The Advisor Is In: Implicit Bias ~ Faculty Promotion and Development ~ A Moment in Medical History
February 2020

Promotion and Opportunity

A message from the chair, Dr. Steve Abramson

Last week the department held the annual recognition reception for those promoted during the prior calendar year. Now in its fifth year, the event was once again a joyous celebration of talented faculty and their successes – and an opportunity to reflect on the importance of promotion as a mark of great individual distinction. Notable this year was the diversity of our faculty honorees, reflecting the breadth of talent combined with the concerted efforts of the division directors to provide mentorship and identify faculty who merit promotion. David Stern and Lynn Buckvar-Keltz have also worked to enhance programming and support to help individual faculty grow professionally, including leadership opportunities for women in medicine and faculty development events.

As we work to promote and facilitate career opportunities for all faculty, I call your attention to this issue’s Advisor Is In, by Joe Ravenell and Richard Greene, which addresses implicit bias. We all must work to ensure that unrecognized bias does not impact our ability to recruit, retain, and advance a diverse faculty. In 2013 we introduced the concept of One Faculty, conceived initially to bring together a community of physicians and scientists across our institutions, divisions, and professional pathways. In these challenging days, the One Faculty concept is more important than ever, promoting our diverse community, creating opportunity and professional growth for all.

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Photo above: Dr. Mark Pochapin celebrates with promoted faculty from the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology: Drs. Renee Williams, Fritz Francois, and Sophie Balzora

Annual Promotions & Appointments
Recognition Reception

On January 16, 2020, the Department of Medicine held its annual recognition reception for faculty members appointed or promoted during the prior calendar year. A warm welcome to the new members of the faculty, and congratulations to those talented individuals promoted over the last year.

See the full list of faculty recognized at the reception

View the reception photo gallery (password: elsa)

 

Supporting Our Faculty:
Professional Development

The Department of Medicine is committed to actively supporting the professional growth of our faculty. Over the past two years, the department has proudly sponsored six faculty members to attend leadership development conferences for women in medicine. Each faculty member was selected through a competitive application process within the department and attended nationally renowned conferences after being accepted by their conference selection committees. The department looks forward to continuing to provide support for professional development with another application opportunity this winter for early career women faculty members.

Past sponsorship awardees, for 2018-2019:

Attended Harvard Medical School Career Advancement and Leadership Skills for Women in Healthcare Program

  • Binita Shah, MD – Division of Cardiology. Associate Director of Research, NYU Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory; Associate Director, VA NY Harbor Healthcare System Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory; Director of Research, NYU Internal Medicine Residency Program. Attended November 2018
  • Verity Schaye, MD, MHPE – DGIMCI. Director of Inpatient Medicine, BH; Firm Chief, Medicine Clerkship; Assistant Director of Curricular Innovation, IIME; Farber Faculty Scholar, E for E. Attended November 2018
  • Ann Garment, MD – DGIMCI. Section Chief, General Internal Medicine BH; Medical Director of Primary Care Addiction Medicine Clinic. Attended November 2019
  • Jennifer Scherer, MD – Divisions of Palliative Care and Nephrology. Director of Kidney CARES Program. Attended November 2019

Attended AAMC Mid-Career Women Faculty Leadership Development Seminar

  • Katherine Hochman, MD – DGIMCI. Associate Chair of Quality, DOM; Director of Hospitalist Medicine Program; Assistant Chief of Medicine. Attended December 2019
  • Sapna Mehta, MD – Division of Infectious Diseases. Director, Transplant Infectious Diseases, NYU Transplant Institute. Attended December 2019


Photo above: Jennifer Scherer, MD, and Ann Garment, MD, at the November 2019 Harvard Medical School Career Advancement and Leadership Skills for Women in Healthcare

At right: Sapna Mehta, MD, and Katherine Hochman, MD, at the December 2019 AAMC Mid-Career Women Faculty Leadership Development Seminar

 
 

This Issue's Advisors: The Office of Diversity Affairs

Joseph Ravenell, MD
Associate Dean for Diversity Affairs and Inclusion

Richard E. Greene, MD, MHPE
Director, Health Disparities Education

 

Mitigating Implicit Bias

At NYU Langone Health, diversity is a core value integral to achieving excellence in clinical care and medical education. We know that diversity increases innovation, yet implicit bias impacts our ability to recruit and retain a diverse workforce as well as accurately address patient needs. Here are 10 tips for mitigating implicit bias in yourself and in the workplace to foster an inclusive culture in medicine.

1. Start from a place of curiosity.

Monitor your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When you notice yourself feeling uncomfortable or uncertain, get curious: What’s coming up for you? Why are you feeling this way?

2. Good people are biased. Accept that you, yes you, have biases.

You are not a bad person because you have bias. Science indicates that bias is simply a functionality of our brains. And it’s impossible to eradicate; we can only override them. So instead of denying you have biases or disengaging if it comes up, accept that you have them and explore why you made an assumption or had a particular reaction.

3. Raise your bias consciousness.

Being self-aware allows for deeper exploration of your identities, biases, and their impact on others. Get a sense of your biases by taking an Implicit Association Test. Remember that bias in our everyday decision-making negatively contributes to disparities in health, education, and the patient experience.

4. Activate your bias consciousness through empathy.

Learning to override your biases requires developing empathy, honing your listening, and applying these skills to people who are different than you. Other evidence-based ways to reduce bias include self-reflection, mindfulness, metacognition, and perspective-taking.

5. Do the work.

  • Imagine taking a walk in their shoes: When people share their experiences with you, take them seriously and imagine how you would feel if you were in another person’s situation. Perspective-taking is one way to begin to reduce bias and increase cognitive empathy.
  • Become engaged: Expand your curiosity beyond yourself and apply it to the world around you. How could addressing your own bias positively impact your work, team, and organization?
  • Reach across lines of difference: Actively connect with people who have different social identities than you, and get to know them beyond those identities. You would be surprised how much people have in common.
  • Get a bias buddy: Find a non-judgmental person you trust to share your biases with who can also challenge your assumptions, thoughts, and decision-making. This person can be an invaluable resource in holding you socially accountable to doing the work.

6. Track your personal growth.

Just like any other skill set, it gets better with practice and time. Whether it’s tracking how many books you read, podcasts you listen to, or movies you watch curated by people who hold different identities than you, actively engage with voices and perspectives that are different than your own. Data collection is critical for addressing personal and collective bias.

As you are in the practice of mitigating bias on an individual level, apply it to the macro spaces you occupy with others.

7. Develop an inclusive leadership style.

You have the power to shape the experiences of the people you work with, manage, and/or lead. Team members who feel they are valued and have a strong sense of belonging are more likely to be high performing and will collaborate effectively. Inclusive leaders are transparent about their weaknesses, listen to, learn from, and highly value their diverse team members, and actively and intentionally support diverse team members equitably.

8. Implement strategies to mitigate bias in the workplace.
Don’t just talk about how mitigating bias is important, do the work by:

  • Understanding the nuanced experiences of those in your organization. Disaggregate and “dig deeper” into diversity data. For example, we often lump all women and all people of color together when reviewing data, yet the experiences of black women are often different than the experiences of white women, and the experiences of black men different than those of black women. Recognizing within-group differences is critical for understanding how bias impacts and compounds in unique ways for people with multiple marginalized identities.
  • Tailoring strategy based on what the data says but in alignment with organizational goals. Team, department, and organizational experiences and needs may be different and a one-size-fits-all strategy may not work. Therefore, developing a customized strategic approach that is aligned with organizational goals and outcomes will have stronger results. Continuously assessing and modifying these efforts will be key to their success.

9. Actively support already existing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Most organizations are already doing DEI work with little results. Many of these efforts are under-resourced and those who lead them aren’t given the authority to actually effect change. Make sure the people doing this work in your organization are empowered, well resourced, and are given the space and authority to actually do the work.

10. Be a diversity champion.

Fostering an inclusive work culture drives excellence. Although diversity is a core value at NYU Langone Health, this only becomes true through action and holding everyone (individually and collectively) responsible to live up to this core value. By getting curious and learning about our individual and collective biases, we can work together to create an inclusive culture of medicine positioned to provide health equity for all.

Download a list of the recommended articles


A Moment in Medical History

America's First Female Medical Student

On January 23, 1849, the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York (now Hobart College), broke tradition by awarding the nation’s first medical degree to a woman—the British-born feminist Elizabeth Blackwell. The United States had only a handful of medical schools at the time—one generally became a doctor via apprenticeship, much like a blacksmith or a carpenter—and the medical schools that did exist were mostly proprietary in nature, meaning they accepted any male applicant willing to pay the tuition and fees.
          Because women of this era were viewed as physically and emotionally unfit for medicine, Blackwell’s application had been submitted by a family friend with connections to Geneva. (She’d been rejected everywhere else she applied.) Fearing a backlash, the dean agreed to let the all-male student body decide the issue by unanimous vote. The students, thinking it a joke, gave their boisterous consent. When Blackwell arrived on campus two weeks later, a witness recalled, “a hush fell upon the class, as if each member had been stricken with paralysis.” Though made to sit separately in lectures, and denied access to the laboratories, Blackwell graduated with honors. The Geneva administration rewarded her accomplishment by banning all female students thereafter.
          Blackwell settled in New York City, where she opened a medical clinic for the poor and established a short-lived medical college for women. She eventually returned to England, becoming the first female physician to be admitted to the British Medical Register. Today, the prestigious Elizabeth Blackwell Medal is awarded annually to the person “who has made the most outstanding contribution to the cause of women in the field of medicine.”


Department of Medicine 19th Annual Research Day

Save the Date – April 29, 2020
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION SITE NOW OPEN

The Department of Medicine will hold its 19th Annual Research Day on Wednesday, April 29, 2020 in the Smilow Research Center. This year’s Keynote Address will be given by Dr. Judy Cho, Dean of Translational Genetics, Director of the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine, and Professor of Medicine and Genetics & Genomic Sciences at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Cho has performed pioneering research into the genetic factors underlying susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Her laboratory has made importance advances defining the genetic architecture underlying differentiation of distinct immune cell subsets, differences in epigenetic landscape of immune cell subsets, and their effects in IBD. Dr. Cho has been widely recognized for her pioneering research, including election into the American Society of Clinical Investigation and her selection as a member of the National Institutes of Health NIDDK Advisory Council.
      Students, residents, fellows and junior faculty are encouraged to submit abstracts of their original research for poster presentation. Submissions can be made by clicking through to the Research Day Abstract Submission Form. The deadline for submission is March 13, 2020. This year, we will again feature a handful of the most intriguing abstract submissions and invite authors to give ultra-rapid (3 minute) oral summaries of their findings immediately before the Lunchtime Poster Session.


Flashback Photo

The photo above features the Class of 2001-2002 from our Internal Medicine Residency Program. Do you recognize a colleague? Are you in the photo yourself? We’d love to identify all of the alumni in the photo who are still at NYU Langone.

Click on the photo for a closer look. Send your comments and guesses to DOMCommunications@nyumc.org

 

News & Events

Dr. Kathryn Moore to Lead New Cardiovascular Research Center
Kathryn Moore, PhD, the Jean and David Blechman Professor of Cardiology and Professor of Cell Biology, has been named the inaugural Director of the new Cardiovascular Research Center (CVRC) at NYU Langone Health. The CVRC is designed to promote and support interdisciplinary laboratory and pre-clinical research and to translate such fundamental discoveries into innovative strategies to prevent or treat cardiovascular diseases. Building upon our strong foundation of existing faculty and programs, the CVRC will pursue its mission through the recruitment of highly promising new faculty, the establishment of a number of key supporting Core resources and the creation of educational and training venues, including seminar series and symposia. An important goal of the Center is to integrate with other faculty and translational programs in the Department of Medicine and broader NYU Langone Health community and enhance the overall environment for impactful translational and clinically relevant research in other areas of medicine.

Christopher Petrilli, MD, clinical lead for value-based medicine, was part of the inaugural cohort of graduates from the Early Career Faculty Program, part of Langone Academy. The Early Career Faculty Program incorporates experiential learning using teaching cases specific to NYU Langone, and helps participants develop key competencies and capacities such as leading teams, decision-making, resiliency, and leading change.

 

Isaac Holmes, MD, medical director of the Adult Primary Care Center at Bellevue Hospital Center, has been accepted into the 2020 ACLGIM LEAD Program. The LEAD program is designed for junior to mid-career faculty who wish to further develop their leadership skills. Training and coaching from leadership scholars and successful GIM leaders is provided at the ACLGIM/SGIM spring meeting and continues for one year afterwards.

 

Audrey Tan, DO, clinical associate professor in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine and the Department of Medicine, has been named the inaugural Director of the newly-created Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine Division of Emergency Medicine Palliative Care.

 

Jan Bakker, MD, clinical associate professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, was awarded the medal of honor by the Catholic University in Santiago, Chile, in recognition of his work with the University's Department of Intensive Care Medicine.



 

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Patient Experience Bookclub

The Patient Experience Bookclub, founded by Dr. Kathy Hochman in 2011, brings faculty, staff, trainees, and students together to discuss and reflect upon important issues in patient care through the lens of literature. Contact Dr. Hochman to join the Bookclub mailing list, and consider attending one of the upcoming sessions:

  • February 28 at noon – Educated, A Memoir by Tara Westover
  • April 24 at noon – Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 by MK Czerwiec
  • June 17 at noon – Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
  • August 20 at noon – In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi

NYU Women in Cardiology

NYU Women in Cardiology (WIC) collaborated with the student-led American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) to organize a mentoring lunch event with the students and female cardiology fellows. The event focused on what it is like to be a woman in cardiology. All medical students were invited to attend the event, which coincided with the first-year medical school cardiology module. Topics of discussion included what inspired the fellows to choose a career in cardiology, accomplishing work-life balance (including family planning during training), future career goals, and research opportunities. The event was well-received by both the students and the fellows, and the group hopes to continue this tradition in the years to come to inspire the next generation of cardiologists. Congratulations to cardiology fellows Dr. Linda Koshy and Dr. Anais Hausvater for coordinating and planning such a successful event.

New York Point-of-Care Ultrasound Course

Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) is the most revolutionary advancement in the bedside clinical exam since the advent of the stethoscope more than two centuries ago. A successful two-day course, held November 18 & 19 at NYSIM, provided a strong foundation in POCUS image acquisition, interpretation, and clinical integration.
         Harald Sauthoff, MD, associate professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, co-directed the course with Linda M. Kurian, MD, assistant professor at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. Additional course faculty from NYU Langone included Michael Janjigian, MD, associate professor, and Eric Bondarsky, MD, instructor.

 

Chiefs' Inquiry Corner

Chiefs' Inquiry Corner—featured regularly on Clinical Correlations—attempts to succinctly answer actual clinical questions that have been raised on the wards and in the clinics of NYU’s teaching hospitals.

NYU Brooklyn: Is IV iron safe to give in patients with active infection?
The iron-infection hypothesis postulates that because bacteria need iron to survive and replicate, our bodies have evolved to respond to infections by sequestering iron intracellularly away from the extracellular bacteria. Although the most recent, large meta-analysis suggests routine use of IV iron was not associated with an increased risk of infections, is there any data on the safety of giving IV iron to patients who are actively infected? Sadly, there are no good data for humans (only animal studies). So, as always, weigh the risks and benefits each time.
Infection and IV Iron

Tisch/Kimmel: What is the effect of acute illness of CD4 count in patients with HIV?
It is an established phenomenon that patients with well-controlled HIV can see a tremendous drop in their CD4 count during acute illness. This effect can also be seen in critically ill patients even without HIV. This drop is transient and should not be used to guide primary prophylaxis; rather CD4 evaluation should wait until resolution of the acute illness.
Interpreting CD4 Counts in HIV

Bellevue Hospital: What is the mechanism of action of hydroxyurea?
Hydroxyurea increases levels of HbF, thereby reducing risk of vaso-occlusive crises in patients with sickle cell disease. Among other mechanisms, hydroxyurea inhibits ribonucleotide reductase, preventing DNA repair and causing transient myelosuppression. The short half life likely contributes to rebound HbF production, however the exact mechanism is poorly understood.
Hydroxyurea in Sickle Cell Disease

 

Events & Opportunities

MAR
1

2020-2021 PrMEIR Innovations Grants

Theme: "Harnessing the Power of E-Health: Enhancing Curricula around Technology and Health"

Currently in its 15th annual cycle, the PrMEIR Medical Education Innovation Grants Program seeks to build institutional capacity in medical education scholarship by providing faculty with funding and technical assistance to pursue new initiatives in education and research. Proposals are selected by committee based on innovativeness of curriculum, strength of evaluation measures, and potential for dissemination. Letter of intent deadline: March 1, 2020. More information

MAY
14

2020 AHA Run and Heart Walk

NYU Langone is proud to once again support the American Heart Association’s annual Wall Street Run and Heart Walk. Visit the NYU Langone company page at www2.heart.org/nyulangone. Click “Create a Team” to get started. Follow the prompts to join a team or create your own. The event is open to all. Registration closes on April 30th.

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