To the YSM Community:
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the Yale Medical Symphony Orchestra's winter concert. The orchestra played to a packed Harkness auditorium. Every time I witness the transformation of committed scientists, clinicians, and students into passionate artists, and the uncomplicated enthusiasm of the audience, including children, for the musicians, I am reminded of the amazing creativity, conviction, and power of our community. This winter’s concert was a particularly poignant reminder that even when faced with uncertainty, we can respond in the positive.
In academic medicine, we are living in a time of unprecedented challenge and change. During this time, it is important that we not lose focus on our missions of education, discovery, and improving health. As many across the school and university tirelessly advocate for discovery and health, share the impact that you are having, and challenge threats to our core missions, we must not only react but also continue to look forward.
Many of our recent emails have focused on the reactive–simple measures to ensure that faculty can continue and pivot their research without interruption, for example. Here I will focus on the proactive. Over the last five years we have developed strategic plans for research, education, and diversity within Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and a joint clinical strategic plan in collaboration with Yale New Haven Health System. We have realized many goals–such as the enhanced resources to promote professionalism and leadership, new resources to promote mentorship, the creation of advising houses, increased financial aid for medical and PA students, increased investments in predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees, execution of transparent funds flow model between the school and health system, creation of an aligned clinical enterprise, the creation of a new department of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science, new investments in support of the science strategic plan, build-out of space, and improved core support. These changes have enhanced our ability to attract outstanding students and future leaders, to make transformative discoveries, and to offer care to more patients.
But not all initiatives have been successful. In town halls, faculty continue to articulate the desire for more cross-departmental interdisciplinary collaboration. We have not made sufficient progress in removing frustration over administrative inefficiencies for either our research or clinical faculty. We have opportunities to better engage staff so critical to all we do. We have much work to do in improving the health of our population, not just individual patients. We must double-down on our efforts to diversify funding sources. As we look forward, we must also listen to and learn from the concerns of the public and leverage this understanding to think in new ways while preserving what differentiates YSM–excellence and rigor in a collaborative environment.
Over the coming months, we will begin work to refresh our strategic plans as a single, overarching strategic plan. We envision a process much like the one we used when we wrote our mission statement together. We will start by surveying the community about priorities, challenges, and aspirations across all missions. Based on those surveys we will hold focus groups, engaging stakeholders across YSM, the university and health system, and the community. Based on the input from these focus groups, we will identify strategic priorities for the next five years. As we do so, we will circulate drafts for iterative input from the community.
As we complete this strategic planning, we will also continue to respond in real time to input from faculty, staff, and students in town halls. To this end, we will soon introduce a series of gatherings called “Fifth Fridays,” to promote interdisciplinary collaboration. We envision inviting faculty from a different basic science department and clinical department or section each fifth Friday of a month, approximately four per year, to lead a rapid-fire presentation survey of opportunities for collaboration. We hope these gatherings will stimulate ongoing conversation and collaboration among faculty at a grassroots level. At the same time, Deputy Deans for Research Koleske and Smith will soon be announcing changes intended to improve the effectiveness of the Office of Team Science.
As evidenced by the Yale Medical Symphony Orchestra, there is no shortage of creativity at Yale School of Medicine. Let’s leverage this to work in new ways and amplify our impact.
Sincerely,
Nancy J. Brown, MD
Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of Medicine
C.N.H. Long Professor of Internal Medicine