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In This Issue:
From left, a Harvard Medical School student listens to CSPH faculty Edward Caterson, MD, PhD, Sarah Peyre, EdD, and fellow Luise Pernar, MD.
Harvard Medical School student and aspiring surgeon Rosh Sethi always wanted to make a difference in public health, but he didn’t know where to start until he was matched with mentor Louis Nguyen, MD, MBA, MPH, in BWH’s Center for Surgery and Public Health.
As Sethi prepares to graduate, he wants to ensure that future medical students understand the role surgeons play in health services, education and research. That idea led the center to hold its first ever open house last month, where more than 80 medical students learned about academic careers in surgery and health services research.
“We want to ensure that you continue the work that many here at BWH and around the world are doing,” said Selwyn Rogers, MD, MPH, chief of the Division of Trauma, Burn and Surgical Critical Care and senior faculty member at for the Center for Surgery and Public Health. “The future of public health and providing care to the less fortunate around the world depends on you and others who are willing to extend a hand to help.”
Attendees also heard from the center’s executive director, Michael J. Zinner, MD, and director, Caprice Greenberg, MD, MPH, as well as Elizabeth Breen, MD, director of the Surgery Core Clerkship and Division of General/GI Surgery, Colon and Rectal Surgery.
“This event was a wonderful opportunity to engage students at Harvard Medical School,” said Greenberg. “Because this is an emerging field, a critical component of our mission is to develop the next generation of exceptionally trained surgeon-scientists.”
The Center for Surgery and Public Health is a joint program of Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health and BWH that focuses on health services, global surgery and education research. No other center of this kind exists, said Zinner.
“We’re a unique initiative dedicated to saving lives and improving the value of surgical care at a population level,” said Zinner. “With the collaborative effort of experts both inside and outside of surgery, we aim for the center to become the pre-eminent institution in the world for research and know-how for the many concerns at the intersection of surgery, public policy and public health.”