2018 Annual Meeting Special Edition

2018 Annual Meeting Special Edition

Vital Signs This Week: Special Edition at a glance

The Annual Education Program was packed to capacity and 10,000 people worldwide tuned in online; #epidemicsgoviral and #MMSAnnual trended on Twitter. And that wasn't nearly all of it. Hundreds of physicians and medical students from across the state gathered for the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society, April 26­–28, 2018, to consider new resolutions that will drive Society advocacy, check in with friends old and new, and deliver standing ovations acknowledging the advocacy and services to medicine of MMS officers and award winners. This special edition of Vital Signs This Week brings you the news from that meeting:

• Annual Education Program: A world-class lineup of speakers
• Resolutions: What the MMS stands for — updated
• Leadership elections: Who’s who and who said what
• Awards: Who won what and why
• Roundup: MMS philanthropy, LGBTQ, international graduates, art auction, Food is Medicine 
  

Annual Education Program: Epidemics Going Viral

Epidemics Going Viral: Innovation vs. Nature

This world-class event featured leading experts in global health, including Bill Gates, who gathered with the MMS and NEJM communities for a scientific and creative exploration of the risks of pandemics, the challenges of containing a modern epidemic, and the role of innovation in mitigating its impact. Missed it or want a rerun? Access the full webcast, including presentations and slides.

Member verdict "I felt I was going to the opening of a Harry Potter movie — a big event — and it didn't disappoint." — Barbara Herbert, MD, medical director of addiction medicine at the Commonwealth Care Alliance

Bill Gates talked backstage with MMS President Henry Dorkin, MD, and Harvard Dean Michelle Williams, SM, ScD

Bill Gates / Shattuck Lecture / Innovation for Pandemics

"Usually, I'm a super-optimist, pointing out that life keeps getting better for most people in the world," said Bill Gates. That optimism is challenged, he said, by the likelihood of a lethal pandemic in our lifetimes. In our ability to contain and address such an event, the real world lags well behind the movies. "The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way the military prepares for war," he said. Mr Gates outlined innovative approaches to preventing, diagnosing, and treating infectious disease globally — including his anouncement of a Gates Foundation initiative to develop of a universal flu vaccine — and advocated for continued US leadership in global health. Following his speech, Bill Gates spoke with Michelle Williams, SM, ScD, dean of the faculty at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and took questions from the audience.

Member verdict "This meeting was incredible. It aligned with all my interests, especially global health. I was star-struck. I learned about Bill Gates in India in the seventh grade; my English textbook said he has a vision of a personal computer on every desk across the world. I look around and see that happening, and he didn't stop there; he went on to change the world. The lack of political will and funding is a major problem in global health, and he is putting resources into what we need." — Arun Chandran, MD, resident, Mount Auburn Hospital

Jeffrey M. Drazen, MD, editor-in-chief of NEJM, delivered opening remarks and moderated a panel

Panels: How to identify and research epidemics

International experts each delivered a TED talk-style presentation before participating in a panel discussion.

How to Identify an Epidemic — Past, Present, and Future Lessons
Will the next microbial threat anniounce itself via Twitter? Can technology generate accurate disease diagnoses? How many decades of background data do we need in order to reliably predict disease outbreaks? What is the role of the clinician in identifying epidemics early? The questions and answers came thick and fast to and from four illustrious panelists and moderator Harvey Fineberg, MD, PhD, president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Acquiring Knowledge While Saving Lives
How can research methods be modified to generate intel rapidly during an epidemic? How can the medical and public health communities engage communities to contain disease? Can genomic sequencing of pathogens help us predict the next disease outbreak? Why are people still dying from cholera? How can we sustain public and political interest in surveillance and research during the lulls between headline-grabbing disease outbreaks? This vigorous discussion, dominated by Brits, was moderated by Jeffrey M. Drazen, MD, editor-in-chief of the NEJM.

Member verdict "The experts were high-level thinkers, able to step back from the day-to-day work and broaden the lens. It was awe-inspiring to look at something bigger than oneself and to see the truly global nature and cross-discriplinary work of people working on infectious disease. It was also striking how important a simple observation of unusual cases that is reported by a clinician can be." — Heather Alker, MD, MPH, preventive medicine faculty, Department of Family Medicine, UMass Medical School

Ethics Forum: Patients' access to physicians' notes

Sharing physicians' notes with patients dramatically improved medication adherence and patients' feelings toward their providers, including among patients with significant mental health issues. These were among the counterintuitive study findings on Open Notes, an initiative to share medical records with patients, presented by Steve O'Neill, LICSW, BDC, JD. The presentation was part of the 2018  Ethics Forum exploring  Transparency in Health Care.

Member verdicts "Almost any skeptics in the audience now realize that Open Notes have validity and are beneficial to physicians and patients — to the extreme, because these patients [in the study] for the most part had mental health issues. The data were very convincing." — Ronald A. Arky, MD; chair, MMS Committee on Ethics; professor of medicine and medical education, Harvard Medical School

"The Ethics Forum was an excellent panel followed by a great discussion with the audience. The constructive tension between competing principles was very interesting: wanting notes to be open and shared, but contemplating the unintended consequences." — Mark J. Hauser, MD, clinical and forensic psychiatrist; past president, Massachusetts Psychiatric Society; specialty representative to the MMS House of Delegates 

Bleeding Control for the Injured/Stop the Bleed Training

In this interactive workshop by the Stop the Bleed campaign, physicians learned hands-on hemorrhage control techniques­­­­—pressure, wound packing, and tourniquets—for saving lives in the field, developed by the American College of Surgeons and the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians. The session was funded by the Physicians Insurance Agency of Massachusetts, the insurance agency of the MMS, and presented by the MMS Committee on Preparedness.

Resolutions: What the MMS stands for — updated

Members testified on a resolution to promote food insecurity screening; Reference Committee A heard testimony over more than five hours

House of Delegates adopts new policies, driving future advocacy

The House of Delegates adopted new resolutions that will shape Society advocacy on public health and  health care delivery. Details on the resolutions and actions are available at those links; read a summary of select public health resolutions. New resolutions included: 

• The MMS will help establish a monitoring system of fetal and infant mortality, which occurs along racial and ethnic lines;  
• The MMS will encourage routine food insecurity screening, a means to address the social determinants of health;
• The MMS opposes concealed carry reciprocity, would would allow citizens with concealed carry permirts issued in other states to bring guns into Massachusetts;
• The MMS opposes the criminalization of self-induced abortion;
• The MMS seeks to limit the scope of involuntary civil commitments solely related to substance use and seek a better understanding of its harms, benefits, and/or efficacy;
• The MMS will work to promote prescription drug price transparency from retail pharmacies;
• The MMS will advocate to eliminate the fee for a volunteer license to practice medicine;
• The MMS will convene a conference on the implications of recognizing health care as a basic human right.

In addition, the MMS adopted several new policies relating to Society administration, including establishing a Women Physicians Section, and collecting demographic data on sexual orientation and gender identity among members, when voluntarily provided.

MMS leadership updates: Who’s who, and who said what

(Left-right) James Kenealy, MD, past recipient of the Special Award for Excellence in Medical Service, conferred with Theodore Calianos, MD, a 2018 Community Physician of the Year, and new president Alain Chaoui, MD  

Alain Chaoui, MD, becomes 2018–19 MMS president

Practicing medicine, said Alain A. Chaoui, MD, the 136th president of the MMS, is increasingly reminiscent of a particular episode of I Love Lucy: When Lucy and Ethel work on a chocolate conveyor belt that moves too fast for them, they scoop up and hide the excess chocolate — and their supervisor, seeing what looks like success, runs the conveyor belt ever faster. Dr Chaoui, a family medicine physician at Family Medicine North in Peabody, dedicated his speech to the value of helping physicians become their own priority and finding effective solutions to physician burnout.

Henry Dorkin, MD, becomes MMS immediate past president

MMS leaders are like cultivators of Bonsai trees, "often starting on one but knowing that we will be long gone before it has flourished," said Henry L. Dorkin, MD, FAAP, the outgoing president. Lois Dehls Cornell, executive vice-president of the Society, thanked Dr Dorkin for his willingness to advocate for difficult but ethically right positions: "You took this stand for physicians and their patients — and you did it with grace and an occasional reference to Shakespeare." 

House of Delegates elects new officers

Members of the House of Delegates elected a full slate of new officers for the upcoming year. In brief:

• Maryanne C. Bombaugh, MD, a gynecologist at the Community Health Center of Cape Cod, is the new president elect; 
• David A. Rosman, MD, a radiologist at MGH, has been elected vice president;
• Joseph C. Bergeron, Jr., MD, was elected secretary-treasurer; Lynda G. Kabbash, MD, has become assistant secretary-treasurer (and received an award); Francis P. MacMillan, Jr., MD, was elected speaker of the House of Delegates; McKinley Glover, MD, becomes vice-speaker; Lee S Perrin, MD, is a new AMA delegate, and Kenath J. Shamir, MD, an alternate AMA delegate.

MMS Awards: Who won what and what they said

M. Donna Younger, MD: Lifetime Achievement

The Lifetime Achievement Award, the Society’s most prestigious honor, went to M. Donna Younger, MD. When she entered medical school in 1951, there was a 6 percent quota for women students, and she was among nine women in her class of 150, Dr Younger said. She described to a rapt crowd best practices of earlier decades (six weeks of bed rest in the hospital following a heart attack; surgical sympathectomy for high blood pressure; patients boiling their urine to observe color changes). Dr Younger spent her career "at the cutting edge of diabetes care concepts that we now accept as routine," said Dr Dorkin, and was also "an innovator in recognizing, and caring for, the impaired physician." Colleagues wrote of their admiration for and appreciation of Dr Younger's leadership and mentorship.

Lynda Young, MD (second from left), award recipient and past president of the MMS, reunited with (left-right) Corinne Broderick, former executive vice-president of the MMS, Donna Norris, MD, president of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society,  and Alice Coombs, MD, past president of the MMS

Lynda M. Young, MD: Distinguished Service

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Receiving the Award for Distinguished Service to the MMS, Dr Young, a pediatrician and past president of the MMS, quoted from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. Colleagues who nominated Dr Young reported how positively she had influenced their own careers and the trajectory of health reform in the Commonwealth. "I watched her as an officer storm Massachusetts," wrote Alice Coombs, MD. "Her personal sacrifice and her commitment to MMS would have been exhausting for anyone else. When she spoke to the legislators, she got their attention.”

Lynn Black, MD: Public Health

Lynn Black, MD, recipient of the Henry Ingersoll Bowditch Award for Excellence in Public Health, encouraged physicians to emulate the radical activism of Dr Bowditch, who took a risky stance against slavery. "MMS has continually and increasingly taken on difficult issues that are mired in controversy, and faced powerful opponents," she said, citing tobacco, racism, gender issues, gun violence, and the global environment. Dr Black is a primary care practitioner at MGH and globally.

Member verdict "I was really captivated by Dr. Black's review of what Dr. Bowditch did, that he was such a passionate person he was willing to give up his social capital to do what was right. Physicians are still called upon to do what is risky today, as in the reference committee conversation about guns crossing state lines.”— Alice T. Coombs, MD, MPA, FCCP; past president, MMS

Scott J. Gilbert, MD: Medical Education

Early in his career, Dr Gilbert said, he had little appreciation for how teaching could help meet his goals of working with vulnerable populations and serving the community; he subsequently discovered that teaching was a means to growing the community through his work with individuals. Dr Gilbert's inspirational teaching and mentorship brought him rave reviews from medical students and colleagues, and the 2018 Grant V. Rodney MD Award for Outstanding Contributions to Medical Education.  Dr Gilbert is a nephrologist at Tufts Medical Center.

Jessie M. Gaeta, MD: Medical Service

Dr Gaeta, chief medical officer of Boston Health Care for the Homeless, said she is humbled by patients' efforts to carry and recover from addiction through this bleak and unprecedented opioid crisis. "The Society's daring calls to action give me renewed hope and pride in my profession and this organization; it is MMS at its best," she said. Dr Gaeta, a nationally known expert in harm reduction, received the Special Award for Excellence in Medical Service. Colleagues praised her progressive thought leadership and compassion in action.

Additional awardees

The Society honored physicians, medical students, and community advocates for their outstanding contributions to improving health and wellbeing in the Commonwealth. (Additional press releases are forthcoming.)

Seven  physicians received the Committee Chair Service Award recognizing exceptional leadership and service to the MMS: Kenneth R. Peelle, MD, Kevin T. Hinchley, MD, Eric J. Reines, MD, Judd L. Kline, MD, Deeb N. Salem, MD, Elizabeth M. Monaco, MD, and Spiro G. Spanakis, DO.

Member verdict "I'm on a lot of committees and we talk out ideas in the reference committees. This is a wonderful organization to be part of. You have to show up. The thing I like the most about the annual meetings is the collegiality." — Judd L. Kline, MD, emergency medicine specialist

Among others honored with individual awards in 2018 are Yvonne Gomez-Carrion, MD (the LGBT Health Award), Megan T. Sandel, MD (Reducing Health Disparities Award), Richard B. Wolk, MD (Senior Volunteer Physician of the Year Award), Luanne E. Thorndyle, MD (Woman Physician Leadership Award), and Julie A. Johnson, MD (Women's Health Award). Three recipients — Curtis L. Cetrulo Jr., MD, Dicken S.C. Ko, MD, and Thomas Manning — shared the Men's Health Award.    

Seventeen physicians were honored with the Community Clinician of the Year Award.    

Sixteen medical students were honored as Massachusetts Medical Society Scholars. Stephanie Rutledge, MD, and Jackson Steinkamp received  Information Technology Awards, and the Medical Student History Essay Award went to Rajesh Reddy.

Ninteen members of the Society were honored for many years of service to the House of Delegates, including Gerald J. Monchik, MD, and Leonard J. Morse, MD (40 years). Six physicians were recognized for 25 years of service, and 11 for ten years of service.

Roundup: MMS supporting organizations, international physicians, LGBTQ mentorship, member art exhibit, Food is Medicine

MMS supporting organizations step up for Massachusetts communities and physicians

Three MMS organizations committed to broadening health care access and improving wellbeing in Massachusetts communities, and to supporting physicians and their families, reported on their recent initiatives:

The MMS and Alliance Charitable Foundation awarded grants in 2017 totaling $265,000 — an all-time high — to 20 organizations providing health care to the uninsured, and addressing the social determinants of health, behavioral health, and health promotion, reported Corey E. Collins, DO, chair. The Foundation also awarded international health studies grants to ten medical students and residents.

The Massachusetts Medical Benevolent Society provided $141,000 in financial relief to 17 beneficiaries during 2017. Physicians who receive support say how meaningful it is to have not been forgotten by their medical colleagues, said Charles A. Welch, MD, president. A recipient wrote: “The support received meant so much to me and my family. My new found career [following addiction recovery] in biotech is entirely mine, and it is so much more rewarding to me as a result, particularly having started where I did.”

The Massachusetts Medical Society Alliance in 2017 celebrated its 70th anniversary and National Doctors' Day. Its charitable initiatives and community outreach supported people with opioid use disorder and people experiencing homelessness, as well as continued anti-tobacco and pro-handwashing efforts in schools, reported Sandra Delgado, BSN, MHA, outgoing president.

Carl G. Streed, MD (right), chair of the Committee on LGBTQ Matters, welcomed attendees  

LGBTQ reception: Connecting mentors and mentees

The first LGBTQ reception at an MMS annual meeting was about establishing mentoring relationships. "There is something unique about being part of the LGBTQ community, things that affect you every day," said Reiner See, MD, vice chair of the Committee on LGBTQ Matters and a neurologist at MGH. "We felt the LGBTQ member should have someone they can reach out to and ask those questions, like 'How can I bring up that I have a partner or husband or boyfriend at an interview for a job or fellowship?' We were very happy with the turnout and hope to make this a tradition."

Member verdict  "These options are incredibly important, especially for rising medical students, residents, and fellows. Carl has mentored me for about six years. Every tidbit, every detail, helps you know what to expect as you go forward in your career. I'm transitioning from being a mentee to a mentor." —Arun Chandran, MD, resident, Mount Auburn Hospital

International Medical Graduates grapple with DACA

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and its impact on the medical field was the topic opf the night at the International Medical Graduates (IMG) annual reception. The speakers included immigration attorneys, introduced by Rajendra Trivedi, MD, chair of the IMG section.

The Nancy N. Caron Annual Member Art Exhibit and Silent Auction drew an appreciative crowd on Thursday night, including Fred E. Shapiro, DO (center), anesthesiologist at BIDMC.

Developing the Food is Medicine State Plan

A working group of physicians gathered to develop medically-tailored nutritional interventions for people with chronic and acute illness in the Commonwealth. The Food is Medicine State Plan, driven by the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School and Community Servings of Boston, aims to build on robust evidence that Food is Medicine interventions are an affective, low-cost way to improve health outcomes.

Member verdict "For years at my practice we've been dealing every day with food insecurity and how food is a part of our patients’ lives. It’s great to see a systemic societal effort to change that. Pediatricians have already been sold on this. It was great to hear all the different perspectives. I’ll be looking to see where this all goes." — Mary Beth Miotto, MD, FAAP, pediatrician, Family Health Center of Worcester

Tweets and just a few more pics