunity gap Pipeline programs expand diversity in medicine

By Sara Piccini

O

Photo: Art Pittman

n the first day of classes at Georgetown School of Medicine this past September, Susan Cheng, EdLD, senior associate dean for diversity and inclusion, spotted a familiar face among the first-year students.

It was Tyrel Powell (M’25), an alumnus of the School of Medicine’s Academy for Research, Clinical, and Health Equity Scholarship (ARCHES), a summer immersion experience for college undergraduates from diverse backgrounds interested in medical careers. “Under his white coat, he was wearing his ARCHES T-shirt—like Superman,” Cheng says.

ARCHES, which Cheng oversees, is one of a host of Georgetown initiatives designed to create a pipeline into medical school for underrepresented high school, college, and post-baccalaureate students.

“You never want to lose sight of where you came from, so I said ‘I have to do my first-day advertising,’” says Powell, a Howard University undergraduate alumnus and firstgeneration medical school student. “I wanted to share what Georgetown is doing by creating true working pipelines. It’s something that needs to be noticed and acknowledged.

“I feel like ARCHES really developed me into the medical student I am today,” Powell says.

For Cheng, the memory is indelible. “There are moments in your career when you feel it was all worth it. Seeing Tyrel on his first day of medical school at Georgetown, wearing his white coat and ARCHES T-shirt—I will never forget that moment.”

GEMS: ‘An experiment in success’

The School of Medicine helped to pioneer the pipeline program model more than four decades ago with the creation of the Georgetown Experimental Medical Studies Program (GEMS) in 1977 —one of the first post-baccalaureate pipeline programs in the nation.

Established through the efforts of Arthur Hamilton Hoyte, MD, Heinz Bauer, MD, PhD, and a host of other committed basic science faculty and deans, GEMS is a one-year immersive academic program for college graduates from underrepresented backgrounds seeking admission to medical school.

“We often call GEMS ‘an experiment in success,’” says David Taylor, MEd, senior associate dean for student learning.

Taylor, who works in tandem with Cheng and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, has been with GEMS for 32 years, taking over leadership of the program in 2014 following the retirement of longtime director Dean Joy Phinizy Williams.

“Over the course of the program, we’ve had close to 77% of GEMS students admitted to Georgetown School of Medicine, and they graduate at a rate of over 93% in the four-year time frame,” says Taylor, noting that the school’s overall admissions rate averages 3.2 to 3.5%.

As Taylor explains, the GEMS academic year is divided into two components. “First, students are embedded in a longitudinal academic skills enrichment bootcamp. What we are focusing on is actual learning strategies—how you initially assimilate information, how you process it, how you attempt to integrate it, which is required in medicine, and then how you apply it as situations change.”

In the second half of the year, GEMS students take classes alongside medical students and must achieve numeric grades at least equivalent to the class mean of 83%, which GEMS students historically have met and exceeded, according to Taylor.

Finding growth in discomfort

“Going through the program was the hardest thing I’d done academically up to that point—it was so transformative,” says GEMS alumnus Francis Navarra, MD (M’21), now a resident in anesthesiology at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.

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“Breaking bad study habits developed over the years, taking classes alongside medical students, many who came from Ivy League schools or generations of physicians—it was a lot to confront as a first-generation student,” adds Navarra, who initially had ambitions to become a professional skateboarder before choosing the complicated path to medical school.

“There were so many times when I wanted to stop. But I had no plan B—my plan B was to make plan A work,” he says.

“Dean Taylor has this uncanny ability of figuring people out pretty quickly. He noticed a lot of the challenges I faced as a student in the program, and he would make sure I worked on those weaknesses,” Navarra says.

“His concept of ‘in our discomfort is where we find our greatest growth’ is something I continue to live by, whether I have a tough case in the operating room or an extremely complicated lung transplant patient in the intensive care unit.”

Navarra emphasizes the importance of mentors like Taylor and has stepped into that role himself. “I love to get to the board and teach the students on my team.

I look at it as a form of giving back.

With the students I mentor who are

in medical school now, the only thing I ask of them is to look back at the person who’s coming up behind them and to help them out,” he says.

Successfully navigating GEMS changes possibilities for students “when you’ve been told most of your life it would never happen,” says Taylor.

He adds, “In terms of the ultimate mission, we are investing in and training students who are more likely to serve communities disproportionately impacted by health disparities, who have families and extended families in those communities.”

Evolution and expansion

Over 45 years, the GEMS curriculum has evolved to keep pace with rapid changes in medicine. It has also expanded from a regional program, focusing on students in the local area, to a national program, as well as broadening its applicant base to include a wider population of underrepresented students.

“We are investing in and training students who are more likely to serve communities disproportionately impacted by health disparities.”

Photo: Phil Humnicky

—David Taylor, MEd, Senior Associate Dean for Student Learning

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COMMUNITY HEALTH

“When GEMS started, it was mostly based on racial and ethnic disparities in medicine,” Taylor says, but has expanded to include socioeconomic and sociocultural factors such as immigration status or coming from a rural background.

This evolution has been reflected more broadly at the School of Medicine with the establishment of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in 2015. “When I came in as inaugural dean, we really wanted to reflect the true diversity of the school, looking at not only students, but faculty and staff,” says Susan Cheng.

For example, the office co-launched a train-the-trainer program for bias mitigation with Kristi Graves, PhD, associate dean of faculty development in the Office of Faculty and Academic Affairs at the Georgetown University Medical Center. More recently, Cheng’s office joined with several other Georgetown learning initiatives to sponsor a professional development series, Teaching for Inclusion and Equity (TIE). “What we’re trying to do is distribute leadership among faculty and staff,” Cheng explains. “More than anything, they’re voracious—actively looking for more support and training.”

The office has also developed a host of programs and resources designed to foster dialogue and promote a sense of belonging among students, such as “I, Too, Am Georgetown Medicine”—now in its sixth year—which brings together medical students from all four classes to reflect on shared issues.

This year’s theme is “Out of Our Element: Vulnerability, Fatigue, & Misinformation.”

“We are all responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the School of Medicine, because it’s core to everything that we do,” Cheng says. “Each of us needs to put our oars in the water together towards this goal.”

Cheng notes that in 2020, the office embedded the word “equity” into its name—becoming the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or ODEI—to highlight the continual work of addressing individual, institutional, and systemic equity.

“Equity in terms of representation, visibility, access—it’s all there,” she says. This emphasis is particularly important for the new student organizations that have formed since Cheng’s arrival, including the first-generation group GUSOM Generation I (see sidebar).

In keeping with its mission, the office has also expanded the medical school’s pipeline programs to include both high school and college students. Cheng views these programs as not only critical to opening more avenues for underrepresented students but also central to the School of Medicine’s mission of cura personalis, care of the whole person.

“In order to fully enact that mission, you need to understand and appreciate a patient’s background—their socioeconomic status, their religious underpinnings, their gender and sexual orientation. All of those things go into patient-centered care.”

A sense of belonging The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Georgetown School of Medicine supports a variety of student organizations designed to foster a sense of inclusiveness and belonging, and to encourage student advocacy for health justice issues.

One example is GUSOM Generation I, a group established four years ago to support first-generation medical students. The journey of Vy Phan (M’24), the organization’s current co-leader, reflects the unique difficulties faced by these students in navigating a path to higher education.

Phan emigrated from Vietnam to Indiana with her parents when she was 4 years old. Although her parents prioritized education, they didn’t have the experience and context to help her navigate the American school system.

“I learned to be pretty resourceful. For homework help, I relied on library books and the internet,” Phan says. Her high grades earned her a scholarship to attend a high school prep school, but when she applied for internships she was rejected everywhere. “I eventually reached out to a classmate’s parents, who worked in my field of interest and helped me out. In that one instance, I realized how important networking and social resources were.”

The Generation I group provides Phan with the opportunity to give back by supporting students in the classes following hers. “I feel quite passionate about being a mentor to others,” she says. “When you’re just starting out, you don’t know what you don’t know.”

One of the organization’s major initiatives is a mentorship program that matches first-generation faculty members and students. It also sponsors special events, such as a February panel discussion about supporting and advocating for first-generation students in their medical training. Another recent initiative is a donation box outside the medical school library where students can donate textbooks and other items.

“These student leaders are rock stars,” says Susan Cheng, EdLD, senior associate dean for diversity and inclusion. “Our student groups are creating great examples for faculty and staff.”

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Confidence, courage, collaboration

In 2016, ODEI introduced its first pipeline program for high school students, the Gateway Exploration Program. The program offers a six-week summer internship opportunity for rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors from District of Columbia public and charter schools, in partnership with the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program.

“Local high school students can be really intimidated by Georgetown,” says Isela Melendez-Carpio, MEd, who serves as director of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the School of Medicine. “Bringing students to our campus, having them do really impactful work, gives them the opportunity to better understand the health disparity issues impacting D.C., all while leveraging the School of Medicine and greater Georgetown community as a resource.”

“We use confidence, courage, and collaboration as the main anchors of the program,” she continues. “That means helping students gain confidence to pursue a career in medicine, giving them courage to speak out on issues important to them, and teaching them that medicine is a team profession.”

For the program’s capstone project, students collaborate in teams on research presentations centered on community health disparities—ranging from infertility across District wards to gentrification as a health problem. “It’s really rewarding for faculty and staff to see young people tackling some of the most difficult issues facing us today, and having students themselves see how they can be agents of change,” says Melendez-Carpio.

In addition to the Gateway Exploration Program, ODEI established a partnership with Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS) in 2018, nominating D.C. public school students to participate in SCS’s one-week Medical Institute and three-week Medical Immersion Programs.

Although the SCS residential programs were on hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, ODEI continued the Gateway program in a fully virtual format, enabling enrollment to increase. “It’s the silver lining of the pandemic, thinking about what virtual platforms can offer students,” Melendez-Carpio says. “It really broadens the scope of who we can serve.”

Incubating change

With the success of Gateway virtual programming, Cheng and Melendez-Carpio introduced a new virtual seven-week summer program for undergraduate students in 2021, the Cultivating Opportunity & Realizing Excellence Leadership Program (CORE).

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Cheng and Melendez-Carpio were inspired to create the program after attending a professional conference with keynote speaker Ibram X. Kendi, author of the best-selling book How to Be an Antiracist.

“He talked about a reframing—instead of referring to achievement gaps, we should talk about opportunity gaps,” Cheng says. “He was arguing that most people, especially our underrepresented students in health care, just need opportunity. They need investment into their capabilities.”

A distinctive feature of the CORE admissions process, Cheng notes, is that there is no GPA requirement. “We really want to ensure that talent can emerge from anywhere. CORE is open to anyone across the country, freshman through senior year,” she says.

“We’ve also made a targeted recruitment effort at twoyear institutions and city colleges to open up the pipeline to this particular population of underrepresented students. It’s something I’m really proud of.”

Students in the program are able to take advantage of a variety of networking opportunities, including mentoring from current medical students. They are grouped in teams of five to complete an “Incubating Change” project, designed to nurture their interest in health equity issues.

“Last year’s topics ranged from disability health to health care for vulnerable populations like the homeless,” Cheng says. Each team was assigned a Medical Center faculty mentor. The winning team, which focused on transgender health, worked with Elke Zschaebitz, DNP, from the School of Nursing & Health Studies.

Cheng’s office also partnered with the McDonough School of Business, with mentors enabling students to engage in design thinking for their final pitch deck presentations on Zoom.

“It’s such a great model because it shows that teams of the future need to emphasize collaboration and innovation across the country over online platforms,” Cheng says. “That’s a pretty cool skill to have in 2022.”

Be bold

CORE draws from a number of the same founding principles as ARCHES, which began in 2017, including advocacy for underserved communities. “ARCHES has always emphasized this in all its different components, whether it’s research, service, or clinical shadowing,” says Melendez-Carpio.

During the six-week summer program, ARCHES students work in Medical Center research labs, attend clinical rounds with physicians at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital,

“We are all responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the School of Medicine, because it’s core to every thing that we do.”

Photo: Lisa Helfert

—Susan Cheng, EdLD, Senior Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion

and conduct a research project that involves information-gathering in the D.C. community.

As an undergraduate student at Howard University, Tyrel Powell knew he wanted to be an advocate for change, but he was torn between pursuing a career as a physician or an attorney. A fellow student told him about ARCHES. “It looked daunting, but it seemed better than anything else out there. I was new to terms like health disparities, but I wasn’t unfamiliar with the reality of it.”

The biggest takeaways for Powell came from the program’s goals: Build, Bridge, and Be Bold.

“Everything that we did was about being bold, like being able to deliver a capstone presentation before the Georgetown medical community after just six weeks,” he says. His topic: Defining the role of human stellate cells in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma drug resistance.

“We had a lot of discussions where we would learn about social determinants of health, and issues plaguing different groups like the homeless and LGBTQ community,” he continues. “Our professors would hand us this tangible information, and say ‘Now what are you going to do about it, how are you going to be bold?’”

“They were giving us the early steps of physician leadership,” Powell says. “I learned that you have to take ownership of the impact that you desire to have, that you have to be willing to support it.”

Powell’s ultimate goal is to become a medical examiner, combining his interests in medicine and the law. “In my life,

there have been too many young Black men around me who were vibrant just like me but who are no longer with us to share their joys with the world. I want to join the league of people to give justice and peace to families who are mourning.”

Powell continues to draw on the lessons he learned in ARCHES about the importance of creating networks.

“Medical school is difficult,” he says. “Understanding how to maximize your connections—whether it’s reaching out for academic support in one of the appropriate offices or going to colleagues or upperclassmen—helps you to keep pushing forward. If I didn’t have those relationship-building skills, I would feel a lot more at a disadvantage.

“When you’re not used to this type of schooling, it’s just really important that you find your support group,” he adds.

“I personally have to remind myself a lot that I’m supposed to be here. That support is essential.” n

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Photos: iStock / Silver Ridge Productions

Recharge stations provide a respite from the stressful hospital environment while new programs help people cope with change and uncertainty.

COMMUNITY HEALTH

Fighting both the pandemic and the stress of the pandemic

By Camille Scarborough

C

OVID-19 has taken a toll on everyone, but especially those on the front lines and those caring for others. Physicians, nurses, medical and nursing students, administrators, hospital workers, lab technicians—so many people have stepped up in response to this health crisis. It’s been a professional challenge, but also a personal one. In addition to having stressful jobs, many are struggling with childcare, elder care, and even self care.

In February 2022, MedStar Health launched the new MedStar Health Center for Wellbeing to further enhance a culture that supports health care worker well-being through programs and research.

In addition to providing integrated peer support and mental health offerings, the center has established partnerships with resilience coaches, therapy experts, and wellness champions.

“It’s a story of resilience. We met the moment and will continue to grow.”

“The past two years have highlighted the exceptional and unique role of health care workers and the many ways we need to grow our recognition of their work and support for their personal and professional well-being,” said Dan Marchalik, MD, MA, executive director of the new center and associate professor of urology at Georgetown School of Medicine. “By creating the

center, we are both elevating MedStar Health’s internal well-being priorities and striving to serve as a national leader in well-being innovation, research, and education.”

Cura personalis on a national level MedStar Health had one of the first physician well-being programs in the country. Beginning in 2017, it supported physicians who needed help managing day-to-day stresses, both at work and at home. When the pandemic hit in 2020, MedStar Health made sure everyone had access to the services.

“The infrastructure was already in place so we were ready to scale up when the need for well-being increased during the COVID-19 pandemic,” explains Marchalik. “It’s a story of resilience. We met the moment and will continue to grow.”

Current services range from recharge stations— quiet break rooms, some with massage chairs and healthy snacks—to a regular podcast called “Scrub In.” An important component of the program includes wellness rounds to different patient units as mental health check-ins. “We want to meet people where they are,” adds Marchalik.

In addition to offering services, the center is engaged in education and research. The Stress First Aid Program, led by psychologist Heather Hartman-Hall, PhD, utilizes a framework adapted from the military to help health care workers cope with stressful situations.

“We are training people to be aware of their own stress and trauma, then triage it in themselves and others,” explains Marchalik. “The program is very intuitive, very comprehensive. It’s like a community support system with a common language.” n

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ON CAMPUS

Being an agent of change

By Bhriana Smith

“We are particularly interested in non-medical influences on health,” Fugh-Berman adds.

One of the benefits of interdisciplinary study in medicine is that it affords a better understanding of the brighter picture: what makes people healthy, what promotes healthy living. Social psychology—the study of how and in what ways people’s perceptions and actions are influenced by environmental factors, such as social interaction—is one example of a field of study that can have a major impact on understanding determinants of health and improving the health care system.

“Social psychology is important for understanding influences on prescribers and on consumers,” explains FughBerman. “Pharmaceutical companies and other players in the health care industry know this, and they use social psychology to manipulate people’s choices. Without some understanding of social psychology and marketing tactics, it would be difficult to separate corporate messages from objective health information.”

Ultimately, the HAPI master’s program focuses on training students to be advocates for a better health care system. Looking beyond medicine, drugs, and hospitals, it considers how matters such as education, cultural background, aging, and marketing affect health and health care.

While working toward their degree, students are making an impact in their communities. “We have students who come into the program and, in their first semester, complete projects that illustrate that they can make a difference, for example, in how the city deals with health problems,” says Myers. “Several groups of students have published articles in national newspapers.”

“People grow up being told that they can make a difference, but then somehow that notion gets pushed to the side as they get older,” adds Myers.

“What we try to do is tell people: you can be an agent of change. You can make a difference.” n Fugh-Berman and Myers, the HAPI program co-directors, believe that interdisciplinary study will help students make a difference as doctors.

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Photo: Courtesy of Adriane Fugh-Berman / Adam Myers

The Health and Public Interest master’s program, or HAPI, is a recently launched degree track led by Georgetown University Medical Center faculty that focuses on the many societal influences that affect health care.

The one-year degree program is overseen by co-directors Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, a professor of pharmacology and physiology and family medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, and emeritus professor Adam Myers, PhD, the associate dean for graduate education.

One of a number of interdisciplinary programs developed

by Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, HAPI originated when Norberto Grzywacz, PhD, the previous dean at the graduate school, asked Fugh-Berman to develop a degree track that “promotes interdisciplinary work and thinking that addressed real social problems,” says Myers.

Fugh-Berman and Myers worked with 11 other Georgetown faculty, and created a program with course topics ranging from cultural psychology to public policy, epidemiology to economics, business communications to health advocacy.

Cura familia helps Huntington’s disease patients

Image: MHJ/iStock

By Kate Colwell and Camille Scarborough

The Huntington’s Disease Care, Education, and Research therapist, occupational therapist, and clinical trials for Center (HD-CERC) at Georgetown University Medical emerging therapies. Family members receive support from Center and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, a full-time social worker and genetic counseling from a established a decade ago thanks to an anonymous alumnus geneticist, and help with disability applications, placement in donor, supports 250 patients and their families through the long-term care facilities, and training facility staff to care for Jesuit principle of cura familia, care for the whole family. people with HD. Huntington’s disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative “HD patients require a sophisticated level of care,” shares condition with no known cure. It can be hard to diagnose, the anonymous donor. “It’s complicated because there are a and the symptoms may strain family relationships. Early lot of moving parts. We need to know there are people we can HD symptoms range from the inability to stay on task to call that day for help.” depression, anxiety, irritability, and anger. Later symptoms Better family care can also lead to better research outcomes include more pronounced personality changes, as well as for patients. Dr. Karen Anderson, HD-CERC director and impaired judgment, involuntary movements, slurred speech, professor in Georgetown’s Department of Psychiatry and and difficulty swallowing, so full-time care is often required.

Department of Neurology, explains that when patients are When his wife received her HD diagnosis more than 10 less emotionally volatile, they are eligible for more treatment years ago, the alumnus turned to the care team at Georgetown. options and can be part of the research to find a cure.

Inspired by their commitment, he decided to dedicate his “What happens at home makes a difference,” she says. foundation’s philanthropy to supporting clinical care for HD “Patients who are stable can participate in research studies.” patients and their families, many of whom are challenged by Georgetown offers seven clinical trials or observational the demands and expenses of everyday care. studies for HD patients, thanks to HD-CERC’s research “Improving care enables HD patients and families to reputation, the level of care it provides, and the high achieve a meaningful quality of life while they wait for better retention rate. treatments,” says the anonymous donor.

“Providing good clinical care enables us to move the At Georgetown’s center, patients receive access to a science forward,” she says. n neurologist, neuropsychologist, neuropsychiatrist, speech

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Georgetown’s M.S. in Biotechnology celebrates 25 years The field of biotechnology has advanced rapidly over the past century, with significant applications in health care, agriculture, manufacturing, forensics, and environmental management. Believing that Georgetown University should invest in preparing future leaders for this growing industry, the late Jack Gregory Chirikjian, PhD, founded the Masters in Biotechnology Program in 1997. With Dolly, the first cloned sheep born in 1996, Chirikjian realized the field was sure to demand a more highly skilled workforce.

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A Georgetown faculty member for 46 years, he was a professor of biochemistry and molecular and cellular biology. A dedicated researcher, Chirikjian was a successful entrepreneur who founded seven biotechnology companies and owned numerous patents. But most of all, he was beloved by students and colleagues. Chirikjian—known as “Dr. C” to many—started the program with just eight students. Today, the cohort size has expanded to around 70 students each year.

The program has over 1,200 alumni.

“Jack was a visionary, and he was the heartbeat behind this program,” says Ivica Labuda, PhD, director of the Masters in Biotechnology Program. “He envisioned this hands-on program that merges science and business, preparing students for biotech careers. Dr. Chirikjian was always available to students, alumni, and colleagues. We are grateful for his contributions.”

In addition to basic research methods, the biotechnology program focuses on developing skills in leadership, teamwork, and entrepreneurship. Students may specialize in one of five tracks: BioBusiness, BioScience, Drug Design and Discovery, Entrepreneurship, and Industrial Sciences. The required capstone internship allows students to get a foot in the door of this in-demand industry.

Photos: iStock

By Karen Doss Bowman

ON CAMPUS

In October, the university will celebrate the degree program’s 25th anniversary, bringing together faculty, students, alumni, and industry leaders for a day of reminiscing and looking toward the field’s future. Labuda says the event also offers a chance to recognize the many contributions of alumni, who are generous in sharing their time and expertise with students.

“Jack was a visionary, and he was the heartbeat behind this program. He envisioned this hands-on program that merges science and business.”

“Our alumni are part of our biotechnology family,” Labuda says. “They mentor our students, help them find internships, and share their knowledge. They’re giving back in so many ways. We are stronger if we are together.”

As the biotechnology program enters its 25th year, Kyle DiVito, PhD, the program’s associate director, and Labuda also recognize the importance of looking toward biotechnology’s horizon. New courses such as Cell and Gene Therapy, Vaccine Development, and Biomedical Tissue Engineering have rapidly become student favorites. Labuda’s mission for the program centers on Chirikjian’s core vision but also brings clarity and creativity to propel the program into the next 25 years.

“In 1997, Dr. Chirikjian’s vision for this program was quite unique, and we have attempted to harness that inspiration even today,” DiVito says. n

MCGSO members volunteer virtually for Brain Awareness Week

Photo: iStock

By Camille Scarborough and Kat Zambon

Each spring, members of the Medical Center Graduate Student Organization (MCGSO) share their passion for science with students from Hardy Middle School in Washington, D.C., during Brain Awareness Week.

Traditionally held in person, the event moved online in 2021 and 2022. MCGSO volunteers led demonstrations and experiments for the middle schoolers at six virtual science stations, including a Skittles Taste Test, Build a Neuron, Protect Your Egg, and Now You See It. Bags of supplies needed for the experiments were available for the students to pick up ahead of time.

“I led the ‘Now You See It’ memory station this year,” says Marissa Laws (G’23). “I was surprised by how much engagement there was. The kids always ask interesting questions. It’s a lot of fun!”

Last year, Amanda Schneeweis (G’22) talked with students about her career path from biomedical engineering to research on Alzheimer’s disease. She believes it’s important for students to learn about science from real scientists.

“Unless young kids have family members who are scientists, it’s rare that they would ever interact with scientists,” Schneeweis says. “Successful science will only come from a diverse pool of scientists. If only kids who

happened to have a family member in science pursue a career in science, scientists will stay a homogeneous group.”

The Society for Neuroscience came up with the idea for Brain Awareness Week, which began in 1992 with a mission to encourage public support and excitement for brain science. In planning for the events, the MCGSO volunteers work closely with the Hardy science teachers to make it engaging and novel for the kids. n

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BOOKSHELF

A fresh look at electricity

By Karen Doss Bowman

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the manuscript in three years—a year earlier than expected, thanks to the pandemic lockdowns.

“It’s the only good thing that came out of the pandemic,” he quips.

A member of Georgetown’s faculty since 1988, Jorgensen values the university’s focus on caring for the whole person.

He also enjoyed sharing the Georgetown experience with his daughter, Anna Jorgensen (C’19).

“Anna lived on campus, but she stopped by my office frequently,” Jorgensen says. “I valued being at the same institution at the same time with my daughter and having that shared experience for the four years that she was here.” n

He hopes these stories will shed light on the ways electricity enables the body’s essential functions of sight, hearing, touch, and movement.

Photo:s Alamy / Timothy Jorgensen

Electricity isn’t just the energy that powers our home appliances, smartphones, and computers.

It is the foundation of all life on Earth.

In his new book, Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life, Georgetown’s Timothy Jorgensen, PhD, MPH, tells the story of electricity from a biological perspective. He shares engaging anecdotes about the key players in electrical discovery—from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk—to illustrate how the world’s views of electricity and the nervous system evolved together. He hopes these stories will shed light on the ways electricity enables the body’s essential functions of sight, hearing, touch, and movement.

“Scientists aren’t always good at portraying how science is done and the benefits of science,” says Jorgensen, a professor of radiation medicine and director of the Health Physics and Radiation Protection Graduate Program. “Readers can painlessly absorb a tremendous amount of technical information, and retain it when the information is conveyed within a human interest story.”

After the publication of his first critically acclaimed and award-winning book about the risks and benefits of radiation—Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation—Jorgensen’s publisher encouraged him to write a sequel.

“But I felt I’d said all I needed to say about radiation,” says Jorgensen, adding that the first book did mention some facts about electricity.

Months later, when Natural History magazine published an excerpt from “Strange Glow,” Jorgensen thought it odd that the chosen selection was all about electricity—not radiation. His wife, Helen, suggested he write a book about electricity. Jorgensen’s publisher liked the idea.

Jorgensen wrote for about an hour a day and completed

BOOKSHELF

The making of a writer

By Camille Scarborough

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Robert Longyear (NHS’19) knew the undergraduate program he wanted to do and knew where he wanted to do it. Georgetown’s B.S. in Health Care Management and Policy perfectly aligned with his goal to improve the health care industry. Now a business executive and the author of two books, he’s well-versed in such innovations as the full-risk primary care model, telehealth, remote-patient monitoring, and technology-enabled care for high-risk patients.

“Everything I’m doing now directly relates to my course of study at Georgetown,” says Longyear, the VP of digital

Photo: Courtesty of Robert Longyear

“Working on my Georgetown thesis taught me that I enjoy writing.”

health and innovation at Wanderly and co-founder of Avenue Health, a company he and Mark Silverman (B’72, L’75) put together with a third co-founder after they connected on Hoya Gateway.

“Working on my Georgetown thesis taught me that I enjoy writing,” adds Longyear, who wrote about innovative payment and care delivery system reform efforts in state Medicaid programs. “I had to organize my learning and define a process. It set me on the path to my first book, Innovating for Wellness.”

During his years at Georgetown, he faced an extended personal challenge: his mom’s chronic myeloid leukemia spiraled out of control. He acted as her caregiver as she fought for her life. This experience makes his book hit home for many readers. He understands, better than most, what is needed to support high-risk patients in the home.

The success of his first book led to a second opportunity.

His publisher agreed it was relevant to write a second book specifically on virtual care, remote patient monitoring, and telehealth. Longyear jumped into the project while working full-time.

“I wrote A Virtual Care Blueprint while stuck inside during the COVID-19 health crisis,” he says. “I wanted to approach it like the other one, with a mix of academic research, practical advice, and personal stories.”

The second book offers a deep dive into telehealth and remote patient monitoring. Twenty-five medical centers have adopted his company’s virtual care model.

Longyear shares that it was a challenge to complete the second book, but he had the advantage of a flexible work environment and supportive colleagues. “I may have neglected outdoor activities for a bit though,” he admits. n

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ALUMNI CONNECTIONS

Alumna’s heritage inspires career goals in medicine and education

By Patti North

to pursue medicine, and by the time I was a senior, I knew I wanted to be a doctor.”

Zuch applied to Georgetown to study human science and was awarded a prestigious Udall Undergraduate Scholarship in the Native Health Care category. While on the Hilltop, she joined the leadership of the Native American Student Council. After graduation she worked with the National Indian Health Board as a public health intern.

Entering the University of California at San Diego Medical School in fall 2021, she was selected for the school’s Program in Medical Education—Health Equity (PRIME-HEq), an MD/Master’s dual degree program that emphasizes health disparities education. Her education is funded by the Indian Health Service (IHS) Health Professions Scholarship designed to educate health professionals to staff Indian health programs.

“I’d like to teach health to high schoolers and inspire them to pursue STEM fields and medicine,” Zuch says. After residency, she will spend four years working in one of the Indian Health Service Units, perhaps focusing on maternal health research.

“Maternal mortality rates amongst Native Americans are some of the highest,” she observes.

She notes that COVID-19 vaccination rates among Native Americans are high, thanks to public health education efforts. “Tribal nations did a good job disseminating information and conveying the message that vaccination allows us to protect our elders, an ethos which is deeply ingrained in Native Americans. It was a model that I wish the rest of the country had followed,” she says, “and it confirmed for me that health care education is paramount.” n

“After experiencing life on the reservation, it grew on me that I should be contributing to the health of a community that helped to raise me.”

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Photo: Phil Humnicky

Raised in a middle-class neighborhood in Arizona, Yasmin Zuch (NHS’20) was proud of her mother’s Navaho and Hopi heritage. When her mother took a teaching job at a reservation school, she and her brother also began attending school there. “It was two hours away,” Zuch recalls, “but the disparities I saw between my neighborhood and what I saw at school were very clear to me even at the age of seven.”

At the reservation, she had the opportunity to learn the Hopi language and participate in dances and cultural ceremonies. “After experiencing life on the reservation, it grew on me that I should be contributing to the health of a community that helped to raise me.”

She had never met a Native American physician, but she recalls non-Native American physicians visiting her schools and talking about opportunities in health care. “It inspired me

ALUMNI CONNECTIONS

Advocating for patients

Photo: Phil Humnicky

By Bhriana Smith

Having grown up in Nashville in a single-parent home and worked his way up to becoming a senior officer in the United States Air Force, Colonel Steven Coffee (EMCQSL’21) is no stranger to confronting challenges. But his greatest life challenge arrived with the birth of his son, Steven Coffee II. In October 2012, a military hospital dismissed parental concerns and misdiagnosed his threeweek-old son’s low glucose and poor feeding as normal. In fact, his son had galactosemia, a metabolic blood condition that affects how the body breaks down the simple sugar galactose found in human and animal milk products. The following month, his son went into liver failure.

Shortly thereafter, Coffee’s son was sent to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, where physicians rushed in and performed a lifesaving liver transplant on the then eight-weekold baby, the youngest patient in America to have a successful transplant at that time.

Though Coffee and his family worked tirelessly to be present for their son during his healing process, there were obstacles regarding his son’s treatment along the way.

“I recall the day my son needed powdered soy Colonel Steven Coffee, pictured here with his son Steven Coffee II, earned his Executive Master’s milk,” shares Coffee. “The treating physician in Clinical Quality, Safety & Leadership, while deployed in Doha, Qatar. His Georgetown coursework was completely online. at the time explained that the hospital didn’t have it on hand, and there was a long process to acquire it. I couldn’t wrap my mind around how “When I was deployed in December 2019, I was afraid I something as essential to getting better—proper food and was going to have to stop taking classes,” he recalls. “But my sustenance—was not available nor was there a mechanism in professors were more than accommodating to my situation.” place to quickly procure this basic need.”

Coffee co-founded the United States chapter of the World That’s when Coffee decided that he would become an Health Organization’s Patients for Patient Safety (PFPS) advocate for patient quality and safety in health care. For initiative. He collaborated with another charter member, the last nine years, he has worked toward improved patient Armando Nahum, to create the Safe Care Campaign. The safety as the first community chair of MedStar Health’s campaign educates internal and external stakeholders about Patient and Family Advisory Council for Quality and Safety sepsis, more commonly known as blood poisoning. It emerged (PFACQ ), a team of national leaders in patient advocacy from the experience of three members of the Nahum family throughout MedStar Health hospitals. developing infections while receiving care at three different In 2021, Coffee took part in the Executive Master’s in hospitals in three different states. One of the three patients, Clinical Quality, Safety & Leadership through Georgetown Nahum’s son, died as a result of the blood infection.

University Medical Center’s program in Biomedical He notes that diversity, inclusion, and representation are Graduate Education, earning his degree while deployed in imperative when trying to determine community health. “The Doha, Qatar. The coursework was completely online. collective ‘we’ is how we will change medicine in this country.” n

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ALUMNI CONNECTIONS

In-person Match Day returns for 2022 Members of the School of Medicine’s Class of 2022, surrounded by family, friends, faculty, and staff who supported their dreams to become doctors, gathered for the annual Match Day celebration to learn together where each soon-to-be doctor would go for their residency—the training that follows medical school graduation. The crowd of more than 400 assembled March 18 at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, D.C., while another 600 watched via Facebook.

This year’s Match Day—the designated day in March when all medical students across the nation simultaneously find out which of the residency programs they chose matched with the programs that chose them—punctuated a tumultuous medical school experience, with their entire clinical experience happening during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and amid a racial justice movement. n

Photos: Phil Humnicky

Sindhura Kolachana (M’22), pictured below, said that standing up for the vulnerable was one of her special memories from the last four years.

“My roommates and I went to one of the protests for children who were in detention camps,” she said. “It was really, really meaningful and why I came to Georgetown in the first place—to help the communities that need it.”

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What’s in my white coat?

Photos: Nate Gowdy

Interview by Jane Varner Malhotra

Georgetown nurse anesthesia alumnus Ebou Cham (G’14) is the interim chief certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

1. I received this pen as a gift from the previous Chief

The busy hospital is a Level 1 trauma center serving all of Washington state, Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Western Montana, approximately a quarter of the landmass of the United States.

Cham’s work is part administrative, part clinical. He wears scrubs to be ready on any given day to pitch in as needed in the operating room. While he usually chooses not to wear the formal white coat, he shared what he carries with him on a typical day.

3. My earbuds are critical for meetings on the go!

CRNA when I stepped up to the role two years ago.

2. I need my iPhone with me because I call into virtual

meetings throughout the day, and depend on reliable connectivity throughout the large hospital.

4. I like to keep a little notebook with me to jot things down so I don't forget.

5. Yes, it’s a fishing equipment container! My team finds

the tackle box is a perfect way to organize all the necessities for clinical days when we pick up patients from the ICU. It has emergency intubation equipment including a laryngoscope (6), endotracheal tubes of different sizes (7), and medications for intubation for blood pressure control, pain, and sedation (8). n

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Reflections on Health with

Lori Wilson, MD (C’88, M’94) I grew up in a middle class African American community in Portsmouth, Virginia. I was 7 when I decided to become a surgeon, after seeing Hawkeye on the TV show “M*A*S*H.” Pipeline programs offered opportunities for me, like a summer mentorship with a clinician-researcher at Eastern Virginia Medical School when I was 16. Someone there said the highest accolade was to become a professor, and I’ve had that in mind ever since.

This year I achieved it.

I was a Bible-Belt Southern Baptist so coming to Georgetown opened my world. I was drawn to the Jesuit aspect, and received a truly dynamic education at Georgetown. I’m a firstgeneration college graduate. My mom and dad made huge sacrifices for me to go to Georgetown.

Before medical school, I was a car salesman. I’ve always loved cars—fast cars. It gave me the opportunity to do something that was not expected and do it for fun.

In medical school we brought a diseased lung to a D.C. middle school to teach the effects of smoking. I could see the kids looked up to me because I was like them. It got me thinking how I could make a difference in my community.

When we look at statistics for African Americans in surgery it’s 3-6%, and less than 15 women in the entire country who are African American full professors of surgery. I’m blessed to be in that group.

It’s so important to give back. I am committed to servant leadership, and try to do God’s work by taking care of our brothers and sisters.

During my fellowship I worked in genomics

and immunology, developing blood sample signatures and biomarkers to personally

cater to the needs of the patient for their type of cancer. Over the years in my area of cancer—breast, GI, soft tissue, melanoma—

immunotherapy and personalized medicine have changed the way we treat patients and save lives.

I go around the country to talk about being

a breast cancer survivor.

As a surgical oncologist I love the fact that I’m educating the clinicians of the future, teaching them the value of research, and operating every day. I love to be the mentor I didn’t have growing up.

I was recently promoted to associate dean of faculty development and diversity at Howard. It gives me an opportunity to ask what diversity looks like from an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) standpoint.

When I walk into a consultation, I often don’t fit people’s expectations of a surgeon. When I was at a predominantly white institution before Howard, many patients didn’t understand my role in their care, but we ultimately always got to where we needed to be.

It’s our responsibility to care for those who are underserved and underrepresented. In my 10 years at Howard, I’ve been able to travel around the world to share my surgical experience, so others can stay in their country and take care of their own.

I put an emphasis on caring for those that may not have the resources to care for themselves, and to help them understand the process of their disease.

Family is big for me. I have

a 10-year-old son, who is special needs. He is an amazing young person who is learning how to navigate the world. He makes my day, every day. My husband is my biggest cheerleader.

I love to cook and bake, and I love learning new things. I think the ability to expand our understanding is one of the greatest gifts we have. n —Jane Varner Malhotra

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Photos: iStock / Shutterstock / Courtesy of Lori Wilson, MD

Professor of Surgery, Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Diversity, and Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at Howard University

Changing lives together

In 2018, Jay Khanna, MD, performed life-changing spinal surgery on Dan D’Aniello at Johns Hopkins University. Four years later, they are changing lives together.

D’Aniello, who followed Khanna as a patient to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital—where Khanna now serves as physician executive director for the Orthopaedic Institute—has made a gift of $5 million to Georgetown University Medical Center and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

The gift devotes $3 million to an endowed chair of orthopaedics and $2 million to the Medical/ Surgical Pavilion.

Khanna, who is also chair and professor of orthopaedic surgery at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and academic chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Georgetown’s School of Medicine, says he is “humbled” by D’Aniello’s support of work grounded in cura personalis.

“Through my care experience, Dr. Khanna and I developed a wonderful relationship, and I’m grateful for his keen knowledge of orthopaedic surgery and for how accessible he was,” D’Aniello says. “The people that I’m investing in here hold a core value that I believe in.”

You too can help support the future of health and medical education, research, and patient care at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Contact us at GUMCgiving@georgetown.edu or call 202-687-2222.

Georgetown University Office of Advancement Communications University Box 571253 Washington, DC 20057-1253 USA