Alumni

Joseph F.J. Curi, M.D. ’64, reports that he is “still in a solo pediatric practice after 31 years. My son, Michael, received his M.D. from UConn and is in a pediatric residency in Virginia. Anne has put her Harvard law degree aside and is a professional duo-athlete. Sarah, a part-time lawyer, is getting her M.P.H. at Harvard. Katheryn is studying for her M.A. in mental health counseling and is a professional mountain biker in Vermont. I thoroughly enjoyed representing the medical school at the Tercentennial weekend.”

Ralph S. Greco, M.D. ’68, HS ’73, was appointed the Johnson & Johnson Distinguished Professor and chief of the Division of General Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is also director of the General Surgery Training Program. After completing his surgical training at Yale, Greco spent two years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Seoul, Korea, and Fort Meade, Md., and then joined the faculty at the former Rutgers Medical School. He became a full professor there in 1983, three years before the school changed its name to the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Greco was appointed chief of surgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in 1996. His clinical interests include pancreatic surgery, surgical oncology and endocrine surgery. He has long pursued research directed at elucidating the response of host cells, namely neutrophils, to nonbiological surfaces utilized in biomedical implants and devices. Greco, his wife, Irene Wapnir, M.D., and their three children moved to Palo Alto, Calif., in August 2000.

Augustus A. White, M.D., HS ’66, was recently appointed master of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Society, one of four academic societies at Harvard Medical School. As master, his goal is to help educate students to be excellent scientists and clinicians who will provide compassionate care to all of their patients, while preserving their own well-being in order to serve happily for many years. White, who focuses on the spine, is a professor of orthopaedic surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a member of the Health Sciences and Technology faculty at Harvard Medical School. He also served as orthopaedic surgeon-in-chief at Beth Israel Hospital for 13 years. The American Orthopaedic Association honored White in June in Palm Beach, Fla., by naming him the Arthur R. Shands, Jr., Lecturer, for outstanding contributions to the orthopaedic profession. He delivered a lecture titled “Our Humanitarian Orthopaedic Opportunity,” in which he described the serious racial disparities in health care in the United States, which he attributed to racial bias. He spoke about the history of this phenomenon and challenged his audience to try to eliminate health care disparities for society’s well-being.

Michael L.J. Apuzzo, M.D., HS ’73, received the William Beecher Scoville Prize from the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies at the opening ceremonies of the September 2001 World Congress in Sydney, Australia. The prize is awarded to a neurosurgeon who has made a principal contribution to the art and science of neurosurgery on an international scale. William Scoville was a Yale neurosurgeon who made numerous contributions and innovations in the field while being active in globally organized medicine. Apuzzo was a pupil of Scoville’s and is now the Edwin M. Todd/ Trent H. Wells, Jr., Professor of Neurological Surgery and Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He was honored for his work in introducing modern aspects of cellular and molecular biology to the operative armamentarium, as well as for his advocacy of the international exchange of ideas and unified global education.

Attilio Vincent Granata, M.D. ’77, an associate clinical professor of medicine at Yale, was elected to the board of directors of the Citizens for Patients’ Rights at the group’s July 19 meeting. Citizens for Patients’ Rights is a grassroots organization dedicated to educating and empowering the public to deal with problems in the health care system. In addition to his academic practice, Granata is a consultant to a number of national and international clients on health care issues, such as strategic planning, cost-effectiveness analysis and quality-of-care planning. He is president and CEO of Health Care Consulting Practice in Orange, Conn. Granata served his residency in internal medicine at Stanford University Medical Center and also completed an M.B.A. as a Palmer Scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. He serves on the Health and Public Policy Committee of the American College of Physicians.

In a biographical sketch for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Daniel A. Pollock, M.D. ’79, described a change in his career as follows: “In my work [as an emergency physician], I saw the same injury types again and again and again. As a result, I thought it would be important to learn injury demographics and causes, and to find ways to prevent injuries, instead of continually treating them and trying to limit their effects.” This conviction led him from a position as an instructor of clinical medicine at New York University School of Medicine to a stint in the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the CDC in 1984. For two years, he worked on the Agent Orange Projects. He then continued within the CDC to become the team leader of the Acute Care Team within the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC). Since 1999, he has served as the acting director of the NCIPC’s Division of Acute Care, Rehabilitation Research, and Disability Prevention, which provides national leadership in preventing and minimizing the impact of nonoccupational injuries. His goal is to engineer a shift in the way medicine is taught and researched toward a population orientation that includes prevention and complements the clinical approach of treating one patient at a time.

Ina S. Cushman, PA ’86, was elected president of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. She has held a variety of other positions within the organization in the past. She is a senior physician assistant with Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, a private practice group providing HMO as well as fee-for-service care. Cushman works out of the Braintree, Mass., center, but consults and teaches throughout the organization and around the country. She pioneered a nationally recognized wound care program and contributed three chapters to the second edition of Telephone Medicine: Triage and Training for Primary Care. She was also honored by United Airlines for her treatment of a fellow passenger in cardiac crisis.

Michael Simons, M.D. ’84, HS ’87, has been appointed the Anna Gundlach Huber Professor of Medicine and chief of the Section of Cardiology at Dartmouth Medical School. He moved to Dartmouth from Harvard Medical School, where he was an associate professor of medicine and director of the Angiogenesis Research Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Simons transported his entire lab northward, including almost 20 researchers and $2 million a year in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association and industry sources. His research in angiogenesis focuses on the use of a growth factor called PR39 to stimulate blood vessel growth.