To the YSM Community:
2026 is here. In the next few weeks, we will be rolling out the final refreshed Yale School of Medicine (YSM) strategic plan. Much gratitude for all of those who participated in surveys or interviews, focus groups, writing, and feedback.
Over the next few months, I will highlight several of the themes we heard consistently and have incorporated throughout the plan. The first of these relates to different forms of communication, a topic we have been discussing periodically since February of 2020.
Many in the focus groups articulated the importance of facilitating bidirectional communication, whether among leaders, faculty, staff, trainees, and students within YSM; among leaders in YSM and Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS) and clinicians and patient-facing staff; or among YSM, the university, and our community.
This type of two-way communication is particularly important during times of rapid change, even when change results from positive work such as the alignment between YSM and YNHHS. Faculty, staff, trainees, and patients bring expertise and important insights that can inform decisions and strategy, and consultation need not slow execution. Too often critical team members have felt that they are informed without having been consulted. Thus, the refresh of our clinical strategic plan calls for developing “formal mechanisms for garnering input from clinicians in planning efforts that affect clinician practice and in tracking outcomes.” In addition, since the summer, leaders of YSM and YNHHS have engaged in the important work of better defining roles, mapping reporting structures, and aligning governance structures to facilitate the role of YSM department chairs as physicians- or surgeons-in-chief across the health system. Clarifying roles and better aligning our structures will facilitate communication, trust, and engagement between YSM and YNHHS.
Within YSM, leadership of the Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) and I have been discussing how to enhance bidirectional communication and institutional memory. Our recent department-wide town halls have led to rich discussions. Many participants of the strategic refresh focus groups commented on how much they valued the opportunity to provide input and have meaningful conversations about YSM. Since 2020 we have held Listening Groups, but the nature of those conversations has evolved over the last five years. Reflecting on the success of the focus groups, it seems that what differentiated them was, in fact, the “focus” on a specific set of questions in groups from different vantage points. Going forward, we will reframe the listening sessions as periodic focus groups.
In the meantime, I encourage community members to subscribe to News and Recognition and YSM Events, to read Beyond Sterling Hall, and to attend the State of the School for YSM-wide information. Summaries of FAC and Executive Group (chairs and deputy deans) meetings are posted for the prior six months at this link and provide detailed information about initiatives within the school.
Our focus groups also revealed the opportunity for better communication with our community. Thus, the strategic plan calls for YSM to “co-create and implement research for community health in collaboration with our community partners, YNHHS, Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), and Yale School of Nursing (YSN) through Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI) and the Clinical and Translational Science Award,” and to “increase opportunities for faculty, staff, trainees, and students to engage with the New Haven community.” We will also work closely with community leaders, YNHHS, Yale New Haven Hospital, and YSPH in actualizing the Yale New Haven Hospital Implementation Strategy Plan based on the 2025 Community Health Needs Assessment. We understand that we must leverage alignment to enhance communication and marketing to the broader community.
Another common communication theme among survey participants and focus group members relates to the difficulty in keeping up with the abundant resources available, such as cores, equipment, career development and mentoring assets, and potential collaborators, etc. With our Communications Team and the Executive Group we have discussed both “20th Century” and high-tech ways to increase awareness of all that is going on and available at YSM at any time. Potential strategies in the former category include periodic messaging about MyYSM (the Yale School of Medicine intranet: https://medicine.yale.edu/myysm/), a more robust introduction to resources during faculty and staff onboarding, hosting biannual update sessions, and pushing outreach by cores. High-tech solutions include using artificial intelligence (AI) to direct faculty and staff to resources when they need them and developing a chatbot to assist with navigation. The Office of Communications team has already developed novel tools, such as using AI to generate a lay precis when our faculty publish a new article. Successfully piloted with Yale Cancer Center last fall, these are featured on the YSM website under “Latest Publications” or you can directly access the newsfeed here. (An automated version will be made available to all departments this winter.)
These summaries provide one way in which we can amplify your work. At the same time, our editorial team has more than doubled the number of news articles featuring basic science research and 2026 will bring the introduction of new content types, including podcasts and short-form video, deeper and more expansive coverage of scientific priorities, and optimization work to further elevate YSM’s online visibility. Indeed, one of the most important forms of communication in which we must engage over the next year is in telling our story to the public.
Sincerely,
Nancy J. Brown, MD
Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of Medicine
C.N.H. Long Professor of Internal Medicine