Election

I am absolutely thrilled at the prospect of returning to the HMS Alumni Council as Vice President. My term as Councilor of the Second Pentad was a fascinating education into the immense work and thought that goes into running the medical school. One of the first subjects we tackled was examining financial aid and the various approaches medical schools around the country were taking to decrease the debt burden of their graduates. As a beneficiary of the school’s Presidential Scholars public service loan forgiveness program myself, I appreciated the strategic investments that HMS has and continues to make in this domain to diversify and better support its graduates to meaningfully pursue areas of great need in medicine.

The second half of my tenure on the Alumni Council was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, and our virtual meetings were an inspiring reminder of the myriad ways in which HMS alumni shape the practice of medicine. As disappointing as it was to not travel to Boston and interact with my fellow council members in person, I appreciated the school’s innovative flexibility as they navigated unprecedented times.

In my work in public health and graduate medical education, I’m always happy to discover fellow alums and build on our shared kinship. I believe that the HMS Alumni Council serves a unique role in bringing alumni voices and perspectives to Dean Daley and his administration. As Council Vice President, I would look forward to listening to and lifting up concerns across classes while also fostering opportunities to help alumni meaningfully connect both virtually and in person. The world of medicine continues to evolve rapidly, and the better we can support and collaborate with one another, the better we can hopefully shape the system into one that is sustainable, thoughtful, and impactful.

Joanna “Mimi” Choi, MD ’09, MPH, is a pediatrician who has worked in the community, county, and state levels of the health system to promote child wellbeing. After studying cross-cultural issues in health policy as a human biology major at Stanford University, Choi earned her MD in the New Pathway track at Harvard Medical School. She then went on to UCSF to complete her internship and residency in the Pediatric Leaders Advancing Health Equity (PLUS) program. Post-residency, Choi moved to Los Angeles, where she served as medical director at St John’s Community Health, the largest federally qualified health center (FQHC) serving South Los Angeles, while also pursuing a master’s in public health in the Health Policy and Management Department of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health as a maternal child health fellow.

Choi has spent the past nine years working in the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, leading pediatric quality improvement for the second-largest health system in the country while also serving as the educational site lead and urgent care director at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, California. She recently completed a three-year tenure as co-director of All Children Thrive - California, where she led an initiative focused on fostering policy and systems change in 17 cities across the state in partnership with the California Department of Public Health and Public Health Advocates. Choi continues to see patients and precept UCLA medical students and pediatrics residents at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center while serving as secretary and board quality committee chair on the Board of Directors at St John’s Community Health. She has won numerous awards for teaching and public service throughout her career.

While at HMS, Mimi worked as a writer and editor for Harvard Health Publications, was president of Students for Environmental Awareness in Medicine, coordinator of the Environmental Society at Harvard, and choreographed the award-winning dance routine that helped Castle Society clinch the first-year Society Olympics. She served on the HMS Alumni Council as Councilor of the Second Pentad from 2018 to 2021, volunteered on her 5th and 10th Reunion Committees, and co-chaired her upcoming 15th Reunion Committee.

Although I have been away from the Longwood campus for years, not a day goes by that I am not thankful for the education I received at HMS, the extraordinary people I met there who enriched my life, and the doors that were opened because of my HMS education. As such, I welcome the opportunity to serve the HMS community through the Alumni Council. It was an honor to have served as a Councilor for the 4th Pentad a few years ago, but unfortunately, my time on the Council was during the throes of COVID-19. So, I am excited to have the chance to serve the Council now as Vice-President, and hopefully, this time, I will not need to shift focus to address challenges brought by a pandemic. 

For the many of us who work outside of Boston, it is easy to feel disconnected from HMS. I think the Alumni Council is critical in fostering meaningful connections between the school and our phenomenal alumni. I will advocate for meaningful programs, networking, and benefits that are accessible to alums across the US and abroad and encourage enhanced communication and engagement. I would also like to help the Council further engage alumni outside of the Harvard system to foster opportunities that help current students succeed—particularly those under-represented in medicine—and address opportunities for improvement in financial aid support, career planning, and networking. The Alumni Council serves to enrich the lives of alumni and actively engage them in the future of HMS—I hope to strongly contribute to this effort and serve as a voice from afar—one that is incredibly grateful for all that I gained from my HMS education but knows there are opportunities for growth, inclusion, and engagement. Thank you for your consideration and support.

Coleen S. Sabatini, MD ’04 (Class of 2003), MPH ’04, is a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Her clinical practice is at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland in Oakland, California. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, her doctorate of medicine from Harvard Medical School, and her master’s of public health from the Harvard School of Public Health (now the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health). She completed her residency training in orthopaedic surgery at the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Program and her fellowship training in pediatric orthopaedics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. She joined the UCSF Faculty in 2010.

Sabatini’s clinical practice includes a range of pediatric orthopaedic conditions, including trauma/fractures, clubfoot and other foot/limb deformities, and dance medicine. Her research focuses on global surgical care and conditions at the intersection of public health and orthopaedics, pediatric trauma prevention and treatment, health disparities, and improving access to care for children with musculoskeletal conditions, particularly children in low-resource environments. 

Sabatini became the director and chief of the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland in 2012. In this capacity, she oversaw a significant increase in the size of the clinical staff and an expansion of services to a wider breadth of the East Bay while maintaining a firm commitment to providing high-quality care for all children throughout Northern California, regardless of insurance status. She served as Director and Chief for over seven years until she requested to transition from these roles to focus on global surgical care to improve access and musculoskeletal care for children in resource-limited environments. She has taught and worked in numerous countries, including Uganda, Nepal, the Philippines, India, and the Dominican Republic. She now spends nearly 50% of her time outside of the United States focused on pediatric orthopaedic education and research, with a particular focus in Uganda, where she runs a pediatric musculoskeletal research and education program with a particular research focus on injection injuries (post-injection paralysis and gluteal fibrosis) and other neglected surgical conditions such as clubfoot, chronic osteomyelitis, and angular limb deformities. Sabatini is an associate director of the UCSF Center for Health Equity in Surgery and Anesthesia (CHESA) and co-director of the Institute for Global Orthopaedics and Traumatology (IGOT). She also serves as the vice-chair of Health Equity and Academic Affairs for the UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.

In addition to her international service, Sabatini is active in various orthopaedic organizations, including the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA), the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), and the J. Robert Gladden Orthopaedic Society (JRGOS). She has served on the Board of Directors of POSNA, JRGOS, and the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society and currently serves as chair of the international committee of the AAOS. She is also active in efforts to increase the number of under-represented minorities and women entering orthopaedics through volunteerism with Nth Dimensions and the Perry Initiative and by mentoring numerous medical students and trainees, domestically and abroad.

To advance the educational mission of Harvard Medical School, we must pay even closer attention to the social context in which our patients are living and in which our colleagues train and work. From the patient’s perspective, it is imperative that we include diverse patient populations in clinical trials and not just provide opportunities to those who can afford to get on a flight halfway across the country. How do we ensure all patients have equal access to groundbreaking new drugs as prices soar? It is critical that we maintain focus on developing drugs that have truly meaningful clinical benefits, are affordable, and have a reasonable side effect profile. On a policy level, we should encourage medical students and physicians to lobby for meaningful caregiver support as the cost of home caregivers and assisted living becomes increasingly unaffordable. How do we eliminate barriers to transportation to the clinic for patients who need a new port, labs drawn, or their next chemotherapy infusion? These are the kinds of issues that many patients, with and without cancer, are grappling with every day, and that should be a regular part of the discourse at HMS. In terms of the modern context that medical students are training in, what are reasonable expectations that we should have of students as they assimilate increasingly vast bodies of information, and how should we prioritize their learning in the setting of exponential growth of medical knowledge? As the critical role of the immune system in virtually every disease process becomes apparent, more of the preclinical curriculum should be invested in the study of this complex system. To continue to attract the best and brightest students, HMS, with the support of its alumni, should offer an increasingly subsidized medical education so that its alumni are not affected by crushing debt from student loans and so that the best potential doctors are not turned away from medical school for financial reasons.

Similarly, alluding to NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s accelerated three-year MD pathway, it seems wise to offer an accelerated pathway that would enable completion of medical school in three years, which could diversify residency and specialty choices among alumni. It would be helpful to offer a peer-to-peer support group for the many trainees who share a common experience of not being able to visit ailing family members because they are on the wards. As the nation’s premier medical school, it is imperative that we come together as a community to discuss how to best adapt to our rapidly changing society and medical field. It would be an enormous privilege to have the opportunity to serve on the HMS Alumni Council.

Amir H. Ameri, MD ’19 (Class of 2018), graduated from the Roxbury Latin School and Yale College in 2013. He then earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, magna cum laude, after completing a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellowship in Dr. Shawn Demehri’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). While at HMS, he received the Soma Weiss Award for Excellence in Research. Ameri subsequently completed his internal medicine residency in the Osler Medical Service at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he received the J. Mario Molina Physician Scientist Award. As a third-year medical oncology fellow at Johns Hopkins, he is leveraging neutrophils to attack cancer in Dr. Mikala Egeblad’s laboratory.

Ameri has been a fierce advocate for his oncology patients in the clinic and in the laboratory. He and his team in Dr. Demehri’s lab at MGH were among the first to report a novel immunoprevention strategy for aggressive cutaneous malignancies in three patients from the Dominican Republic affected by xeroderma pigmentosum. Ameri now seeks to push the boundaries of immunotherapies and use the myeloid arm of the immune system to potentiate anti-tumor immune responses. At Johns Hopkins, he collaborates closely with Dr. Chris Jackson’s lab in the Department of Neurosurgery to develop a novel immunotherapy for patients with glioblastoma multiforme. After graduating from the fellowship, Ameri plans to have an outpatient clinic for treating immunotherapy toxicities and aspires to use findings from the laboratory to inspire novel clinical trials in solid tumor immunotherapy. Ameri’s work has been published in The Oncologist, The American Journal of Hematology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, British Journal of Dermatology, and the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

In the clinic and the lab, Ameri is actively engaged in teaching pre-medical students, medical students, and residents. Ameri has been a dedicated teacher and mentor for undergraduate students interested in the physician-scientist pathway, as well as a lab mentor to several undergraduate students. He also has enjoyed serving as an interviewer for the Osler Physician-Scientist Pathway for the past two years.

Ameri has been active with the Harvard alumni community. He served as a class representative and helped organize the class’s fifth reunion. While at HMS, he also enjoyed serving as a community affairs representative and helping to organize the class ski trip to Stowe, Vermont.

Ameri enjoys spending time with his wife, Rachel Wallwork, MD ’16, and son, Daniel, in Towson, Maryland

As a proud alumnus of Harvard Medical School, I am honored to be considered to join the Alumni Council. My journey in medicine has been shaped by the outstanding education and experiences I gained at HMS. The school not only equipped me with the knowledge and skills necessary for a successful medical career but also instilled in me a deep sense of responsibility toward advancing health care. Throughout my career, I have witnessed the transformative power of collaboration and mentorship, both of which were integral aspects of my HMS experience. I believe that the Alumni Association can play a crucial role in fostering these connections beyond our time at HMS. Strengthening the network of alumni engagement, as well as relationships with current students, can provide valuable support to recent graduates and create opportunities for meaningful collaboration amongst alumni with diverse backgrounds, from clinicians to researchers to administrators and those in industry.

I believe industry has a critical role to play in improving the state of American health care, especially as we see increasing difficulties associated with operating hospitals and other provider organizations.  I also believe industry can lose sight of mission and quality when there are not sufficiently strong clinical voices in leadership positions. As a council member, I would be thrilled to be a connector between the startup and technology communities and HMS alumni. 

Ben Robbins, MBA ’15, MD ’16 (Class of 2014), is a psychiatrist and venture capitalist focusing on early-stage health care startups. As a general partner at Google Ventures (GV), he directs investments across healthcare delivery and neuropsychiatric therapeutics. In his role, Robbins has overseen key ventures, including Headway and Brightline, and has contributed as a board member to successful outcomes such as the acquisitions of Aspire (by Anthem) and Rodin (by Alkermes).  He has a particular focus on launching health care services companies that meet the needs of underserved mentally ill, Medicaid-enrolled, and geriatric populations.

Robbins graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA cum laude with honors in 2008, Harvard Business School with an MBA in 2015, and Harvard Medical School with an MD in 2016. Robbins joined GV in 2014 while pursuing his MD/MBA. At the time, Robbins was on a more traditional health care administration path but met Krishna Yeshwant, MD ’09 (Class of 2008), MBA ’09, at Atul Gawande, MD ’95 (Class of 1994), MPH ’99’s, newly created Ariadne Labs.  He was inspired by Dr. Yeshwant and the work being done by the GV team, and he began helping out informally, which progressed into a role that now spans nearly ten years. He continued as a venture partner through school and residency, ultimately becoming a general partner in 2022. 

Robbin’s multifaceted career reflects a dedication to reshaping mental health services, fostering innovative health care solutions, and making a positive global impact. His experience at GV, combined with his clinical background, positions him as a thought leader in the evolving landscape of mental health, value-based care, and neuropsychiatric therapeutics. Beyond his venture capital role, Robbins co-founded a non-profit dedicated to funding, building, and operating a primary school for AIDS orphans in Tanzania. His transformative experiences in Dar es Salaam ignited his interest in innovative health care delivery, especially through creative approaches that improve access to medical care.  His diverse background also includes a notable stint as an intern at “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart.  

Overall, Robbins is committed to advancing mental health, shaping innovative health care solutions, and contributing to the broader conversation on improving health care delivery and access. His journey reflects a fusion of clinical expertise, entrepreneurial spirit, and a passion for creating positive change in the health care landscape.

My interest in serving on the HMS Alumni Council came about as a result of serving on the 20th Reunion organizing committee in 2022. Having been somewhat neglectful of staying connected with classmates following graduation, perhaps some of the inspiration for re-engagement came from being part of the Executive MBA program at The Wharton School in 2020, where there was a huge emphasis on networking and honing leadership skills. HMS is one of the most valuable networks we have, and engaging with the HMS community on a consistent basis can have a profound influence on our lives now, just as it did when we were students at HMS.

I would have three simple goals by serving on the HMS Alumni Council. First, I want to recreate the very successful alumni engagement models I see through my business school network by creating regional HMS Alumni clubs and planning local events. Second, we all have CME in our respective specialties but do not have as many opportunities to gain broader skills. The Alumni Association can help by opening up access to a wide range of programs and certificates offered across Harvard University. Finally, as HMS and medical education continue to evolve, the third goal is to reconnect alumni to the school in simple yet effective ways, such as mentoring students and recent graduates or working with the development office to help the school with its growth plans. 

We all made a decision to attend HMS because of how special of a place it is, and I hope that I can help inject some of the vitality of the HMS community back into our busy lives. Thank you for your consideration and the privilege of serving on the Alumni Council.

Vatsal S. Doshi, MD ’03 (Class of 2002), MPH ’03, MBA, an ophthalmologist specializing in vitreoretinal surgery, is currently based in Short Hills, New Jersey. While establishing one of the premier retina practices in New Jersey, Vatsal developed a passion for investing in innovation, which helped him become one of the most successful physician entrepreneurs in the country.

Vatsal immigrated with his family from India at the age of 10 and grew up in Queens, New York. His childhood ambition was to become a physician, which culminated in graduating with a bachelor of arts from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude with honors in anthropology, followed by an MD and MPH from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health (now the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health). He completed his post-graduate training at world-renowned eye institutes, including USC Doheny Eye Institute and New York Eye & Ear Infirmary (NYEEI). During his training, he pursued research and published many scientific studies in leading journals. As an attending at NYEEI, he volunteered to help train the next generation of eye surgeons.

Upon completing his training, Vatsal established his practice in 2010 because he saw an opportunity to develop the ideal model for high-quality patient care with personalized service in a modern setting. The practice grew organically rapidly and became one of the most reputable retina practices in New Jersey. In 2020, Vatsal decided to have a more scalable impact in health care and sold the practice to EyeCare Partners (ECP), the largest vertically integrated eye care organization in the U.S. ECP was acquired in a $2.2 billion transaction by Partner’s Group, a $90 billion Swiss private equity firm and one of the largest in the world. At ECP, Vatsal serves as a regional medical director, as well as on the medical executive board and retina leader group, which gives him an opportunity to help shape the best clinical practices for eye care across the country. Vatsal is also actively involved in philanthropic efforts through his charitable trust, which he founded in 2020. 

Vatsal has also been fortunate to achieve success as an investor by managing his own portfolio and investing in disruptive technologies. He has a lifelong passion for learning and recently completed an Executive MBA program at The Wharton School in 2022. During the next phase of his career, his goal is to connect with like-minded individuals and help support innovation in the life sciences and technology in order to advance civilization and push the boundaries of human experience. In his personal life, Vatsal is married and blessed with two wonderful children. In his spare time, he enjoys tennis, cycling, and travel. He has found a new passion in triathlons and recently completed his first Ironman 70.3 race.   Vatsal’s ultimate goal is to leave behind a strong legacy through his work, family, and relationships and strive to enrich the lives of as many people as possible.  

It was chicken soup for the soul to attend my 20th HMS reunion in June 2023. I visited with best friends and classmates and marveled at how quickly time flies. I also marveled at the achievements, both big and small, of my lovely classmates. What was most palpable was the fact that bumps along the road were acceptable, that roads less traveled were respected, and that making the world a better place was still first and foremost in the minds of all. I loved hearing from the teachers, the inventors, the powerhouse clinicians, and impactful researchers, as well as the parents, coaches, home chefs, and musicians. The campus, too, has evolved to be home for so many. I was comforted both by the knowledge that many of my classmates never left Harvard and, at the same time, many have traveled the world. We cover the globe in geography and disciplines.

I am committed to working within academic medicine to advance the understanding and elimination of health disparities. Caring for vulnerable communities with compassionate and robust scientific inquiry in the areas of health behavior and chronic complex disease is a means to that end. Thus far, I have remained committed to the power of primary care and direct a practice serving underserved medically and socially complex patients. I partner with community members and agencies to develop and implement rigorous research projects that answer questions pertinent to their needs. As the director of the Center for Special Health Care Needs at ChristianaCare Hospital, I work to build clinical programs and research infrastructure to inform best practices. I am currently working on initiatives to support the necessary movement of young adults with special health care needs as they leave their pediatric system of care and enter adult systems of care. We have been fortunate to collaborate in QI and implementation science initiatives in each of these programs. As co-PI, I am recently implementing a PCORI-funded multi-site RCT to test an intervention supporting long-term care planning for caregivers of adult children with intellectual disability. Rounding out my professional life, I served ten years on the Board of Directors of Maternity Care Coalition, a community-based organization serving low-income women and their families with direct service and advocacy. I recently was selected to join the board of Easterseals, America’s largest nonprofit health care organization serving those of any age with physical and intellectual disabilities. I am the proud mother of 3 kids (ages 15, 13, and 9) and wife to Sean (HMS 2000).

Leading multi-disciplinary teams has been a highlight of Charmaine Smith Wright, AB ’99, MD ’03’s career. A dual-trained internal medicine and pediatric primary care physician, she works to bridge the gap between pediatric and adult care for patients with childhood-acquired medical conditions. After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, she completed a med-peds residency at Brigham and Women’s and Boston Children’s Hospitals. Subsequently, she finished a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and joined the faculty. For the next 10 years, she worked at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in a variety of capacities. She applied for and secured NIH Loan Repayment for Clinical Health Disparities Research and a 4-year career development award (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program). She used community-based participatory work to deploy an effective intervention combatting postpartum weight retention in low-income mothers that was tested by RCT and disseminated.

Another project included implementing a low-cost fitness program partnering doctors and obese patients exercising together, with positive results including increased weight loss and improved diabetic control, cardiovascular functional status, and self-efficacy among participating patients. She served as program director for the Penn-CHOP med-peds residency program and received the Stephen Ludwig Mentorship Award. She sought to prime the pipeline of under-represented minorities (URM) who choose academic medicine as a career and wrote about the link between academic medical center community engagement and URM recruitment and retention.  She was the director of a master’s level course teaching community-engaged research methodology at the Penn School of Public Health. In 2018, she joined the ChristianaCare Health System as the director of the Center for Special Health Care Needs.

Over the past few years year, the Center for Special Health Care Needs has grown beyond its signature primary care, down syndrome, hemophilia, and cystic fibrosis programs also to include sickle cell, cerebral palsy, women’s health, developmental psychiatry, gastroenterology, urology, and Mary Campbell Center programs. She received intramural ChristianaCare and Penn funding (from the ChristianaCare Physician’s Fund, Leonard Davis Institute, Implementation Science Working Group, Center for Public Health Interests, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Healthy Weight, General Internal Medicine Division, Bach Fund, and others) as well as foundation funding from Aetna, Kynett, William Penn and RWJF to create, implement, and evaluate interventions. She currently holds intramural ChristianaCare funding to implement and evaluate a cerebral palsy program and the federally funded Delaware Clinical and Translational Research Program for a health care utilization review for patients with sickle cell. As co-PI, she is recently implementing a PCORI-funded multi-site RCT to test an intervention supporting long-term care planning for caregivers of adult children with intellectual disability. Wright prides herself on building programs and interventions that work.

Physicians are in crisis. Levels of burnout, demoralization, depression, suicide, panic disorder, and substance use disorders among our peers are climbing. In one 2023 survey, six of ten physicians reported feelings of burnout. The risks appear higher for women and for primary care providers. At the same time, physicians are wary of getting help for themselves, fearful that if disclosed, it would adversely impact their careers. Most state licensing boards, as well as many institutions, require the disclosure of any mental health care practitioners have received.

Many factors contribute to this current nightmare, including a broken health care system demanding copious, unrealistic, unreimbursed administrative tasks that get relegated to nights and weekends, mistreatment by patients, colleagues, and administrators, and repeated moral injuries created when our values as physicians collide with the painful realities of modern health care. All of these factors were magnified by the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

The Harvard Medical Alumni Association is uniquely positioned to help in this crisis. As leaders across all medical disciplines and systems of care, we can create a knowledge base as to the roots of the problems physicians face, support our peers in crisis or at risk, and advocate for change within our health care and licensing systems. We must destigmatize physicians getting the mental health care they desperately need. If fortunate enough to be elected, I would like to see our Association work towards aiding our burdened physicians. Thank you for your consideration.

Scott T. Aaronson, MD ’81 (Class of 1980), completed his undergraduate degree at Columbia University with honors, majoring in chemistry and comparative literature, before earning his medical degree with honors from Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency training in psychiatry and fellowship in affective illness at McLean Hospital.

Aaronson has devoted his entire professional career to improving treatment outcomes for patients burdened with difficult-to-treat mood disorders. After fifteen years as an in-and-out patient clinical psychiatrist in Boston, he moved to Baltimore to become the Director of Clinical Research at a large psychiatric teaching hospital, Sheppard Pratt. He has held that position for 22 years, making his program an internationally recognized center for pivotal studies supporting drug and device development of novel treatments for severe mood disorders, including neuromodulation-based therapies—transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). Over the past seven years, the work of his center has expanded to include research on esketamine and psychedelics. In response to the growing size of the clinical research and neuromodulation program developed by Aaronson, Sheppard Pratt created the Institute for Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics, which houses the clinical neuromodulation services, an expert consultation service, and the newly formed Centre of Excellence in Psychedelic Treatment. Aaronson serves as the chief science officer of the Institute.

Highlights of Aaronson’s work include the publication of the largest study ever conducted looking at severe, chronic treatment-resistant depression in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The study compared the five-year outcomes of 500 patients implanted with VNS vs. 300 patients getting treatment as usual. The results demonstrated very significantly improved outcomes in the VNS implanted cohort. This study led to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid agreeing to rescind the non-coverage determination for VNS made in 2007 and funding a randomized clinical trial under their coverage with an evidence development program. The study includes a unipolar and a bipolar depression cohort and will have its first results available in Spring 2024. More recently, he has been a leader in the study of psychedelics in difficult-to-treat mood disorders as a lead investigator for a phase 2 trial of psilocybin in treatment-resistant depression as well as the lead author for the first study looking at the effect of psilocybin in treatment-resistant bipolar type II depression. Other illnesses under study at the Institute as targets for psilocybin therapy include depression with active suicidal ideation and anorexia.

Aaronson serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he is a valued teacher and mentor for psychiatric residents. He is a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a fellow of the American Society for Clinical Psychopharmacology, and the Clinical TMS Society. He has served on the boards of both organizations. He has served on his HMS class reunion committees. He is the proud father of Alexandra, a psychiatric research physician in the Veterans Administration, and Zachary, a theater administrator.

As a child, I couldn’t decide on a career because I found everything so interesting. I chose medicine because I knew it would provide multiple career options and still allow me to make a difference. I flourished at HMS but struggled to decide whether to focus my career on big questions like health policy or one-on-one patient care. Continuing my efforts to keep my options open, I started my training in primary care medicine and then chose endocrinology to maintain breadth even as a specialist. Clinically, this allowed me to study all parts of the body and interact with many different colleagues. In the corresponding clinical research, I found the perfect combination: basic science, clinical care, and a chance to contribute to improved patient outcomes.  

I was chief medical officer at AstraZeneca, starting right before the COVID-19 pandemic. In that role, I was responsible for evaluating and communicating the safety of all our products, including the new COVID-19 vaccines. I saw unequivocally how the long history of omission of underserved groups from academic and industry research impacted our full understanding of new therapies and a lack of community from communities. Improving health equity to overcome this sad history has become my mission and will require a significant effort from our institutions, both in academia and in industry. For HMS’s training mission, we will need to continue to improve representation among students, trainees, and faculty. In clinical research, we must continue to improve the representation of those affected by a disease in observational and interventional clinical investigations. To do so, we will need to invest in collaborations with communities to understand their needs. I am very proud of the work that HMS has been doing to increase the diversity of our student population and provide them with sufficient resources to graduate without significant debt. I would love to be part of the Alumni Council to help continue that work.

Ann Taylor,  MD ’83, graduated summa cum laude from the University of California San Diego before coming to Harvard Medical School. After HMS, she completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in endocrinology and metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the faculty there. In her 12 years on the faculty at HMS, she taught in the clinic and on the wards, led NIH-funded physiologic clinical investigation, treated patients with female reproductive disorders, and ran the Clinical Trials Support Office of the Clinical Research Program at MGH. She served as associate director of the Immunoassay Core Laboratory for Clinical Services and assistant director of Residency Training for Clinical Research. 

In 2001, Taylor left academia to join Pfizer Global Research and Development as a clinical lead in metabolism. Over the next 20 years, she held positions of increasing responsibility, moving from Pfizer to the Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Research in 2008 and then to MedImmune and AstraZeneca in 2018. At the time of her retirement in 2021, she was the chief medical officer at AstraZeneca, responsible for global patient safety, quality, and global regulatory support. Her early career focused on translational medicine across academia and pharma, working closely with basic scientists to identify optimal endpoints to demonstrate target engagement and efficacy of novel pharmacologic agents. She later led teams of project managers, strategic experts, clinical operations, biometrics, and clinical quality. In the pharmaceutical industry, she learned the benefits of explicit leadership development and cross-functional teamwork for achieving efficient and creative results, skills that were not taught in academic medicine.

In retirement from full-time employment, Taylor serves on the Boards of Directors of three biotech companies (Unlearn.ai, Terns Pharmaceuticals, and Comanche Biopharmaceuticals) and two non-profit organizations (the New England Advisory Board of the Trust for Public Land and Yleana Leadership Foundation), co-chairs the National Academies of Science Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation, and engages in multiple other consulting and volunteer activities.  Taylor has interviewed high school students for Harvard College for the Harvard Club of Rhode Island and medical students applying to the MGH internal medicine program. She has served on her class’s Reunion Committee for the last 15 years, including as co-chair for her 40th Reunion. She is married with two sons and lives in Rhode Island, where she enjoys travel, cooking, gardening, and friendships. 

As a primary care physician and program director of a primary care training program, I am deeply concerned about the predicted shortage of primary care physicians in the United States, estimated to range from 21,000 to 55,000 by the year 2023. As a physician committed to creating a just health system in the U.S., I feel that growing and strengthening our primary care workforce is critical to achieving health equity in our country. As with many areas of medicine, one predictor for trainees choosing to pursue a primary care career is a primary care role model. This was certainly my experience at HMS. My vision of being a generalist was supported and strengthened during both my medical school and residency training.

As alumni, many of us serve as role models for HMS students, and the Alumni Council has been focusing on supporting the pipeline of physicians and leaders in medicine through mentorship programs fueled by MD alumni. It would be my honor to serve on the Alumni Council to continue this work of engaging our vast network of alumni as role models and mentors for students. I want to ensure we engage our alumni across the spectrum of medical specialties, particularly in primary care. As leaders in their communities, our alumni have various bandwidths to engage with students. I would work with the Alumni Council to create a variety of opportunities, ranging in time commitment, that would allow our alumni multiple options to engage with students and foster connection with our alumni to the HMS community.

Shelly-Ann N. Fluker, MD  ’01, is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. Fluker received her undergraduate degree in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her MD from Harvard Medical School. She completed a primary care residency and chief residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Fluker is a faculty member in the Division of General Internal Medicine section at Grady Memorial Hospital, an academic safety net hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.

Fluker has focused her career on caring for medically underserved patient populations and educating health professionals. Fluker has a primary care practice at Grady Memorial Hospital, where she cares for primarily uninsured and underinsured medically and socially complex persons. Fluker also focuses on caring for patients with hepatitis C and has served as the associate medical director of the Grady Liver Clinic since 2008. The Grady Liver Clinic is an internationally recognized and award-winning model for primary care-based hepatitis C care in urban, underserved patient populations which operates at Grady Memorial Hospital. The Grady Liver Clinic has led the implementation of hospital system-wide screening programs for hepatitis C and provides comprehensive care for patients with chronic hepatitis C in the Grady Health System and regionally. Fluker has been the co-investigator of several research projects that have focused on the implementation of systematic screening for hepatitis C and evaluating the care cascade for hepatitis C in a medically underserved population. Fluker teaches regionally and nationally  on hepatitis C screening, treatment, and alternate models of care. 

Fluker is the program director of the Primary Care Track of the Emory University J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency program, which prepares general internal medicine physicians to work in interprofessional teams to provide high-quality, cost-effective health care that is patient- and family-centered. The graduates of the Primary Care Track excel in caring for medically underserved populations, practice in diverse settings, and are leaders in their communities. Fluker leads the team that guides the administrative and educational oversight of the program. Fluker is an active teacher who supervises trainees in both the inpatient and outpatient general internal medicine settings and has designed and implemented numerous curricula. Fluker has served as a mentor for numerous trainees and junior faculty members and has been recognized for her teaching and mentorship with numerous institutional awards.

Fluker is an active member and leader in the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM), where she has served on numerous committees, as president for the southern region, chair of the Board of Regional Leaders, an ex-officio member of the SGIM Council, and program chair for the 2023 Annual Meeting. Fluker has also been an active member of the Harvard Medical School alumni community. Fluker serves as the Class of 2001 Class Agent and was the co-chair for the Class of 2001 20th Reunion Committee.

Each spring, I see the future of medicine before me when I stand in the amphitheater in the TMEC and teach the first-year HMS students about coronary artery disease and the HST students about valvular heart disease. Each year brings the thrill of students posing unanticipated, insightful questions born from fresh perspectives.

At the opposite end, I also have the honor of being the link to the past, serving as Class Agent for my year and chairing our Reunion Committees. For our 25th Reunion, held some six months before COVID-19 would burst onto the world stage, our class led a symposium on leadership. Thanks in no small part to our training at HMS, we were blessed to have classmates who were leaders in many different aspects of the larger medical profession: academic medicine, education, hospital administration, health care policy, industry, and even an astronaut!

And yet, we can improve each of these aspects. While our Reunion was a great success for those who came, I wish more of our classmates had attended. We can and should do better to engage all of our alumni, as they all have something wonderful to offer. Indeed, we should tap into that variety of professional experiences as a resource for our current students. The practice of medicine, whether the focus is on clinical care, research, or education, is harder than ever. An engaged alumni network would be a terrific resource for our current students as they contemplate what road to take after graduation.

I have been at HMS for over 30 years now, since the first day of school when I moved into Vanderbilt Hall. I have a deep love for this institution and would be honored to serve as a councilor-at-large.

Marc S. Sabatine, AB ’90, MD ’95 (Class of 1994), MPH ’02, is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Lewis Dexter, MD, Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). After graduating magna cum laude in biochemical sciences from Harvard College, he earned his medical degree from HMS. He subsequently completed an internal medicine residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), followed by a year as chief resident in medicine. He did his clinical cardiology fellowship at MGH, followed by his cardiology research fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. Eugene Braunwald at the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) Study Group at BWH. During this time, he also earned his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health (now the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health). He came onto the faculty of both BWH and MGH, where he attends in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) of both hospitals. In 2011, he became the chair of the TIMI Study Group, the oldest cardiovascular clinical trials academic research organization in the U.S. He is a fellow of the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, and the European Society of Cardiology. He has been inducted into the American Society of Clinical Investigation. He has been on the writing committees for several U.S. and European practice guidelines. He is a deputy editor for JAMA Cardiology.

Under his leadership, the TIMI Study Group continues to be one of the predominant cardiovascular clinical trials academic research organizations in the U.S. TIMI has led close to 100 randomized clinical trials that have enrolled over 400,000 patients from a network of over 5000 sites worldwide. These trials have led to the approval of new medicines or new indications for medicines and changes to practice guidelines. In addition to being a cardiovascular clinical trialist, Sabatine has been a pioneer in the multimarker approach to risk stratification. Sabatine has had multiple NIH and American Heart Association grants supporting the application of proteomics and metabolomics to discover novel biomarkers. He has a long-standing interest in pharmacogenetics and has made seminal observations on the ability to use genetics for personalized medicine. Sabatine has authored over 400 original research papers, and his work has been cited over 100,000 times, making him one of the most highly cited medical researchers for many years.

At HMS, Sabatine is actively engaged in teaching medical students. He has taught cardiovascular physiology and pathophysiology to both HMS and HST students for over 20 years. He also teaches third- and fourth-year students at the bedside when they rotate through the CICU. He has been his Class Agent (original class of 1994) and chair of all his Reunion Committees since graduation.

He is married to Jennifer Tseng, a surgeon. The two met as medical students in Chevy Chase, Maryland, when they reported the results of their respective Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellowships. They have two children: Matteo, a senior in high school, and Natalie, a sophomore in high school.