@umassmed magazine Summer 2021

2021

SUMMER

THE UNIVERSIT Y OF MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SCHOOL MAGAZINE

An army of vaccinators UMass Medical School Vaccine Corps delivers relief from pandemic Story on page 16

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Class of 2021 revels in Commencement celebration

Inaugural PURCH class reflects on its journey

New VA clinic on Worcester campus nears completion

The University of Massachusetts Medical School is the commonwealth’s first and only public academic health sciences center, home to three graduate schools. Our mission is to advance the health and wellness of our diverse communities throughout Massachusetts and across the world by leading and innovating in education, research, health care delivery and public service.

SUMMER

2021

@umassmed

contents

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F E ATU R E S Commencement Leadership appointments advance IMPACT 2025 Strategic Plan UMass Medical School appoints four faculty members to endowed chairs

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Immersive MD program fosters systemic change

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Cover story: An army of vaccinators

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Serving those who have served 24 Community-driven, community-responsive 26

Marlina Duncan, new vice chancellor, shares perspective Last Word COVER PHOTO BY FAITH NINIVAGGI

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ROB CARLIN PHOTOGRAPHY

Commencement lorem ipsum dolor set un amet ontose Class of 2021 celebrated at 48th Commencement

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apping the end of a historic

year in which students played a central role in the COVID-19 pandemic response, UMass Medical School celebrated the Class of 2021 at the 48th Commencement on Sunday, June 6. In all, 288 degrees were awarded, including four honorary degrees, before a crowd of approximately 1,000 students, faculty, relatives and friends assembled on the football field at Worcester State University on an unseasonably hot and humid late spring afternoon.

“In moments when science, nursing and medical care were 2 | SUMMER 2021

needed most, you came together to participate in the discoveries that brought forth new treatments, new therapeutics and new vaccines.

You served on wards, in tents, in arenas, in conference centers and at your neighbors’ doors,” Chancellor Michael F. Collins told the class in his address to the graduates of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Graduate School of Nursing and School of Medicine. “During the trying and triumphant moments of your career, please know of the enduring pride that the University of Massachusetts Medical School shall have in calling you one of our

own. You are scientists, nurses and doctors at their best!”

The event was held in person after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions just a few weeks prior.

Due to the construction of the new education and research building on the UMass Medical School’s Worcester campus, the event was held at Worcester State.

Class speakers Heather Lovelace, DNP; Sumeet Nayak, PhD; and Benjamin Cook, MD, spoke about the arduous, surprising and ultimately rewarding journeys they undertook with their classmates.

JOHN GILLOOLY/PEI

“

During the trying and triumphant moments of your career, please know of the enduring pride that the University of Massachusetts Medical School shall have in calling you one of our own.

The degrees awarded include: 158 Doctor of Medicine; 11 MD/ PhD; nine Master of Science in Clinical Investigation; 28 Doctor of Philosophy and four Master of Science in the biomedical sciences; 48 Doctor of Nursing Practice; four PhD in Nursing; five Master of Science in Nursing; and six postgraduate certificates.

Honorary degrees were awarded to Worcester civic leader Michael Angelini, Esq.; former University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees Chair Henry Thomas III, JD; and Dan Riccio and Diane Casey Riccio, PhD, both UMass alums.

Graduates said the unusual final year of studies brought many new lessons.

“The pandemic was definitely a challenge that none of us anticipated, but I think we all rose to meet it and there were some silver linings,” said Brielle Tishler, MD, who is staying at UMass Medical School for her residency in internal medicine and pediatrics. “We had unique opportunities. Some of us got to be part of vaccination efforts. The school did a great job to support us.”

ROB CARLIN PHOTOGRAPHY

CHANCELLOR M I C H A E L F. CO L L I N S

Top: GSBS grad Devyn Oliver (right) snaps a pre-Commencement picture with fellow grads Kyusik Kim (left) and Ankit Bhatta (center).

Middle: Dan Riccio and Diane Casey Riccio, PhD’03, received honorary degrees in recognition of their generous support of the Medical School.

Bottom: SOM grad Osemwengie Enabulele is all smiles as the Class of 2021 prepares to graduate. @UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 3

“Everybody accommodated us at the end of our clinical year during the pandemic,” said new Graduate School of Nursing alum Joseph Prendergast, DNP. “Colleagues and faculty made that happen with everybody working together.”

Andrew Boylan, MD, agreed.

“The pandemic was a little bit of a speedbump but I think the school really did a great job adjusting to it.”

Dr. Boylan is a member of the first cohort of School of Medicine students to complete the Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health program based at the UMMS-Baystate Health campus in Springfield.

“This has been a nine-year journey and I really can’t believe it’s coming to an end,” said Asia MatthewOnabanjo, MD, PhD, who is headed

to the University of North Carolina for urology residency. “I like to say that in ninth grade, somebody told me that I wouldn’t be standing here and that’s not a story that’s uncommon to people of African-American descent or people of color. The fact that I’m standing here is my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” ■

Leadership appointments advance IMPACT 2025 Strategic Plan

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hancellor Michael F. Collins

and Provost Terence R. Flotte made a number of leadership appointments over the past year that align with the vision of the IMPACT 2025 Strategic Plan, disseminated in early 2020. The plan provides a roadmap for future growth, development, investment and change that guides the institution’s actions over the next five years on behalf of the diverse communities served.

Mary Ahn named vice provost for faculty affairs Mary Ahn, MD, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics and director of child and adolescent psychiatry training, has been named vice provost for faculty affairs. In this role, Dr. Ahn is overseeing all aspects of faculty administration, including faculty appointments, promotion, tenure and post-tenure review; professional development for faculty; and oversight of the Office of Faculty Affairs.

In furtherance of the institutional commitment to enhancing the diversity and inclusion of the faculty, Ahn will partner with leaders in all academic departments and teams across the organization to advance these goals.

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University and earned her medical degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago, followed by postdoctoral, residency and fellowship training at McLean and Massachusetts General Hospitals and Harvard Medical School.

Esi A. Asare named director of admissions for School of Medicine

Mary Ahn, MD

Ahn has served as a professional development consultant and mentor to peer faculty, residents, fellows and medical students and as a wellness coach in the Office of the Chief Experience Officer; advisor to the Junior Faculty Development Program; and vice chair for academic affairs and career development and director of the Career Development and Research Office in the Department of Psychiatry.

She is certified as a coach by the International Coaching Federation, the only globally recognized, independent credentialing program for coach practitioners, and provided coaching to other academic institutions.

Board certified in psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry, Ahn graduated from Johns Hopkins

Esi A. Asare, MBA, was named the new director of admissions for the School of Medicine in December.

Asare was most recently director of multicultural admission at Le Moyne College, a private university in Syracuse with an enrollment of more than 3,100, where she held a series of increasingly responsible positions over the past 11 years. Her previous experience also includes work in an

Esi A. Asare, MBA

innovative mentoring partnership program at a community agency and in undergraduate admissions.

She holds an MBA and an MS in management systems from Clarkson University, and a BA in economics from Lawrence University.

“Ms. Asare’s work at Le Moyne is a strategic fit for the School of Medicine; our commitment to diversity and inclusion requires that we expand our reach and challenge ourselves to find additional approaches to recruitment and engagement,” Dean Flotte said.

Parth Chakrabarti named executive vice chancellor for innovation and business development Parth Chakrabarti, MPH, MBA, an experienced strategic leader in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, was named UMass Medical School’s new executive vice chancellor for innovation and business development in December.

Chakrabarti began his career as a medicinal chemist before transitioning to a series of global business leadership roles in Fortune 500 companies, including Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Sanofi Genzyme, Becton Dickinson and Amgen. During his career, he has closed numerous deals and has built innovation and strategy functions on behalf of several global organizations. Most recently, he served as vice president of business development at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston, leading the company’s Portfolio Innovation and Business Development Operations. Previously, he was global head of business developmentimmunology at Sanofi Genzyme and was senior director of transactions and new ventures at Johnson & Johnson Innovation.

Chakrabarti is co-inventor on multiple granted patents in the field of drug discovery, covering multiple therapeutic areas, and has co-authored multiple peerreviewed research papers. He has

Parth Chakrabarti, MPH, MBA

three advanced degrees: an MPH in management and health policy from Harvard University; an MBA from the Indian School of Business, and a master’s degree with specialization in pharmaceutical chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Anne Larkin named vice provost for educational affairs Anne C. Larkin, MD, was promoted to vice provost for educational affairs, a newly created position that includes responsibility for creating an inclusive process to implement the educational goals of the IMPACT 2025 Strategic Plan as well as oversight of crucial educational resources that support the educational mission of the three schools. Dr. Larkin will continue to lead critical accreditation processes.

The new role includes oversight of the Lamar Soutter Library, the interprofessional Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation, the integrated Teaching

Anne C. Larkin, MD

and Learning Center, the Institutional Research Evaluation and Assessment group, the Center for Academic Achievement, the Office of the Registrar, the Office of Financial Aid, the Outreach and Learning Environment, and clinical teaching sites. She will chair the Liaison Committee on Interprofessional Curriculum and continue to serve as senior associate dean for the School of Medicine.

For the past three years, Larkin has served as senior associate dean for educational affairs. She is also vice chair and associate professor of surgery, specializing in breast and endocrine surgery.

Larkin joined UMass Medical School in 2001 after surgical residency training at ColumbiaPresbyterian Hospital and two years of active duty in the United States Navy. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and her medical degree from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Milagros Rosal named inaugural vice provost for health equity Milagros C. Rosal, PhD, professor of population & quantitative health sciences in the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine, was appointed to the newly created position of vice provost for health equity at UMass Medical School in September.

Dr. Rosal is an accomplished faculty member and an influential thought leader in the field of health equity research. Throughout her tenure at UMass Medical School, she has been a champion for diversity and health equity and has taken on numerous leadership roles that have contributed to the institution’s diversity and inclusion goals. In recognition of her tireless efforts to promote diversity, Rosal, in 2016, received the Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence in Diversity. @UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 5

In her new role, Rosal is developing and implementing a strategic vision for increasing recruitment and retention of diverse faculty, an institutional priority articulated in the IMPACT 2025 Strategic Plan. Her extensive experience, expertise and networks are shaping the newly created position in concert with a number of senior leaders and she is co-chairing the Provost’s Faculty Recruitment Task Force, a group that will work to advance the Medical School’s diversity goals within the faculty ranks.

Milagros C. Rosal, PhD

Rosal holds degrees from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Venezuela, and Nova Southeastern University in Florida. She completed fellowship training in psychology and behavioral medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

With her appointment, Rosal was also named the inaugural recipient of a newly endowed faculty position, the Imoigele P. Aisiku, MD’97 Chair in Health Equity and Diversity, created specifically to support the faculty member who serves as vice provost for health equity. (See news brief below) ■

UMass Medical School appoints four faculty members to endowed chairs

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he University of Massachusetts

Board of Trustees approved the appointment of four esteemed UMass Medical School faculty members to new or existing endowed chairs.

The Imoigele P. Aisiku, MD’97 Chair in Health Equity and Diversity The Imoigele P. Aisiku, MD’97 Chair in Health Equity and Diversity was made possible by the generosity of Imoigele P. Aisiku, MD’97, MSCR, MBA, and is the first endowed chair to be established by an alumnus of UMass Medical School. Dr. Aisiku serves as the chief of the Division of Emergency Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham Health, where he is also the vice chair of diversity, inclusion and health equity. This new endowed chair was created specifically to support the faculty member who serves as vice provost for health equity.

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Milagros C. Rosal, PhD, professor of population & quantitative health sciences in the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine (pictured above), was named the inaugural vice provost for health equity in September.

Dr. Rosal’s research focuses on the prevention and management of chronic health conditions that pose a significant burden to racial and ethnic minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. She has been the principal or co-principal investigator on more than 40 research studies, most of which have been federally funded, including two center grants related to health equity: the Center for Health Equity Intervention Research funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the UMass Worcester Prevention Research Center funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Brian Lewis, PhD

The George F. Booth Chair in the Basic Sciences The George F. Booth Chair in the Basic Sciences was established by Robert W. Booth in 1999 to support a faculty member engaged in basic science research. It is named in memory of his late father, George F. Booth, a Worcester civic leader who had a deep appreciation for medical science and innovation.

Brian Lewis, PhD, professor of molecular, cell & cancer biology, joined the UMMS faculty in 2003 after earning his doctorate in biology from Johns Hopkins University and completing postdoctoral fellowships in cancer biology at the National Institutes of Health and Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

His lab focuses on elucidating the molecular mechanisms driving the initiation, progression and spread of pancreatic cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma, making significant contributions to the field of cancer biology. Dr. Lewis generated the first pancreatic cancer model induced after the postnatal and sporadic activation of oncogene expression while a postdoctoral fellow. This model was the first to provide strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that pancreatic cancers develop from the transformation of pancreas progenitor cells.

A national leader in graduate biomedical education, Lewis serves in dual leadership roles as associate dean for diversity and prematriculation programs in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and assistant vice provost for outreach and recruitment for UMass Medical School.

The Richard M. Haidack Professorship in Medicine The endowment for the Richard M. Haidack Professorship in Medicine was established in 1991 through a bequest from Richard Haidack, whose brother, Gerald, was among the initial group of faculty members recruited to UMass Medical School in the early 1970s and who went on to become a professor of surgery and cell biology. The chair was established to support the work of the chair of the Department of Medicine.

David McManus, MD’02, chair and professor of medicine, earned his medical degree and master’s in clinical investigation from the

David McManus, MD’02

School of Medicine and completed residency training in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

He joined the faculty here in 2009 and was appointed chair of medicine in 2020.

Founding director of the Program in Digital Medicine, Dr. McManus is a leader in the field of cardiac electrophysiology, particularly in the areas of the epidemiology of heart rhythm disorders and use of technologies to better diagnose and treat cardiovascular disease.

His digital health research and work in the point-of-care diagnostics space led to the NIH-funded Center for Advancing Point-ofCare Technologies in Heart, Lung, Blood and Sleep Center at UMass Medical School and UMass Lowell and his recent work on one of the NIH’s centerpiece pandemic initiatives—the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics program.

The Katz Family Chair in Psychiatry The Katz Family Foundation has endowed a fund dedicated to providing ongoing support for the chair of the Department of Psychiatry at UMass Medical School.

Kimberly A. Yonkers, MD, is the inaugural holder of the Katz Family Chair in Psychiatry. A leader in the

interdisciplinary fields connecting psychiatry and women’s health, she joined the institution as chair of psychiatry in November. A major component of her work has been the treatment of illnesses in pregnancy and the postpartum period and across the menstrual cycle, including pivotal research that indicated half of the instances of postpartum depression begin antenatally and that standard antidepressant treatment is effective for postpartum onset of major depressive episodes.

Her recent research on the impact and treatment of substance use disorders in pregnancy led to a widely adopted screening measure to help identify and assist pregnant women with these disorders.

Kimberly A. Yonkers, MD

Dr. Yonkers is a graduate of Amherst College and received her MD from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. She completed her residency training in psychiatry at McLean Hospital, followed by a fellowship in neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. Immediately prior to joining UMass Medical School, she was professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and held appointments in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine and in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health. ■

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 7

Putting diversity, equity and inclusion into practice

Marlina Duncan shares her perspective

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arlina Duncan, EdD, wants

to normalize diversity,

equity and inclusion practices. Incorporating them into policies and programs would become second nature, in her ideal, not viewed as something separate and optional.

Dr. Duncan joined UMass Medical School at the end of 2020 as the vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion. As a member of the senior leadership team, Duncan oversees the Diversity and Inclusion Office and partners with diversity leaders across the three schools, business units, and academic and administrative departments to ensure that the goals outlined in the IMPACT 2025 Strategic Plan are met and that diversity, equity and inclusion remain at the forefront.

She said when she arrived at UMass Medical School, she was encouraged to see so much diversity and inclusion activity going on. The missing link, to make those efforts more powerful, was bringing them together.

“Everyone is doing great things in their silos, but how do we bring that 8 | SUMMER 2021

together and bring awareness to the community that we have individuals who are working hard to improve the culture of the institution?”

Duncan said.

And improving the culture means changing how people think of diversity, inclusion and equity— to normalize it.

“The more you normalize things, it becomes a standard of what we talk about in our budget, a standard of what we all incorporate in our personal and professional development,” Duncan said. She compared diversity work to how we think about technology. “No one blinks an eye when you put in the budget that you need this amount of money for technology resources.

If we could think about diversity, equity and inclusion in the same manner, it’s just what you do. And it’s an ongoing, evolving process.”

Duncan, who is Black, described her professional journey as winding. Her role as vice chancellor is the culmination of previous experiences in teaching, program development and higher education administration, largely in the field of science.

Both of Duncan’s grandmothers were nurses, and as a child in Springfield, Massachusetts, she envisioned that she would become a doctor. She majored in biology and minored in chemistry at Westfield State University. She participated in a pipeline program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, where she shadowed a doctor and discovered that working with sick people wasn’t for her.

Instead of medical school, Duncan decided to take a position after college teaching science at Doherty High School in Worcester. Teachers in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering and math— were in high demand and were hired by schools even without formal teacher education training. Duncan soon wanted to learn more about the art and skill of teaching and dug into educational philosophy and best practices.

Amidst her exploration of education, Duncan’s experiences as a student and as a teacher revealed another prevalent message: There was a misconception of who belonged and who didn’t.

FAITH NINIVAGGI

PRO F I LE

Duncan was one of only two Black women in her undergraduate major department, biology. She said the two became friends and supported each other, but there was always a sense of questioning why she was there and whether being identified as different was worth it.

“As I became a teacher, I thought it would be enough that I would be in front of the classroom to really motivate students. And it wasn’t enough, because you’re not going to change the system just by being there,” she said.

Duncan added that even though she didn’t have role models who looked like her, she had mentors who weren’t people of color who encouraged her along the way.

She said, “I think there’s a gap, that we’re not telling enough of those stories where it doesn’t have to be someone who looks exactly like you. But you do need to be a champion for different types of groups and different identities.”

Duncan decided to pursue a doctorate in science education at UMass Amherst after several years of teaching in Massachusetts and Connecticut because, she said, “There has to be a way to do more around who is in these spaces and why. And I wanted to approach it from the teacher’s lens.”

Her graduate focus on underrepresented populations working on PhDs in STEM fields, and the reward of developing practices leading to more students embarking on this path, ignited Duncan’s passion. She committed to working with diversity and inclusion, particularly in STEM education. She was driven by the question, “How do I create spaces that are going to allow folks from marginalized communities to thrive?”

After earning her doctorate, Duncan became an assistant professor of science education at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, a historically Black

university. She wanted to be part of a community that supported people of color, she said.

But Duncan also missed New England and yearned for opportunities to work in administrative as well as academic roles. So, she and her husband moved back to Massachusetts and she became director of diversity initiatives, education and outreach at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. There, she worked with pipeline programs involving high school students and undergraduate summer research interns.

“How do we hold ourselves accountable?

It’s one thing to have good intentions and another to be intentional.”

MARLINA DUNCAN, EdD Duncan’s work at the Broad Institute led to her most recent positions as assistant vice president of academic diversity in Brown University’s Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity and associate dean of diversity initiatives in the Graduate School at Brown.

“All these places had such unique cultures and such an innovative way of approaching education,” said Duncan. “If I didn’t have these different experiences, I wouldn’t have the perspective I have now.”

Duncan’s immediate focus is to unify diversity and inclusion activities with creation of concrete, coordinated goals. And that entails being clear about what diversity, equity and inclusion mean for the institution as a whole, not just for different units or departments.

“How do we hold ourselves accountable?” she asked. “It’s one thing to have good intentions and another to be intentional.”

Once everyone feels like they’re working toward a common goal, Duncan continued, that will make the work easier. As part of that, enhancing communication around diversity and inclusion will become even more important to keep everyone up to speed on what others are doing.

Another major focus for Duncan is looking at the impact of diversity and inclusion work. People are looking for direction, she said.

Making initiatives more data-driven could guide decisions on whether to continue certain initiatives or not.

“I think we get stuck in doing what we’ve done in the past, but not looking at impact,” Duncan said. “I hope to encourage leadership and the institution to look at the impact of our work. Our work can’t just be transactional; it has to be transformational.”

Duncan said she saw opportunities for UMass Medical School to attract more diverse representation among faculty, staff and students—another focus on her to-do list—by making the institution a resource in training and professional development and fostering greater relationships with other communities.

The biggest challenge for Duncan as she addresses diversity issues and changing institutional culture is time.

Time to pause and reflect. Time to be creative.

“When we’re under pressure, we’re not going to be creative and take risks in the ways that we need to move,” she said. “That’s why I really do encourage departments to make space for this, give people time to ask questions, build knowledge and then take action. So often we’re just reacting to an event or something we’ve seen in the news.”

Duncan, her husband, their 7-yearold son and aging cat live in the Whitinsville village of Northbridge. ■

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 9

Immersive MD program fosters systemic change First cohort of Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health students become doctors

By Kylee Denesha

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In line with the PURCH mission, the simulation is an interactive, interprofessional educational experience in which students truly learn what it means to be a member of a family living at or below the poverty line that illuminates some of the many social determinants of health that impact their patients.

“You’re assessing how to get to work, pick up your kids from school, receive health care and buy groceries all without having access to transportation,” said Dr. Manikantan, now in her internal medicine residency at Stony Brook University Hospital in New York.

“If you can’t make ends meet, you have to navigate the possibility of your house being foreclosed or checking your family into a homeless shelter. You make tough decisions, such as not getting groceries one week, then find ways to get services that could be of assistance.”

DAVE ROBACK

he first year of medical school brings

lots of excitement for new students:

getting to know professors and peers, taking foundational courses on core pharmacology concepts, and exploring the campus. For one group of School of Medicine Class of 2021 graduates, the first year also involved figuring out how to afford a month’s worth of meals and bus tickets for a family of three or four on an impossibly tight budget.

“The poverty simulator threw us into realworld situations in our introductory weeks at UMass Medical School,” said Poornima Manikantan, MD’21. The Longmeadow native graduated with the inaugural class of students in the Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) track. “It was an opportunity to simulate the difficult decisions that many community members face daily.”

PURCH Class of 2021 members from left: Poornima Manikantan, Amanda Whitehouse, Kathryn Norman, Colton Conrad and Kevin White

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 11

“It is a simulated month that takes place within a few hours where students navigate different social services and challenges,” said Justin Ayala, undergraduate education program coordinator for PURCH. “It recreates some of that anxiety that folks feel on an everyday basis in low resource communities. This can help our learners see and feel the lived experience of the patients that they may be interacting with.”

In the PURCH track, offered at the UMMS-Baystate campus in Springfield, students learn primary and sub-specialty care of patients within a populationhealth framework. Participants complete their preclinical and

basic science courses in addition to program-specific courses such as Determinants of Health and Doctoring & Clinical Skills. In their third-year, students complete clinical rotations at Baystate Medical Center. The PURCH curriculum prepares students to practice medicine in diverse urban and rural communities, with a focus on underserved populations and analysis of social determinants of health. The 2021 PURCH cohort comprised six men and nine women, including 11 Massachusetts residents.

The program augments the MD track with additional emphasis on patient-centered, community-based care and innovative, immersive

“PURCH definitely helped me solidify my interests in working with urban-rural community health populations.”

KEVIN WHITE , MD’ 21

DAVE ROBACK

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learning experiences. PURCH prepares students to manage the health of both individuals and populations.

“PURCH highlights ways to establish cultural and structural change. It enhances the student experience in learning about their community and how that knowledge influences everything from how they talk to their patients to understanding their community partners,” said Sarah McAdoo, MD, director of the PURCH population health capstone course.

Kevin White, MD’21, was the first student accepted to PURCH when it was launched in 2017. He was born at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield in 1995, and now, Dr. White is beginning his internal medicine residency at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland. Inspired by the tradition of military service in his family, White is also a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.

Although he is far from home, he credits PURCH for the opportunity to train in the community that raised him.

“In first grade, I remember the school counselor asking what we wanted to be as adults. I would say I wanted to be a doctor,” White said.

“My mother is a medical assistant, always helping others and putting people before herself. I wanted to be just like her.”

White was able to pursue that vision when he enrolled in PURCH after graduating from UMass Amherst. He was introduced to the UMMS environment when he participated in the BaccMD Pathway, an undergrad program that provides students from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine the opportunity of provisional acceptance to the School of Medicine.

“As I went through the program, I gradually became more interested in medicine. It brought together some of the qualities that I really aspire to emulate as a physician. PURCH definitely helped me solidify my

UMMS-Baystate Campus SPRINGFIELD • Two Thursdays per month during preclinical work in years one and two of the PURCH program • Base for clinical work in years three and four of the PURCH program

interests in working with urban-rural community health populations.

Springfield is extremely diverse, with vast Hispanic, African-American and Asian populations,” he said.

The PURCH curriculum focuses on cultivating physicians who are teamoriented, excellent diagnosticians, self-reflective, empathetic and leaders who can be led. Students in the program strive to exemplify those characteristics.

“PURCH is not just a track, it’s also a state of being,” said Kevin Hinchey, MD, senior associate dean for education at UMMS-Baystate.

“It encompasses the essence and traits of what it means to be a doctor.

Our goal is to teach our students to find and maintain humility and understanding while working with their patients.”

“On the surface of the water, we have all of our classes and academic work that outlines our responsibilities as providers,” said Rebecca Blanchard, PhD, assistant dean for education at UMMSBaystate. “But underneath that water, deep down is the outreach and connection to the community.

UMass Medical School Campus WORCESTER • Base for preclinical work in years one and two of the PURCH program • Six to twelve days per year in years three and four of the PURCH program

That’s what will really mold the physician.”

Colton Conrad, MD’21, moved to Springfield from North Carolina when he matriculated at UMass Medical School. From the minute he toured Baystate Medical Center, he knew it would be a great place to learn. Dr. Conrad is now serving his residency in emergency medicine at Baystate, which was his top choice.

Like White, he was intrigued by the novelty of the program.

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 13

“I was really excited to be a part of a new program and be one of the first to step into the field with this specific training,” said Conrad. “I’ve been able to develop a better understanding of patients on a deeper level than their illnesses or ailments. They’re not just patients, they’re people living in a community,” said Conrad, noting that is his responsibility as a physician to meet his patients where they are.

Courses taken in the PURCH track provide the same information, build the same skills and develop the same competencies as the traditional MD curriculum, but PURCH focuses on a commitment to underserved populations. Courses bring real patient experiences to life both inside and outside the classroom, putting students in the shoes of people for whom they will care. The courses also show students the complexity of the human anatomy through the lens of other trades and professions.

“A car mechanic came in on our first day of classes,” said Conrad.

“They taught us how they do a diagnosis and history of a car’s maintenance . . . asking questions like, ‘When did the problem start?

What does it sound or feel like to you?’ The analogy was super insightful, especially walking into med school on day one.”

“PURCH unites people who are oriented around social determinants of health and finds avenues to provide care in a way that is cognizant of all of the other drivers that impact health outcomes, such as housing instability, internet access and food insecurity,” said Amanda Whitehouse, MD’21. Alongside her former classmate Conrad, Dr. Whitehouse is also beginning her career as a physician at Baystate Medical Center, in pediatrics. She taught for Teach for America before enrolling in medical school and believes firmly that education is critical in shaping the doctors of tomorrow.

“There is so much to be aware of as a clinician. You truly take on the role of an educator,” she said. “Medicine and teaching are synonymous, and I feel that PURCH puts us in the shoes of both the learner and the teacher.

We learn from our patients as they do from us.”

An asset of the PURCH education is the collaboration with lay faculty, a diverse group of community members who are passionate about shaping the education of future providers. The community faculty live in Western Massachusetts and represent organizations that collaborate with PURCH and Baystate on the goal of developing culturally humble physicians as community advocates. They help augment curricula and teach by hosting student learning experiences and serving as standardized patients, a role for which they are trained to act as patients with specific medical conditions in simulated office visits where students interview and examine them.

71% Massachusetts residents

BAYSTATE HEALTH

PURCH Class of 2021 at a glance

62% Female

38% Male

Where the inaugural PURCH MDs are now: 73 percent are going

into primary care

40 percent are staying

in Massachusetts for their residencies

20 percent are starting

14 | SUMMER 2021

their careers at Baystate Health

“I’ve been able to develop a better understanding of patients on a deeper level than their illnesses or ailments.

They’re not just patients, they’re people living in a community.”

Both the PURCH students and community faculty said this experience is invaluable and instrumental to structural change.

“Students participated in many moments where they were able to engage directly with families,” said Jenise Katalina, healthy families resource specialist at The Children’s Trust and former vice president of family services at Square One in Springfield. Square One provides a range of education and support services to help families grow cognitively, emotionally and socially.

“I believe that we cannot create systemic change and address the needs in our community without an interdisciplinary approach. Not only did this program provide an opportunity to connect students with the community that they will be working in, but it also provided me and my organization with the opportunity to learn more about the medical schooling process and move our work forward with another lens on our work.”

“I remember showing the students my community when we went on a food desert tour,” said Charlie Holmes, leader of Springfield’s Service Employees International Union, and a standardized patient and community faculty member.

“We developed a strong bond with this hands-on experience. It so much touched my heart when I saw

DAVE ROBACK

K ATHRYN NORMAN , MD’ 21 the students volunteering in my community.”

Kathryn Norman, MD’21, chose PURCH after graduating from Harvard and working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the Public Health Associate Program in California for two years, where she developed a love for local health policy. Now an internal medicine resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dr. Norman credits PURCH for immersing her and her peers in Springfield-based volunteer projects over the years, exposing them to the lifestyles and environments of their patients.

“I took part in a neighborhood workday through Revitalize CDC, a community development coalition.

We went out and did some painting and gardening. I was painting a fence and a woman in her 50s, who was also painting, started chatting with me and shared how she had a personal connection to Baystate Medical Center in her family. I remember her saying how amazing it was to see a medical center grow and bring in students who were not part of Baystate, but who were coming out and learning about the community because they truly wanted to be there. It stuck with me,” Norman said. ■

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 15

An army of vaccinators UMass Medical School Vaccine Corps delivers relief from pandemic

By Susan E.W. Spencer

16 | SUMMER 2021

A

year after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down

life as people knew it, rays of hope appeared

on the horizon. Two mRNA vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, one made by Pfizer-BioNTech and the other by Cambridge-based Moderna, received U.S. Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization in December 2020; a third vaccine, by Johnson & Johnson, was added in February 2021, with others in the pipeline.

But a daunting challenge remained: How would the vaccines make their way into the arms—and immune systems—of most Americans—enough to reach herd immunity—especially those in hard-to-reach communities?

In Worcester, UMass Medical School and its community partners were building the foundation of what would be envisioned as “an army of vaccinators,” with students and other volunteers fanning out to inoculate people who could not easily navigate getting a vaccine on their own.

At the Rock of Salvation Pentecostal Church on Main Street one morning in March, six School of Medicine student volunteers administered the Moderna vaccine, while Matilde Castiel, MD, associate professor of medicine and commissioner of health and human services for the City of Worcester, filled syringes with the day’s allotted 100 doses and oversaw the clinical team. Many of those showing up for their vaccine appointments were people of color, a community particularly burdened by severe COVID-19 disease, and were excited to take this first step toward immunity and reconnecting with their neighbors.

“There is no way we could pull this off without the Medical School volunteers,” said Worcester City Manager Edward M. Augustus, Jr., who stopped by.

UMass Medical School volunteers have played a key role with Dr. Castiel and regional public health groups to bring vaccines to where they are needed most, such as churches and community centers in hard-hit neighborhoods, the Worcester Senior Center, the YMCA, and senior and low-income housing complexes.

“I feel like we’ve been waiting a year and now I can finally help. It feels really good,” said Emily Farbman, SOM ’23, as she waited for her next vaccination patient at the church.

FAITH NINIVAGGI

Benjamin Potee, SOM ’24, goes over the vaccine record with a recipient.

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COV E R S TO RY

Alex Richard, SOM ’24, had already volunteered at several Worcester Senior Center vaccine clinics and the large-scale vaccination site set up in February at Worcester State University, a collaboration with Saint Vincent Hospital and Commonwealth Medicine, the health care consulting and operations division of UMass Medical School.

“I read Chancellor Collins’ and UMass President Meehan’s op-ed in the Boston Globe, calling for the Vaccine Corps, and said, ‘This sounds awesome,’” Richard said. “It’s such an opportunity for us to be here. It is really a sense of hope.”

A national purpose “Health and public officials would be wise to mobilize a most precious and treasured resource—young people—to serve as the foundation for a well-trained, public serviceoriented COVID-19 Vaccine Corps,” Chancellor Michel F. Collins and UMass President Marty Meehan wrote in the Globe editorial, which was published Jan. 1. “The nation must not delay in utilizing this sizable group of motivated Americans who are ready, willing and able to step up to assist with the unprecedented vaccine campaign that will help to usher in the end of this pandemic.”

Chancellor Collins said that the idea for a COVID-19 vaccine corps, based on service models of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and Teach for America, stemmed from conversations with students who were frustrated about being on the sidelines and not being able to help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was the same desire to serve that led UMass Medical School to be the first in the nation to graduate its fourth-year medical students two months early last year, so these new doctors could immediately join the front lines against COVID-19, according to Collins.

“We’d go wherever people needed help,” said Collins. “It’s time for a national purpose.”

Vaccinating the commonwealth

FAITH NINIVAGGI

18 | SUMMER 2021

GSN student Christy Mangiacotti delivers a dose to a grateful recipient.

Collins described the Vaccine Corps as “a perfect model for interprofessional collaboration,” with involvement from all three UMass Medical School graduate schools as well as others in the community such as dentists and pharmacists.

Vaccination programs developed locally started out as building blocks, but more work would be needed to scale the effort to reach across the state.

Administering the inoculation, colloquially called “giving the jab,” is the easy part, said Collins. The hard part would be setting up the structure for the Vaccine Corps, vetting volunteers, scheduling them at a growing number of sites and coordinating with delivery of vaccines.

Commonwealth Medicine, a division of UMass Medical School with more than 1,000 professionals experienced in supporting public agencies on a wide range of health care system and project management solutions, filled the need for technical expertise.

“We have the nimbleness to develop targeted solutions for

FAITH NINIVAGGI

The large-scale vaccination site at Worcester State University relied on thousands of volunteers to deliver vaccines to more than 50,000 people.

complex public health problems,” said Lisa Colombo, DNP, MHA, RN, executive vice chancellor for Commonwealth Medicine.

Commonwealth Medicine launched the Vaccine Corps volunteer portal in February, and

by May, Commonwealth Medicine had registered more than 7,000 volunteers from across the state.

Volunteers included licensed clinicians and those who stepped up to support their efforts by registering patients, scheduling follow-up doses, greeting patients and other nonclinical duties.

In addition to students from UMass Medical School, Commonwealth Medicine collaborated with more than a dozen academic partners to enlist volunteers.

Multiple clinical partners requested volunteer support to deliver vaccines to their populations.

Perhaps the most visible example was Commonwealth Medicine’s regional collaboration on the largescale vaccination site with partners at Worcester State University and Saint Vincent Hospital, that administered as many as 2,300 vaccinations in a day. In addition, the Vaccine Corps has been deployed

“

This work is what UMass Medical School and Commonwealth Medicine are not only built for but, more importantly, are passionate about.

LISA COLOMBO, DNP, MHA , RN

in dozens of clinics, including sites affiliated with the City of Worcester and the Worcester Housing Authority, homeless shelters, UMass Memorial Medical Center, colleges and universities, and in other regions such as East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, a clinic in Springfield and a statewide homebound vaccination project.

Approximately 83,000 vaccine doses had been given to nearly 50,000 recipients by Vaccine Corps volunteers by June at the Worcester State University site.

“This work is what UMass Medical School and Commonwealth Medicine are not only built for but, more importantly, are passionate about,” Dr. Colombo said. “Making an impact on public health is what energizes the volunteers.

And the clear sense of relief and appreciation from people after receiving their vaccine has made an indelible impression on all who have participated in this effort.”

Supporting the Vaccine Corps’ equitable distribution of vaccine to vulnerable populations were philanthropic donations totaling

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 19

COV E R S TO RY

$435,000. Contributions were led by a $200,000 gift from the Woburnbased Cummings Foundation that UMass Medical School was challenged to match. In response, the leadership and board of directors of the United Way of Central Massachusetts approved a six-figure donation. Contributions were also received from the Frias family/S&F Concrete, The Kraft Group, the Tsotsis family, the Melvin S. Cutler Charitable Foundation and the DuFour family.

Additionally, Wagner Automotive Group of Shrewsbury generously donated the lease of a van to assist Vaccine Corps volunteers in delivering vaccines to special populations in Massachusetts.

Driven by students

20 | SUMMER 2021

“

We’re in the midst of a life-altering pandemic and out of it came this monumental showing of human ingenuity, collaboration and caring.

FAITH NINIVAGGI

The Vaccine Corps grew out of the confluence of student-driven initiatives at UMass Medical School.

One was a movement for medical students to serve vulnerable populations in Worcester; the other expanded a Graduate School of Nursing program that led to GSN students teaching medical students how to give injections.

“About five years ago, we trained a group of medical students to give intramuscular injections for the flu vaccination,” said Jill Terrien, PhD, ANP-BC, associate professor of nursing and associate dean of interprofessional and community partnerships in the GSN. “I teach a course in the fall semester where students are encouraged and required to get involved in the community and this seemed like a perfect fit.”

Dr. Terrien worked with the medical student representative to the Wellness Committee, Christopher Lee, SOM ’22, and 13 GSN students who are registered nurses in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program to update the earlier work as a PowerPoint module that SOM students would take online before receiving practical training from the nurses.

Nearly 500 medical students were proper protective equipment. trained over the winter and spring.

“I think it is important to give back In addition, health practitioners to the community and this was my in the community who wanted to small contribution,” Korobkina said. refresh their knowledge received “These students are out there now, training from GSN students, bringing vaccinating people and helping get numbers of ready volunteers to more the pandemic under control.” than 700. GSN students and faculty The GSN-led training connected then reached out to other medical with teams of medical students who schools in the state, training medical were already volunteering with free and dental students at Boston University in March.

Commonwealth Medicine staff asked GSN students to develop a condensed training module, focusing just on intramuscular injection in the arm, which could be widely shared with nursing, medical and dental schools.

“It’s been this kind of flowering from a small group of nursing students MINA BOTROS , SOM ’24 to this statewide effort,” said Lee. “And at each step, every entity gave what they could. It’s making a huge difference.” clinics and shelters in Worcester, Emily Everett, BSN, RN, a student offering help with telehealth in the GSN’s Doctor of Nursing programs, medication assistance Practice program, joined the and links to services. injection training team because she Mina Botros, SOM ’24, cowanted to explore clinical teaching president of the Worcester Free and give back to the community. She Care Collaborative, applied skills was surprised by the overwhelming from his engineering background response from medical students to administer student vaccinator wanting to be trained. volunteer assignments in the city’s “It’s like this little seed was vulnerable neighborhoods. planted,” Everett said. “It means a “At the start, a lot of it was just lot that within the program, we have open Excel spreadsheets, people been able to make such a difference posting times so that we knew already. It’s snowballed into a bigger when students were supposed to thing and hopefully, we’re going to be coming to the clinics,” Botros help everyone in Massachusetts.” said. “A lot of it was serendipitous, Graduate School of Biomedical building and evaluating as we went, Sciences students such as Ekaterina until we got to the point where Korobkina helped with inoculation Commonwealth Medicine said to us, training too, greeting and registering we’ve blazed a path and they can students and making sure they had help pave it behind us. Their ability to

Mina Botros, SOM ’24, at a community vaccination clinic at the YWCA Central Massachusetts in Worcester. @UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 21

COV E R S TO RY

“When catastrophe strikes again, how do we engage people? The experience of getting out there and doing something that is so much bigger than yourself is huge.”

Long-term outlook

FAITH NINIVAGGI

Top: Alex Richard, SOM ’24, was on the team of student clinical volunteers working an April clinic at the YWCA Central Massachusetts.

Bottom: Thomas Pomfret, PharmD, MPH, BCPS, clinical consultant pharmacist team lead, and Daniel Wenzel, MD’21, discuss the upcoming shift at the Worcester State University large-scale vaccination site.

handle all the nitty-gritty details has been instrumental.”

Botros said he never anticipated, coming to medical school, the importance of playing a connecting administrative role between students, city health officials and statewide efforts, looking into what it takes to get several groups collaborating.

“What I truly like most about these efforts is working with patients in the community and working alongside my peers. I love to learn from

22 | SUMMER 2021

those who have come before me— including leaders of the Medical School and its clinical partner—and interwoven both clinical duties and administrative ones so beautifully.”

The human response to the pandemic is also something Botros would like to study further as more information comes in. “We’re in the midst of a life-altering pandemic and out of it came this monumental showing of human ingenuity, collaboration and caring,” he said.

Terrien agreed that responding to the pandemic would not be a short-term exercise, with continued need for vaccinations in younger populations and perhaps booster vaccinations as well. “But these are the building blocks we have now, and I hope we can keep reactivating whenever we need it,” she said.

Michael Hirsh, MD, professor of surgery and pediatrics and assistant vice provost for wellness and health promotion at UMMS, said, “This is an example of how we lead from the front.”

Reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the pandemic becoming a national emergency, Dr. Hirsh, who is also medical director of Worcester’s Division of Public Health, said, “We’ve exposed now, with this terrible year, all the health care disparities that students really care about. I think these students have opened a lot of eyes up that this is part of the problem. And I think things will be very different moving forward, about how we look at public health and how we look at the social determinants: Public health is everybody’s business.”

Collins said the Vaccine Corps has offered another benefit—a way for UMass campuses to unite and connect with thousands of residents interested in serving the commonwealth. He saw opportunity for sustained growth and meaningful impact as the Vaccine Corps develops relationships with more local boards of health and academic and health care institutions.

Collins said, “We dropped a little pebble into the pond, and now we can see the ripples.” ■

COVID-19: Where we are now Within days of the appearance of COVID-19 infections, UMass Medical School faculty in all three schools were immersed in activities to understand it; treat it; prevent its spread; understand its impact; and assess its effects on the community, the commonwealth and the world. More than a dozen UMMS research laboratories began working on projects related to COVID-19, including: •

Vaccine research and development;

•

Clinical trials to evaluate convalescent plasma and new uses for available medications;

•

Creation of additional testing capacity in the early months of the pandemic;

•

Development of new testing technologies for rapid deployment; and

•

Studies of the virus and its variants.

When prospective vaccines were ready to be evaluated for effectiveness, UMass Medical School was a primary clinical trial enrollment site for a number of

vaccines, including the PfizerBioNTech and the Moderna vaccines, including as a site for clinical trials for adolescents and children; and several ambitious surveillance trials, where Medical School faculty contributed to national and international databases of virus prevalence and the prevalence of mutations.

And when vaccines first started to be delivered, UMass Medical School was there too, with the early development of a volunteer vaccine corps, training of hundreds of health care professionals to administer vaccines, and working with its innovative business unit, Commonwealth Medicine, and a local health care system opening a large-scale vaccination site that by July had administered more than 83,000 doses of vaccine to more than 50,000 people. By June, UMMS rolled out—literally—a mobile vaccine van that is reaching schools and other sites across central Massachusetts for vaccine clinics. ■

Worcester large-scale vaccination site at closing

83,000+ shots given

25,000+

volunteer hours

1,700+

Vaccine Corps volunteers

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 23

Serving those who have served New VA health care facility on UMass Medical School campus to offer ‘the very best care in the very best clinical spaces’

By Colleen Locke

24 | SUMMER 2021

When the new communitybased outpatient clinic for veterans opens on the UMass Medical School campus later this year, the stateof-the-art facility will not only centralize a number of services for veterans that are scattered across the city and region, it will provide opportunities for current and future health care practitioners to learn from and serve those who have served the country.

The years long effort to bring the VA clinic project to the UMMS campus is personal for Chancellor Michael F. Collins, whose father was treated for a brain tumor at the VA in Jamaica Plain. Chancellor Collins said one of his favorite medical school rotations was at that same VA. “My view is we make a lifetime commitment to those who have served, and I would like the Medical School to be part of fulfilling that commitment,” Collins said.

The clinic areas will occupy the first two floors of the new four-story building, adding 15,000 square feet more of space dedicated to patient care than the three existing VA sites in Worcester combined. This new facility will provide the primary care, mental health, specialty care and rehabilitation services currently offered at the Lake Avenue and Lincoln Street VA sites (which will close), as well as new services such as endocrinology and gastroenterology.

U.S. Rep. James McGovern championed the project at the federal level and facilitated discussions with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that eventually led to the project being approved.

“The problem that Dr. Collins zeroed in on at the beginning was that we had a lot of veterans in Central Massachusetts who had long wait periods in order to get

the care that they needed. That’s simply unacceptable. Veterans have stepped forward and in many cases put their lives on the line to protect our country. This is the right thing to do,” McGovern said.

The new clinic is a collaboration between UMMS and the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System, longtime partners in delivering health care to veterans.

Its location on the Worcester campus expands opportunities for students at the Medical School to train in VA health care.

“

We owe it to our veterans to do everything we can to respond to the invisible and other wounds of war.”

TERENCE R. FLOT TE , MD “This affiliation has afforded us the opportunity to assist in the training of medical students, many of whom have pursued full-time careers within the VA,” said Duane Gill, FACHE, executive director of the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System. “We are proud to work with UMass Medical School in ensuring that our veterans in and surrounding Worcester receive the very best care in the very best clinical spaces available.”

Triage nurse Wanda Scott, RN, BSN, will be working in the new building. She’s also a client, and said the location will make services more visible to veterans like her.

“The location is key,” Scott said.

Terence R. Flotte, MD, the Celia

and Isaac Haidak Professor, executive deputy chancellor, provost and dean of the School of Medicine, said data show that medical students who train in VA health care settings are more likely to care for veterans as doctors.

“As the state’s only public medical school, we have a special obligation to care for the underserved in Massachusetts. This particularly includes veterans, who have been disproportionately affected by depression, suicide, substance use disorders and homelessness. We owe it to our veterans to do everything we can to respond to the invisible and other wounds of war,” said Dean Flotte, whose father was a World War II veteran and whose wife’s 99-year-old grandfather receives his care in Worcester.

Air National Guard Brig. Gen. Sean Collins, PhD’09, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Nursing, who served four combat tours prior to his current assignment as Commander, Air Force Medical Readiness Agency, Headquarters Air Force, has lectured on veterans topics and taught courses on veterans health issues. He said that UMass Medical School students are taught to ask patients if they or a loved one have served in the military.

“I always ask when I’m meeting a patient for the first time, have you served in uniform, because it does give you a different perspective on what that individual may have come in contact with or been exposed to if they deployed,” he said.

“I think this is going to be an enormous statement to those who served our country—that the University of Massachusetts Medical School stands proud in caring for them when they need it,” Chancellor Collins said. ■

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Community-driven, community-responsive Grassroots collaborations confront disparities illuminated by pandemic

By Sandra Gray

D

ramatic health disparities

are not new or limited to COVID-19, but the pandemic has illuminated longstanding gaps in health status and health care stratified by race and ethnicity.

“We knew before the pandemic that health disparities exist and these disparities disproportionately affect the overall health and lifespans of Black, brown, indigenous and immigrant populations,” said Matilde Castiel, MD, associate professor of medicine and commissioner of health and human services for the City of Worcester. “We were aware that families in our city’s Black, Latino and immigrant communities were most likely to contract the virus because they had less opportunity to socially distance, quarantine or work from home.”

UMass Medical School purposefully instills in the health care providers and scientists it trains the means to understand and proactively address the socioeconomic factors that underly health disparities. During the pandemic, the Medical School played a significant role in grassroots initiatives created by the city, community organizations and advocates to help those most affected by COVID-19.

26 | SUMMER 2021

Collaborations initially included engaging Black and Latino communities in vaccine clinical trials and addressing lack of confidence about getting vaccinated through community conversations and town halls. Building upon these collaborations and fostering more community-engaged research, service-learning programs and curriculum focused on health disparities and health equity will remain a focus long after the pandemic ends.

“We want our community to know that we’re here and available to help,” said Ché Anderson, who in 2020 joined UMass Medical School as assistant vice chancellor for city and community relations after nearly seven years with the City of Worcester, most recently as deputy cultural officer. “We look forward to assisting. We want to be active partners.”

Expanding representation and participation in clinical trials

In the fall of 2020, UMass Medical School reached out to diverse communities in Worcester to recruit volunteers for a clinical trial of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine under the leadership of Robert Finberg, MD, distinguished professor of medicine, who has served as principal investigator on more than half a dozen clinical trials related to COVID-19. Dr. Finberg is a member of Gov. Charlie Baker’s COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Group, which has emphasized equity in COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

“Lack of representation in research is yet another driver of health disparities,” explained Stephenie Lemon, PhD, professor of population & quantitative health sciences, chief of the department’s Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine and co-director of the UMass Worcester Prevention Research Center. “Our overarching goal is to make the research accessible to underrepresented groups.”

Sarah Forrester, PhD, is employing a creative approach with Worcester’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force and community organizations. In an effort to address barriers to research study participation, the task force is utilizing storytelling by community members who are best positioned to convey messages about why Black and Hispanic people should take part in clinical research.

“COVID-19 is hitting these communities the hardest,” said Dr. Forrester, assistant professor of population & quantitative health sciences. “We connect through personal stories, through hearing and seeing somebody that looks like you and has the same experiences you have had.”

With its mission to achieve social justice through improved health for all, the Department of Population & Quantitative Health Sciences is involved in many health equity efforts at the Medical School. “We have a passion for social justice through improved health,” said Chair and Professor Jeroan Allison, MD. Delivering answers, dispelling misinformation UMass Medical School helped address lack of confidence among Black and Latino residents about COVID-19 vaccination by hosting virtual town halls and community conversations to provide reliable information, answer questions and address concerns.

“We tailored the panels to the audience to bring the knowledge of our physicians and scientists to them,” said Dr. Lemon. "There is a 28 | SUMMER 2021

lot of interest in populations of color hearing from trusted experts who look like them. Everyone we asked to participate said yes.”

For example, events hosted by African immigrant churches have immigrant physician scientists, including Professor of Pediatrics Benjamin Nwosu, MD, who are well known to the community whose concerns they are addressing, on hand.

$107.2M in UMass Medical School research supporting health equity (CY2020)

Specific research focus COVID-19 Immunodeficiency Aging Diversity Cardiovascular disease Substance abuse Mental health Global Disability Community Cancer Some events have taken a panel presentation approach in which each participating physician and scientist gives a three or four minute overview of their topic, then takes questions. A radio call-in show featured Dr. Castiel answering questions in Spanish.

One of the first gatherings to address the vaccine and the history of distrust and hesitancy in communities of color, hosted

by Black Families Together, drew more than 300 attendees. Other organizations hosting UMMS and community speakers—among them clergy who are powerful role models for their congregants—include African Community Education, the Worcester Latino Empowerment Organizing Network, the Latin American Business Organization, Protégete Latino en Contra del Coronavirus, the Worcester Together coalition and City of Worcester employee unions.

Castiel has participated in many of the events, some conducted in Spanish and broadcast on local Latino radio and television stations.

Germán Chiriboga, MPH, the project director for the UMMS Science Participation Resource Center and a member of the steering committee of the Worcester Latino Empowerment Organizing Network, has served as a webinar moderator.

Translating information for nonEnglish and English-as-a-secondlanguage speakers is essential to these efforts. The UMass Worcester Prevention Research Center, in partnership with the City of Worcester and the Central Massachusetts Regional Public Health Alliance, has produced fact sheets in Spanish, Vietnamese, Swahili, Portuguese, Albanian, Kinyarwanda, Arabic, Hindi, Haitian Creole, French and Mandarin Chinese.

Addressing social determinants of health Beyond supporting vaccine awareness and access, other Medical School initiatives address the social determinants of health that underlie disparities.

UMass Medical School is one of 22 partner organizations and agencies of the Worcester COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. The task force was established by the

“What we learned during COVID-19 is that the kind of outreach we were able to do helped people access health care.

How we collaborated to establish relationships between health care providers and the communities that our institutions have so frequently failed is what should continue happening as we move on.”

MATILDE CA STIEL , MD A SSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE COMMISSIONER OF HE ALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES FOR THE CIT Y OF WORCESTER

Worcester Department of Health and Human Services and UMMS clinical partner UMass Memorial Health. Its 56 members are leaders from all segments of the community and health care system including UMMS representatives Castiel, Anderson, Forrester, Chiriboga and Ann Moormann, PhD, professor of medicine.

The Greater Worcester Community Health COVID-19 Survey conducted by the Department of Population & Quantitative Health Sciences has informed pandemic relief efforts in Worcester and other local communities. It is being updated to capture concerns about COVID-19 vaccines as well as the overall impact of the pandemic on residents.

Educational outreach programs for high school and college students from backgrounds

underrepresented in health care and biomedical sciences are being continued remotely this summer.

“It is important to show our students and partners that we can navigate through these challenges as they are presented to us,” said Robert Layne, MEd, assistant dean of outreach programs.

And School of Medicine and Graduate School of Nursing faculty and students continue to serve as trainers and vaccinators for the UMMS-led Vaccine Corps.

More to be done Community-driven, communityresponsive efforts addressing disparities during the current health crisis show promise for sustainability even after the pandemic. But there is much more to be done and proponents fear a loss of momentum.

“What we learned during COVID-19 is that the kind of outreach we were able to do helped people access health care,” said Castiel.

“How we collaborated to establish relationships between health care providers and the communities that our institutions have so frequently failed is what should continue happening as we move on.”

“Our intention is to look at sustainable partnerships as we move forward, to maintain longstanding partnerships and to build upon the many new ones we have created,” said Chiriboga. “We are grateful for the opportunities we’ve been given to help strengthen our community.” ■

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 29

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lastword

Michael F. Collins, MD Chancellor and Senior Vice President for the Health Sciences

A

great deal of the work of an academic health

sciences center is focused on what is happening now: The circumstances created during the pandemic made us suddenly and acutely aware of how much is going on at any given moment in this collective of thousands of faculty, staff and students spread across the commonwealth.

As a campus community, we were able to pivot effectively to working remotely, to maintaining essential operations, to attacking new research challenges related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and to expanding our reach into areas like our volunteer Vaccine Corps and participation in large clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines (both of which you’ve just read about in these pages). We have a strong and stable leadership team and a welldeveloped organizational structure accustomed to working “in the now.”

But while the “now” is critically important, we also must be intently focused on a future five, 10, 20 years away. This is why we have taken the strategic planning process so seriously, with hundreds of members of our community focusing on where a great academic medical center will be a decade from now and what we will need to do to get there. For every hour we spent in the past year and a half working in the moment on challenges that arose from the pandemic, there have been many

30 | SUMMER 2021

hours and much energy spent on what happens next.

This focus on the “next” is why a new education and research building is being constructed on the Worcester campus: a nine-story, 350,000 square-foot component of our future academic hub that will be critical to the next generation of life sciences research and training. I must acknowledge that there were some who were surprised that we would break ground on a bold and complex building amid a pandemic. “Why now?” they asked.

The answer, simply, is because it is “what’s next.”

We know from our strategic planning that when this building opens, we will have nearly outgrown our current research space. We know that the progress our research faculty are making for diseases like ALS and Tay-Sachs will need FDA-compliant manufacturing on site to create clinical trial therapeutics. We know that our new Program in Human Genetics & Evolutionary Biology— a key recommendation of our scientific leadership in the current strategic plan—must be established and recruiting by 2023 when the new building begins to open. And we know, because of our strategic growth and achievement over the last decade, that co-locating our programs in molecular medicine, gene therapy and the neurosciences will spark research discoveries and accomplishments with real world impact.

We cannot wait for progress; we must shape what happens next now.

The campus right now looks a bit—I will say it— disheveled, as work on the new Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient Clinic and the campus improvements that support it move toward completion, even as we are blasting for the foundations of the new research and education building on the west side of the campus green.

But we cannot wait for progress; we must shape what happens next now. So, as old traffic patterns and walking paths give way to new routes and new approaches as we make our way across campus, we look to the day when these buildings open, when new colleagues and new programs and new research funding move us forward in ways we can only begin to envision now. ■

lastword

The new education and research building will include program space for more than 75 principal investigators and an FDA-compliant manufacturing facility for clinical trial therapeutics.

@UMASSMED MAGAZINE | 31

@umassmed @umassmed is the magazine of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, one of five campuses of the UMass system. The magazine is distributed periodically to members, benefactors and friends of the UMMS community. It is published by the Office of Communications.

Readers are invited to comment on the contents of the magazine, via email to ummscommunications@umassmed.edu; please include “@umassmed magazine” in the subject line.

Chancellor and Senior Vice President for the Health Sciences: Michael F. Collins, MD Executive Deputy Chancellor and Provost, Dean of the School of Medicine: Terence R. Flotte, MD Vice Chancellor for Communications: Jennifer Berryman Editor: Mark L. Shelton Managing Editor: Ellie Castano Writers: Ellie Castano, Kylee Denesha, Jim Fessenden, Sandra Gray, Lisa Larson, Colleen Locke, Mark Shelton, Susan Spencer Design and illustration: Daniel Lambert

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On the cover: Graduate School of Nursing student Reginald Sarpong, one of the many UMass Medical School students who volunteered to inoculate Massachusetts residents against COVID-19 this year, says he was eager to lend a hand at clinics like the one at the YWCA

Central Massachusetts in downtown Worcester in April. “I strongly feel that in order to get back to our normal lives, we need to vaccinate as many people as possible,” he said, in between administering the shots to dozens of Worcester residents at an event organized by the

Worcester Department of Health and Human Services. “I’ve been giving the vaccine for months now and every day I feel so accomplished. Being able to give my time and helping these people fight this virus is very worthwhile for me.”

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