Chair of medicine becomes dean in Ohio

Search begins for replacement as Horwitz takes the reins at Case Western's medical school.

Ralph I. Horwitz, M.D., FW ’77, a leader in the field of clinical investigation and chair of Department of Internal Medicine at Yale since 1994, has moved to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland to head its medical school.

Ralph Horwitz

Horwitz also heads the new Case Research Institute, a joint project of the Case Western Reserve University and the University Hospitals Health System, and he is overseeing the establishment of a new M.D. program at the School of Medicine to train physician investigators. The Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine—born of an alliance between Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation—will offer a five-year curriculum emphasizing clinical research. An inaugural class of 30 students will begin its studies in 2004.

Horwitz, who assumed the deanship of the 160-year-old medical school April 1, said he will be guided by “a powerful commitment to integrating public health into clinical medicine.” He plans to reshape the curriculum at Case Western Reserve medical school, which graduates 140 students each year. “I want to balance the biology of disease with the context of illness, to give priority to both the care of the individual patient as well as the health of the public.” He plans to foster research “that cuts across the spectrum from fundamental biology on the one hand to the most integrated patient-based clinical research on the other.”

Horwitz said his greatest satisfaction during 25 years at Yale derived from co-directing the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, which trains physicians to conduct and evaluate patient-based research. Horwitz said the roughly 100 graduates of Yale’s program have had “an enormous impact” in establishing the field of patient-oriented research. Horwitz’s legacy to the department “will be compassion and rigor in the care of our patients, a spirit of vigorous scientific inquiry, and service to the larger community,” said David L. Coleman, M.D., HS ’80, chief of the medical service at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven and acting chair of medicine.

Horwitz’s wife, Sarah M. Horwitz, Ph.D., also has a new job. Formerly an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale, she is now a professor of psychiatry at Case Western.

The Horwitzes’ journey west has historic parallels. Connecticut pioneers led by David Hudson settled in the Connecticut Western Reserve in 1799. Connecticut had claimed the Reserve, a tract in what is now northeastern Ohio, after the Revolution. Hudson helped found Western Reserve College in 1826. Modeled on Yale, it became known as “the Yale of the West”: many early professors hailed from Old Blue, as did its second president, the Rev. George E. Pierce. It was Pierce who started the College of Medicine of Western Reserve College in Cleveland.

—Cathy Shufro

Notes

Degutis

Linda C. Degutis, Dr.Ph., associate professor of surgery (emergency medicine) and public health, and associate clinical professor of nursing, was elected in November to a four-year term on the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association (APHA) at the annual meeting in Philadelphia. APHA is the oldest and largest organization of public health professionals in the world.

Gelernter

Joel E. Gelernter, M.D., professor of psychiatry, Robert Malison, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry, and colleagues have been awarded a $1.6 million grant from the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health and seven partners. The grant, one of six new research and training grants made by the center, is to be used to conduct an international research-training program in the genetics of drug dependence. The Yale team will collaborate with the Faculty of Medicine at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. The project will support Thai research fellowships for training in the United States and a one-month field exchange in Thailand for U.S. trainees.

Lakkis

Fadi G. Lakkis, M.D., associate professor of medicine (nephrology) and immunology, received the 2002 Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) and the American Heart Association. The annual award, which recognizes investigators under the age of 41 for excellence and creativity in nephrology research, was presented in November at the ASN annual meeting in Philadelphia. Lakkis presented a plenary address describing his path-breaking studies on the mechanism underlying rejection of transplanted organs. He is the fifth Yale faculty member to receive the award.

The following appointments have been made at the School of Public Health: Brian P. Leaderer, M.P.H. ’71, Ph.D. ’75, the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Public Health (environmental health), was appointed vice chair and deputy dean. His main responsibilities in this position will include overseeing the M.P.H. program curriculum and other departmental master’s-degree programs, and developing and coordinating interdivisional research and training programs at EPH. Theodore R. Holford, Ph.D. ’73, professor of public health (biostatistics), and professor of statistics, has been appointed the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health. Holford, who specializes in the development and application of statistical methods in public health and medicine, has focused his research on how trends in cancer epidemiology are described. Curtis L. Patton, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology (microbiology), will serve as the head of the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases Division. Nancy H. Ruddle, Ph.D. ’68, associate professor of epidemiology, microbiology and immunobiology, and director of graduate studies in epidemiology and public health, was named the John Rodman Paul Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health. Ruddle is known for her discovery and analysis of lymphotoxin, a protein produced by T cells that AIDS in protecting the immune system and destroying tumor cells. Tongzhang Zheng, Sc.D., associate professor of epidemiology (environmental health), will serve as the head of the Environmental Health Sciences Division.

University President Richard C. Levin received The Hill Development Corporation’s Annual Courtland Seymour Wilson Community Builder Award for his efforts to build a partnership with the city of New Haven and, in particular, the Hill neighborhood. Also honored at a ceremony in December were Jorge Perez, president of the New Haven Board of Aldermen, and Charles Williams, principal of Hill Regional Career High School.

Levin was honored for several partnership efforts with the city: the Yale Homebuyer Program, which has helped more than 520 Yale employees buy homes in the city; a program that allows Career High students to take courses at the medical school; the university’s efforts to promote a local biotech industry; and summer programs that bring more than 500 New Haven high school students to the Yale campus for academic and athletic activities.

Bernard Lytton, M.B.B.S., the Donald Guthrie Professor Emeritus of Surgery, has been named the first director of the Henry Koerner Center, which opened in January to serve retired faculty members.

Lytton, who attained emeritus status in 1999, was the master of Jonathan Edwards College for many years. As college master Lytton organized teas with distinguished visitors and oversaw the Tetelman Fellows program, which brings noted scientists and others to the college for lectures and conversation with students. Among the visitors during Lytton’s tenure was the Dalai Lama, who came to Yale in 1991.

The center, which occupies the second and third floors of the Pierpont House at 149 Elm St., serves as a place for emeritus faculty to meet and work and remain integrated in the life of the university. The center’s 600-square-foot furnished common room will have an adjoining 300-square-foot seminar room for teaching, conferences and discussion. There will be 12 offices with computers and telephones assigned by the director to those involved in undergraduate teaching and to those participating in the programs of the center.

The center’s donors, Lisbet Rausing, senior research associate at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and Joseph Koerner, Yale College ’80, professor of history of art at University College London, named it after Joseph’s father, Henry, whose paintings appeared on more than 50 Time magazine covers.

Pasko Rakic, M.D., Ph.D., the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of neuroscience and chair of neurobiology, and Patricia Goldman-Rakic, Ph.D., the Eugene Higgins Professor of Neurobiology, jointly received the distinguished Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience at the 2002 Society of Neuroscience meeting in November. The Society endows the prize to honor and recognize outstanding contributions to the field of neuroscience. Rakic’s research is centered on the early developmental events in the cerebral cortex, such as neuronal proliferation and migration. Goldman-Rakic’s focus is the cellular mechanisms of cortical function relating to learning and memory and to disorders of higher brain functions.

Schoenfeld

Mark H. Schoenfeld, M.D., clinical professor of medicine, is currently serving as president of the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology (NASPE). The society’s mission is to improve care by promoting research, education and optimal health care policies and standards. Schoenfeld also served on a joint committee of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and NASPE to define the guidelines for implantation of intracardiac arrhythmias.

Sinclair

Jack C. Sinclair, M.D., adjunct professor in epidemology and pediatrics and a pioneer in the care and treatment of critically ill newborns, was honored in October by the creation of the Jack Sinclair Chair in Neonatology at McMaster University in Canada. Sinclair is a professor emeritus of pediatrics and an associate member of the McMaster University Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

Send faculty news items to Claire Bessinger, Yale Medicine Publications, P.O. Box 7612, New Haven, CT 06519-0612, or via e-mail to claire.bessinger@yale.edu.