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In This Issue:
Carolyn Kreinsen
A primary care physician, Carolyn Kreinsen, MD, MSc, has volunteered for years to support trauma victims through organizations such as Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights. Now, she is developing a way to support trauma victims through the creation of a BWH Primary Care Trauma Center.
“My hypothesis is that there are patients in everyone’s practice who have been victims of current or past trauma; these patients sometimes keep their experiences to themselves, and, as a result, the symptoms related to their trauma can be misinterpreted,” said Kreinsen, of Brigham and Women’s at Newton Corner. “Evolving data indicates there are health care impacts from short- and long-term conditions resulting from trauma and violence.”
For her proposal to launch a BWH Primary Care Trauma Center, she received the first annual Rina Spence Award in Primary Care and Women’s Health.
The award was founded as a way to recognize BWH primary care physicians, particularly those who seek to advance women’s health as it intersects with primary care. The $25,000 award funds the weekly sessions that Kreinsen is devoting to the development of the trauma center. She began her work on the center in mid-January, and will continue the endeavor for a span of six months.
Kreinsen’s proposal is for an integrative resource and consultative trauma care center available to practicing clinicians working with affected patients. The center will offer expertise in recognizing the physical signs of various kinds of trauma as well as the impact trauma can have on individuals.
“There is shame, there is guilt, there is PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder],” Kreinsen said. “Those intertwine with and compound the physical and other psychological sequelae of trauma, making it more difficult to recognize and to treat the underlying sources of related symptoms and illness.”
Kreinsen said the trauma center has three goals: to offer consultation for past and present victims of trauma who may require more in-depth evaluation; to develop a set of guidelines for ways to work with victims of trauma; and to organize a series of lectures to explore the different kinds of trauma and the impact it can have on the victim, as well as on friends and family.
“I am committed to and passionate about working with these individuals,” Kreinsen said. “This is important to me, and I think it’s important to the Brigham.”
Three leaders in primary care and women’s health at BWH helped choose the award recipient: Paula A. Johnson, MD, MPH, chief of the Division of Women’s Health and executive director of the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology, Stuart Mushlin, MD, medical director of Brigham Circle Medical Associates, and Joseph Frolkis, MD, PhD, director of Primary Care, in addition to Rina Spence, a women’s health expert, who funds the award.
“The Brigham is unique because it attracts the very best physicians in the country–people who want to expand boundaries and accomplish new objectives,” Johnson said. “If we give our female physicians the tools to do that, the practice of medicine and the lives of our patients and families will benefit as a result.”
The Rina Spence Award will enable outstanding primary care physicians to advance primary care and women’s health at BWH and nationally, said Johnson. She added that Kreinsen’s program will bring together local and global expertise that uniquely exists at BWH to develop evidence-based opportunities to identify and care for patients that will address a need in the community.