Veterans Affairs

Daniel Federman, MD, Vice Chair, Veterans Affairs

The Department of Internal Medicine has 77 faculty members who care for patients in numerous clinics, lead educational initiatives, and perform research as part of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System.

Allergy and Immunology

Christina Price, MD

The section addresses drug allergies along with the management of immune deficiency in immunoglobulin infusions and allergen immunotherapy. The section specializes in clinical research in adults with immune deficiency. Christina Price, MD, delivers patient care services through e-consults, telehealth, and in-person consultations.

Cardiovascular Medicine

Steven Pfau, MD

The VA Connecticut Cardiology Section comprises 11 full-time and 10 part-time faculty members; 12 advanced practice providers; and seven full-time fellowship trainees. It serves veterans in Connecticut, eastern New York, western Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. VA Connecticut is one of two centers for tertiary cardiac and cardiovascular surgery in New England.

The clinical programs have continued to expand their regional presence through innovative remote clinical care. In the last year, we have added remote support to Springfield and Northampton, Massachusetts, as well as the existing locations of Castle Point, New York, and Manchester, New Hampshire. Yale faculty provide expertise in cardiac electrophysiology, peripheral vascular disease, and interpretation of echocardiograms to these locations through video visits and image file transfer—thus saving patients and providers both time and travel expenses, and improving regional efficiency in tertiary cardiac care.

Locally, our clinical program has added left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) for patients with atrial fibrillation intolerant of anticoagulation with the first implant of a Watchman device in April 2023. Through close collaboration with the Yale LAAO program, VA patients benefit from the expertise of Yale faculty and the efficiency of having the procedure performed on the West Haven VA campus.

Mehran Sadeghi, MD, was recognized in January 2023 with a Senior Clinician Scientist Investigator Award by the VA Office of Research and Development. This award identifies Sadeghi as an outstanding clinician-scientist with a long history of VA-based research that continues to provide high-quality clinical care to veterans. Sadeghi is exemplary of VA-based cardiology faculty who continue to contribute to clinical and basic sciences; he has over 35 peer-reviewed publications in such areas as clinical vascular medicine, vascular biology, transplant medicine, coronary physiology, and cardiac CT imaging in the past year.

Endocrinology

Varman Samuel, MD, PhD

VACHS endocrinology is staffed by six faculty (with a total of 2.5 FTE) who provide endocrine care for veterans in outpatient clinics in West Haven and Newington, and supervise endocrine fellows in their longitudinal clinic. Two faculty members, Varman Samuel, MD, PhD, and Daniel F. Vatner, MD, PhD, have their own independent labs. Two faculty members, Ana Luisa Perdigoto, MD, PhD, and Diana Athonvarangkul, MD, PhD, are young investigators.

Two clinical faculty members, Lisa Parikh, MD, and Grace Lee, MD, bring clinical expertise in endocrine subspecialties (e.g., obesity medicine, transgender care, bone and thyroid diseases) to ensure outstanding care for veterans and a comprehensive educational experience for trainees. Together, they have 16 publications from 2021 to 2022. Samuel is currently the section chief for this section and has his laboratory at VACHS. He is currently serving on the VA’s Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee for Diabetes.

The section recruited Athonvarangkul this year to replace Barbara Gulanski, MD, MPH, who retired from the VACHS after more than 20 years of dedicated service and leadership. Parikh and Vatner have continued to expand their clinical expertise to develop specific roles in obesity medicine and clinical lipidology. With support from the VA, it would be feasible to expand these roles within the Clinical Resource Hub to make VACHS a regional center for these endocrine subspecialties.

Gastroenterology / Liver

Tamar Taddei, MD

The VA Section of Digestive Diseases is led by Tamar Taddei, MD, section chief. Simona Jakab, MD, serves as associate chief of hepatology, and Petr Protiva, MD, MPH, as associate chief of gastroenterology. Gyan Prakash (Avi) Ketwaroo, MD, MSc, is the director of endoscopy. The section continues to win national recognition by participating in the National GI and Hepatology Program Office Field Advisory subcommittees, including the section chiefs (Taddei), endoscopy (Ketwaroo), cirrhosis (Jakab), and liver cancer (Taddei) subcommittees. Petr Protiva, MD, MPH, in partnership with a dedicated primary care service, leads VACHS’s colorectal cancer screening initiatives, and serves as the local site PI for two VA national colorectal cancer screening trials. Amy Ogurick, MD, continues leading quality improvement initiatives to improve fellowship training and the ambulatory GI practice while developing her career as a 2023 Department of Medicine Advancement of Clinician-Educator Scholarship (ACES) recipient.

Gyanprakash Ketwaroo, MD, MSc, has furthered endoscopy education by developing a hands-on training series for attendings and fellows. Joseph Lim, MD, served as course director for the annual VA Liver Update, broadcast widely to VACHS and the VA New England Healthcare System (VISN 1). Jonathan Dranoff, MD; Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao, MD; Matthew McConnell, MD; Jakab; and Taddei continue to expand hepatology and liver cancer outreach to the VISN 1 and beyond, providing specialty care to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Oklahoma.

The section welcomed Basile Njei, MD, MPH, PhD, in January 2023, and Anahita Rabiee, MD, MHS, in August 2023. Njei received a highly competitive VA ORD Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion supplement for his work under the mentorship of Amy Justice, MD, PhD. He also received an early-career investigator award in health care disparities from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). He was selected to attend the joint AASLD-European Society for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Masterclass, a two-day intensive training session designed for future leaders in academic hepatology.

Anahita Rabiee, MD, MHS, received the VA HSR&D Small Award Initiative For Impact Funding (SWIFT) to study disparities in alcohol-associated hepatitis, as well as an industry-sponsored grant to study the utility of albumin coadministration with diuretics for fluid retention in cirrhosis with Garcia-Tsao. Louise Wang, MD, MSCE, presented her VA CDA-funded research on polygenic risk scores in pancreatic cancer at the annual American Association for Cancer Research meeting in 2023. Fred Gorelick, MD; Wajahat Mehal, MD, DPhil; and Jonathan Dranoff, MD, continue to lead and serve NIH and VA study sections in addition to their busy research projects.

Members of the section have leadership roles in the AASLD and the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), the field’s two premier specialty societies. Loren Laine, MD, chief of Yale Section of Digestive Diseases, serves as chair of Digestive Disease Week, which is the premier digestive diseases meeting in the world. Taddei assumed a three-year term as governing board member and treasurer of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in January 2023. Susan Zapatka, APRN, was elected associate lead of the AASLD Clinical Practice Special Interest Group (SIG); and Neeraja Kannan, DNP, was elected associate lead of the AASLD Liver Cancer SIG. Garcia-Tsao received the prestigious 2023 International Mentor Award from the Asociación Latinoamericana para el Estudio del Hígado (ALEH). Section members published over 85 papers in the past year.

General Medicine

William Becker, MD

The section of general medicine, led by William Becker, MD, has 26 primary care physicians.

The Health Professions Education, Evaluation, and Research (HPEER) fellowship is in its second year and is co-directed by Rebecca Brienza, MD, MPH. HPEER is an interprofessional fellowship focused on educational and curricular design and implementation for substance use disorder.

The Center of Excellence nurse practitioner residency received full accreditation in March 2023.

The mailed fecal immunochemical test (FIT) program, led by Jin Xu, MD, increased VACHS’ average colon cancer screening rate by more than 10% compared to the averages across other Veterans Integrated Services Networks (VISNs).

Amy Schwartz, MD, co-chaired the Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) Implementation Roadmap Committee for the Office of Primary Care. This committee has published practical tools (including a gap analysis tool and an activity tracker) for use nationally across all primary care sites to optimize the primary care delivery system. The group has provided a detailed assessment tool for local leadership, and a thorough description of best practice implementation strategies.

Daniel Federman, MD, presented at the Department of Internal Medicine’s Medical Grand Rounds on “My Journey in Pain Management: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been” in September 2022. In addition, Federman delivered a presentation on the advances in wound healing and self-induced skin lesions at two national meetings.

From September 2022 to September 2023, the section produced ten publications on topics ranging from antibody titers to vaccine rates and post-discharge outcomes.

Hematology / Medical Oncology

Michal Rose, MD

Eight faculty members care for patients with cancer and hematologic disorders at VACHS. The section has a robust clinical trials program and is a popular rotation for fellows and residents. Talib Dosani, MD, was given the David S. Fischer, MD Annual Teaching Award for 2023.

The Schwartz Rounds, initiated in 2020 by Edward Perry Jr., MD, average over 100 attendees per quarterly session, with most participants rating the experience as excellent in post-session surveys. In May 2023, Perry collaborated with Jeffrey Kravetz, MD, and Amy Schwartz, MD, to initiate the Primary Care Schwartz Rounds, focusing on topics of interest to primary care providers.

The VACHS Hematology/Medical Oncology clinical trials program is active within the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). VACHS continues to be the top enrolling site nationwide for NCTN studies.

• A081801 (CHEMO-IO): 5/205 sites
• A151804 (ir-AE): 5/43 sites
• LungMAP: 6/412 sites
• NHLBI-MDS: 14/170 sites
• S2013 (I-CHECKIT): 5/183 sites

Michal Rose, MD, serves as the lead oncologist to the VISN 1 clinical trials network and the SWOG Storefront (a consortium of five VA medical centers across New England), recognized as a top-accruing institution at the SWOG Fall meeting in Chicago in October 2023.

VACHS continues to be a hub for the Lung Precision Oncology Program (LPOP), a partnership between the National Oncology Program Office and the Office of Research and Development to optimize lung cancer care. The primary co-investigators are Hilary Cain, MD, and Michal Rose, MD. The lung cancer clinical trials portfolio was expanded through this grant, and the team mentored other New England VAs as they built their clinical trial programs. Rose was invited to present best practices from this program at the annual LPOP meeting in Boston in September 2023.

Herta Chao, MD, PhD, renewed her VA Merit grant in 2023 and continues to be PI on an R01 and R01 supplement to study the cognitive effects of androgen deprivation therapy. She also chairs an NCI Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment workgroup focusing on the cognitive assessment of cancer patients undergoing treatment.

Alexander Pine, MD, PhD, represents Yale on the NCCN Guideline Panel on Cancer-Associated Venous Thromboembolism Diseases, and Rose represents Yale on the NCCN Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Panel. Talib Dosani, MD, is a VA clinical pathways development team member for hematologic malignancies for the Veterans Affairs National Oncology Program.

Hospital Medicine

Elizabeth Marhoffer, MD

Elizabeth Marhoffer, MD, leads the Section of Hospital Medicine as interim section chief. She took over the role from Craig Gunderson, MD, as acting chief in 2023. Other section members stepped into new leadership roles at Yale School of Medicine and VACHS between September 2022 and September 2023.

Benjamin Cherry, MD, was named director of the Internal Medicine sub-internship to support the educational mission. Shaili Gupta, MBBS, joined the Internal Medicine Traditional Residency Program as associate program director, and was named director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity of Graduate Medical Education at VACHS. Naseema Merchant, MBBS, became site director of the Chief Residency Program in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety; associate director for Quality Improvement, Patient Safety & Leadership; and site director for the Internal Medicine Clerkship. Benjamin Rodwin, MD, was named associate program director of the Internal Medicine Traditional Residency Program and director of Trainee Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, VACHS Office of Education.

In addition to Marhoffer, other faculty members were named to new administrative positions at VACHS. John Chang, MD, was named chair of the Flow Committee, VACHS. Craig Gunderson, MD, became deputy executive director of the National Hospital Medicine Program for the Veterans Health Administration. Shaili Gupta, MBBS, was appointed vice chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at VACHS. Naseema Merchant, MBBS, became physician lead for the High Reliability Organization in the Department of Medicine at VACHS.

Ben Carey, MD; Chang; Gunderson; Gupta; Jürgen Holleck, MD; and Merchant gave 31 regional and national talks, and the section published 27 peer-reviewed papers. Gupta won the Yale Education grant. Holleck’s SWIFT grant was extended for his research, “Risk of Serious Adverse Gastrointestinal Events Associated with the Use of Potassium Binders for the Treatment of Hyperkalemia in Hospitalized Patients.”

Infectious Diseases

Richard Sutton, MD, PhD

Richard Sutton, MD, PhD, resumed duties as chief of infectious diseases in January 2023 after Louise-Marie Dembry, MD, MBA, retired. Sutton attends the inpatient ID service and has an active, well-funded research laboratory at Yale that investigates aspects of HIV cure. He presented work at the Cold Spring Harbor’s Retroviruses meeting on his HIV Rev dimerization assay in May 2023. Sutton serves on the WHVA R&D committee and the IBC at Yale, which reviews biosafety protocols at VACHS. Sutton also serves on Yale’s internal medicine residency selection committee.

Joseph Vinetz, MD, contributes to VA internal medicine clinical care by performing inpatient ID consults, internal medicine hospital team attending, outpatient HIV clinic mentoring, and outpatient travel medicine consulting/precepting. He is now an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) member. He is working to establish such VA-based research programs as nationwide pneumococcal serotype study and bacterial immunopathogenesis (with Gary Désir, MD). Vinetz also contributes to VA teaching by co-directing the internal medicine residency journal club.

Sandra Springer, MD, helped to write legislation and testified in the Connecticut state legislature to legalize mobile retail pharmacies; the bill was signed into law by governor Ned Lamont on July 1, 2023. Through Springer’s NIDA DP1, she built and rolled out the mobile pharmacy clinic in Waterbury, Conn. Springer and her team were awarded the Vizient Pharmacy Vision Award for Excellence in Public Policy for this work. She was accepted into the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Innovations for Substance Use Disorders (I4SUD) NIDA-funded program in August 2023.

Springer was appointed a standing member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on the Framework for the Consideration of Chronic Conditions in Women in January 2023. Over this year, Springer also presented 16 accepted abstracts at national and international infectious disease and addiction medicine conference, and published ten articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Rupak Datta, MD, PhD, MPH, was elected to serve on the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) research committee from 2023 to 2026. His research has focused on antimicrobial stewardship in the VA’s home-based primary care program; his recent publications include “Antimicrobial resistance in Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae urine isolates from a national sample of home-based primary care patients with dementia” in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology (May 2023). He contributes to the VACHS Antimicrobial Stewardship program, Hospital Epidemiology & Infection Prevention program, and the Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy clinic.

Andrew Chou, MD, MSc, joined VACHS as the associate hospital epidemiologist in September 2022 and transferred his VA Clinical Research and Development project (VA CSR&D IK2 CX001981, titled “Using Big Data to Identify & Prevent Transmission of Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae within VHA”). Over the past year, he has published five peer-reviewed articles and made seven presentations.

Sheela Shenoi, MD, MPH, continued her scholarly work to improve HIV and tuberculosis care in the United States and internationally. She continues to serve as associate director of the Office of Global Health, where she co-leads the Global Health & Equity Distinction Pathway and helps coordinate the Global Health Scholars Program for residents and fellows. She is a core faculty member of the Connecticut AIDS Education & Training Center and co-directs the Global AIDS Research Faculty Network at Yale. Shenoi presented at the International AIDS Society annual meeting in 2023, the International Union Against Tuberculosis & Lung Disease, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). She published two research articles, one review article, two perspective articles, and one textbook chapter. Shenoi began to serve as co-chair of the Infectious Disease Diversity, Equity, and Anti-racism group at Yale School of Medicine; the vice chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America Grants for Emerging Researchers program; and the vice chair of the HIV Section of the International Union Against Tuberculosis & Lung Disease, all in 2023.

Brinda Emu, MD, is an infectious diseases physician-scientist who continues to focus on the pathogenesis of HIV-associated malignancies. She founded and directs a multidisciplinary clinic focused on the care of patients with HIV and cancer, with integrated care from specialists in infectious diseases and oncology. She serves on the VACS (VA Cohort Study) Translational and Cancer Core. She was also the infectious diseases representative on the VA COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Committee.

Kidney Medicine

Susan T. Crowley, MD, MBA

In addition to her national duties as the Executive Director of Kidney Medicine for the Veterans Health Administration, Susan T. Crowley, MD, MBA, leads the Section of Kidney Medicine, which consists of seven Yale academic clinicians, educators, and scientists. She serves on the steering committee for the VA Cooperative Studies Program (CSP) Dialysis Platform (DiaP) Trial and its inaugural study, VA CSP # 2026, Beta-Blocker Dialyzability on Cardiovascular Outcomes (BRAVO).

David Geller, MD, PhD, is the medical director of dialysis at VACHS; the lead dialysis medical director for VA New England; the director of VACHS’s Hypertension Clinic; and the co-director of Yale School of Medicine’s core curriculum course on homeostasis. In addition to Geller’s many clinical and educational duties, he is the site PI of the VA study titled “Incremental hemodialysis in veterans,” a multicenter national trial comparing the effects of conventional versus graduated dialysis on patient outcomes for incident hemodialysis patients.

Robert Safirstein, MD, is the PI of preclinical protocols investigating the molecular aspects of cisplatin and ischemia/reperfusion-induced acute and chronic renal disease. He is also the PI of protocols investigating renalase protein’s role in acute and chronic renal failure models. Safirstein was designated co-PI with Fred Gorelick, MD, on the mechanism of pancreatitis accompanying chronic kidney disease. His clinical activities include supervising fellows in their in-service rotations and seeing patients weekly in an outpatient clinic in Newington. He also sees patients in weekly telehealth clinics in Oklahoma. He is the site director of the West Haven telehealth program that provides care for veterans with kidney disease in underserved areas across the United States.

Namrata Krishnan, MBBS, is the site program director of the nephrology fellowship programs for Yale and the University of Connecticut. She is involved in medical education and curriculum development at the local and national levels in collaboration with the National Kidney Foundation. She is heavily engaged in clinical care at the VA in inpatient and outpatient settings, serving as the director of the post-transplant renal clinic and the renal clinic at VA Newington. She serves on various local VA committees, including the VA national kidney-palliative care committee.

William Chang, MD, PhD, is a clinical nephrology attending physician in the inpatient setting and the outpatient clinical resource hub telenephrology program. His research focuses on vascular and kidney tissue engineering to model disease and develop new therapeutic approaches. Chang is a principal investigator and a project lead at Yale School of Medicine for research programs funded by the American Diabetes Association and the Department of Defense.

John Chang, MD, is involved in clinical care in various settings, including hypertension (HTN) clinics at VACHS and Yale, and a remote telehealth renal clinic in New Hampshire. Chang is the site PI of the Empagliflozin for Worsening Heart Failure Study, a multicenter study investigating the acute effects of empagliflozin (Jardiance), an antidiabetic drug, as an adjuvant to loop diuretics on the parameters of diuretic efficacy.

Justin Belcher, MD, PhD, is the site director of telenephrology at VACHS and provides telenephrology care for multiple VA centers in Oklahoma. He is the renal site PI of the HOPE trial, a study of chronic pain management strategies for hemodialysis patients. He is actively involved in education, providing didactic lectures for fellows, residents, medical students, PA students, and surgical staff as part of a formal lecture series, reports, and clinical services. Belcher sees patients in inpatient services, in face-to-face outpatient clinics, and via telemedicine at multiple community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs) across Connecticut. He is actively involved in research surrounding acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients with cirrhosis via the HRS-HARMONY consortium, which he co-founded.

Occupational Medicine

Efia James, MD, MPH

In 2023, Efia James, MD, MPH, assumed the role of chief of the VA Occupational Health Service, succeeding Brian Linde, MD, MPH, who took on the role of director of Occupational Health Services at the VA Palo Alto Medical Center in California. In addition to her new position as service chief, James serves as the VA VISN 1 Employee and Occupational Health lead physician and a member of the VHA Employee Occupational Health Change Advisory Board.

As part of the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022, Richard Smith, MD, led the implementation at VA Connecticut as the lead environmental health clinician. He assembled a team of clinicians and administrative staff dedicated to providing consultative services to veterans seeking additional evaluation for toxic exposures during military service. The team’s members offered veterans valuable insights into the risks of developing medical conditions related to military service exposures and disability benefits.

The VA Occupational Health Service (OHS) introduced the Military Toxic Exposure Elective for Traditional Internal Medicine Residents at the VA in July 2023. This elective aims to familiarize residents with environmental medicine by using a comprehensive approach that includes web-based learning, patient-centered assessment activities, and experience conducting veteran environmental health evaluations. Residents who complete this elective earn Level 1 Military Environmental Exposures Certification from the American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM), in collaboration with the VA Health Outcomes Military Exposures (HOME) and War Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC).

Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine

Hilary Cain, MD

The Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine (PCCSM) section at VACHS continues to excel in clinical care delivery and further the VA and YSM research missions. Hilary Cain, MD, section chief of VA PCCSM, continues to serve as co-lead PI for the VA Connecticut arm of the national Lung Precision Oncology Program (LPOP) with Michal Rose, MD, hematology/oncology VA chief. The LPOP goal is to create an excellent lung cancer diagnosis and management system.

The current Lung Cancer Screening (LCS) program at VACT has implemented a new software provider by the VA National Lung Cancer Program Office, and has hired new nurse navigators led by Kathryn Lerz, APRN. Three thousand three hundred veterans have been enrolled in the VACT LCS program in the past two years, and VACHS has achieved remarkable adherence to follow-up screening of 84%—far higher than the civilian sector norm. The team was honored to be invited to deliver a “Best Practice” presentation at the Annual LPOP meeting in September 2023. Our efforts have resulted in 60% of lung cancers being diagnosed as stage 1 diseases where a cure can be achieved.

Kathleen Akgün, MD, associate section chief for VA PCCSM and VA medical ICU director, was appointed co-director of the Cooperative Studies Program (CSP) Network of Dedicated Enrollment Sites (NODES) Program. In October 2023, she was the recipient of the Yale Department of Internal Medicine 2nd Century of Women at Yale: Emerging Leaders in Internal Medicine Award. She continues as a core lead for Emerging Areas of Health Services Research in the Pain Research, Informatics, Multimorbidities and Education (PRIME) Center.

She collaborates closely with Amy Justice, MD, PhD, (Section of General Medicine) the Veterans Aging Cohort Study, and Shelli Feder, PhD, APRN, (Yale School of Nursing). Akgün serves as a member of several national and international committees, including the American College of Chest Physicians Palliative and End-of-Life Section; the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Behavioral Science and Health Services Research Assembly Programming Committee; the ATS Health Policy Committee; and the American Board of Internal Medicine Hospice and Palliative Medicine Item-Writing Task Force. She continues to mentor learners and fortify relationships with clinical and research leaders to advocate for equitable and accessible pulmonary and ICU care for patients.

Edward Manning, MD, PhD, continues his work investigating remodeling of the pulmonary vasculature and its role in the decline of cardiac and lung function that occurs in healthy aging through the support of his Fred Wright VISN1 (VA) Career Development Award. He is investigating ways to slow or reverse these declines in pre-clinical trials. He also received an expansion award from the Additional Ventures Single Ventricle Research Fund mechanism with co-PI Jay Humphrey, PhD, to further investigate maladaptive remodeling of the cardiopulmonary system due to chronic hypoxia in children born with single ventricle defects.

Lauren Cohn, MD, is the director of Biologics and Advanced Therapeutics in Airway Diseases. In this capacity, she educates residents, fellows, and faculty throughout the VA about new therapeutic approaches to asthma through lectures, FTF, and e-consults. In the past year, the number of e-consults requesting assistance with biological therapies has increased. Cohn continues to direct the Newington Pulmonary Clinic, where the patient load and clinical faculty have expanded.

Rheumatology

Evelyn Hsieh, MD, PhD

Section Chief Evelyn Hsieh, MD, PhD, and Lisa Suter, MD, have continued to be recognized nationally to serve as chairpersons of committees and subcommittees of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR): Suter as co-chair of the Quality Measures subcommittee, and Hsieh as the founding chair of the Global Engagement committee and co-convener of the ACR Global Rheumatology Summit. Suter is also a member of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons Patient-Reported Outcomes Task Force.

Hsieh was invited to lead an international collaborative review titled “Global Perspective on the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Rheumatology and Health Equity,” published in Arthritis Care & Research in January 2024. She continues to lead NIH-sponsored research focused on osteoporosis and fractures among veterans with HIV. She co-chairs the Veterans Aging Cohort Study Rheumatology, Endocrine, and Geriatrics Syndromes Core with Julie Womack, PhD, from the Yale School of Nursing.

Joshua Bilsborrow, MD, MHS, received the Teacher of the Year award from the 2023 graduating class of rheumatology fellows from the Yale Section of Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology, and carried out an educational and workshop series for Rwandan internal medicine residents to increase their knowledge of rheumatology and stimulate interest in pursuing further training in the specialty. David Podell, MD, PhD, joined the VA Connecticut rheumatology team, and was

inducted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians during a ceremony in London in December 2022.