By Jenny Blair, M.D. '04
On June 3, Richard Kayne, M.D. ‘76, gave his last speech as president of the Association of Yale Alumni in Medicine (AYAM) executive committee. On his parting, the group remains a vigorous, active, and increasingly visible presence on the medical campus and in the university.
“I leave this presidency with AYAM’s sails full and with great momentum,” Kayne told the alumni present.
Under Kayne’s leadership, said Douglas A. Berv, M.D. ’74, Kayne’s friend and fellow AYAM committee member, what had been an already strong organization has “taken off.”
“He has just skyrocketed it. He’s a powerhouse. He inspires people rather than orders people,” Berv said.
During Kayne’s tenure, colleagues say, alumni have grown more involved with the school and more engaged with current students. Kayne has involved the AYAM with an array of new initiatives: working to add a biomedical engineering masters option for medical students; creating a mentorship program to help international students navigate things like car purchases; discussing responses to threats to the Affordable Care Act; and exploring how the school could become a global climate change leader.
“I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time, and I’ve been surrounded by a core of supercharged people who, as soon as you activate them, it’s like ‘Oh, I can do this!’ or ‘I’m already doing that,’” he said. “It’s incredibly exciting.”
An endocrinologist in private practice in Cheshire, Conn., Kayne is a regular at medical campus events like the Anatomy Service of Gratitude, the Yale CBIT Health Care Hackathon, and Second Look Weekend, which he also urges fellow alumni to attend.
He relishes connecting people. When Kinari Webb, M.D. ’02, spoke at the 2017 School of Medicine graduation, Kayne arranged a meeting with Robert Dubrow, M.D., Ph.D., professor of epidemiology (environmental health), and four medical students interested in climate change. (Webb launched a program in Borneo that integrates health care with protection of the rain forest there.) The students also discussed resuming a Yale chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)—Webb was involved in the organization while a medical student.
During the reunion, Kayne met with John Pastore Jr., M.D. ’67, who in the 1960s played a major role in founding International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, serving as secretary and board member. (In 1985, the group received the Nobel Peace Prize.) Pastore, past president of PSR, offered to work with students interested in founding a chapter at the School of Medicine.
Kayne also introduced Webb via email to Mytien Nyugen, president of the Medical Student Council. Kayne hopes to have Dubrow, who heads the Yale Health Initiative for Climate Change, give talks at grand rounds and the Medical Student Council on climate change. He’d like to encourage medical students to write theses on the topic and have climate change added to the medical school curriculum.
Inspired by students who created an extracurricular course called U.S. Health Justice, he is also pushing that subject to center stage. “Students want social justice in the medical school’s mission statement and they want it in the curriculum,” he said. “We’ve got the people. I’m going to keep pushing for it.”
This summer, Kayne will begin a three-year term as a member of the Board of Governors for the Association of Yale Alumni. He told the AYAM in his speech that he plans to work across schools to advance university-wide programs in not only social justice and climate change but also multicultural inclusion and biomedical engineering and, he said, “I will represent AYAM’s interests passionately.”
The AYAM’s former vice president, Harold Mancusi-Ungaro M.D. ‘73, of Santa Rosa, Calif., succeeded Kayne as president.