Department of Surgery

March 5, 2018March 5, 2018

Welcoming New Faculty – Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC

Please join us in welcoming Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, as a new faculty member in the Department of Surgery and new Division Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Brigham Health.

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC
Chief, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Brigham Health
Director, Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center, Brigham Health
Member of the Faculty, Harvard Medical School

Andrea L. Pusic, MD, MHS, FACS, FRCSC, completed her medical degree at the Cumming School of Medicine (University of Calgary) in Canada and master of public health at Johns Hopkins University. She completed a general surgery residency at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and a plastic surgery residency at McGill University in Montreal, followed by a plastic and reconstructive surgery fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). Dr. Pusic was most recently an attending plastic surgeon at MSKCC and a professor of surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York, NY.

Dr. Pusic is an internationally-renowned innovator and leader in the area of patient-reported outcomes and surgical experience. This is increasingly important in the current health care environment of measuring quality, assessing value and ultimately, influencing how health care is funded. Dr. Pusic will lead the newly formed Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience (PROVE) Center at Brigham Health. The scope of the PROVE Center will be focused on patient-reported outcomes, patient experience and value-based surgery in surgical patients throughout Brigham Health.

Dr. Pusic’s research focuses on the measurement of quality of life and patient satisfaction in surgery. Dual training in epidemiology and surgery has enabled her to lead a team of experts in psychometrics, quality of life and social science methods to develop, validate and use new quantitative measures to assess patient outcomes. The patient-reported outcomes instrument she developed for breast surgery, the BREAST-Q, has been widely adopted for research and clinical care and serves as the basis for development of other outcome measures in surgery.

Throughout her career, Dr. Pusic has been involved in research studies that seek to better understand the patient perspective on surgical outcomes and experiences. She is principal investigator of a study funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) that examines how electronic patient-reporting of symptoms may improve surgical care. Altogether, she has been a principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over $10 million in federal research grants.

Dr. Pusic has authored over 200 scientific articles and book chapters and has mentored more than 24 surgeons during various stages of their academic careers. In 2017, she was awarded the Research Achievement Award from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons/Plastic Surgery Foundation. Dr. Pusic is vice-president of WomenforWomen Reconstructive Surgery and regularly leads surgical camps to provide reconstructive surgery for injured women and girls in the developing world. She is a past board member of the International Society of Quality of Life (ISOQOL) and was recently elected president-elect of the Plastic Surgery Foundation.

February 15, 2018March 5, 2018

Adil Haider, MD, MPH, Installed as President of the Association for Academic Surgery

Adil Haider, MD, MPH, was installed as the 51st president of the Association for Academic Surgery (AAS) the Academic Surgical Congress in Jacksonville, FL.

About the Association for Academic Surgery

The Association for Academic Surgery (AAS) was founded in 1967 and is the world’s largest organization dedicated exclusively to the promotion of surgical research. It has about 3,000 active and senior members from the United States and other countries. The AAS is dedicated to the advancement of academic surgery and surgeons everywhere. The mission of the organization is to promote surgical research investigations through the communication of ideas between surgical residents, surgical fellows, junior surgical faculty and full professors and by awarding surgical research grants.

Adil Haider, MD, MPH, FACS

Adil Haider, MD, MPH
Kessler Director, Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Associate Surgeon, Division of Trauma, Burn, Surgical & Critical Care, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Adil Haider, MD, MPH, is an active trauma and critical care surgeon, prolific researcher, and the Kessler Director for the Center for Surgery and Public Health (CSPH), a joint initiative of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the deputy editor of JAMA Surgery and president of the Association for Academic Surgery (AAS).

Dr. Haider is credited with uncovering racial disparities after traumatic injury and establishing the field of trauma disparities research. He is regarded as one of the foremost experts on healthcare inequities in the United States, with projects focused on describing and mitigating unequal outcomes based on sex, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age and socioeconomic status. His other research focuses on long-term clinical and functional outcomes after trauma and emergency general surgery, optimal treatment of trauma/critically ill patients in resource-poor settings, and advanced analytic techniques for surgical health services research.

Dr. Haider has formally mentored more than 120 research trainees, published more than 230 peer-reviewed papers and serves as principal investigator on extramural grants worth more than $8M. He believes that equality is the cornerstone of medicine, and his professional goal is to eradicate disparities in healthcare in the United States.

January 30, 2018January 30, 2018

Nancy L. Cho, MD and Erika L. Rangel, MD Appointed BWH Surgery Associate Clerkship Directors

Nancy L. Cho, MD and Erika L. Rangel, MD, have been appointed associate clerkship directors in the Department of Surgery. In this important role, they will help to oversee the Core Surgery rotation during the HMS Primary Clinical Experience in collaboration with clerkship director Reza Askari, MD.

Nancy L. Cho, MD

Nancy L. Cho, MD
Associate Surgeon, Division of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery
Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Associate Clerkship Director, Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Cho is an associate surgeon in the Division of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery, Section of Endocrine Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. She received her medical degree from Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, NY and completed both her General Surgery Residency and Endocrine Surgery Fellowship at BWH.

Dr. Cho is board certified in General Surgery. Her clinical interests include endocrine diseases of the thyroid/parathyroid glands and melanoma. Her primary research focus involves studying tumor-stroma biology with the goal of developing more effective, patient-specific treatment strategies.

Erika L. Rangel, MD, MS, FACS

Erika L. Rangel, MD, MS, FACS
Associate Surgeon, Division of Trauma, Burn, Surgical & Critical Care
Associate Clerkship Director
Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Director of Surgical Critical Care and Inpatient Programs, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital
Instructor in Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Rangel is an associate surgeon in the Division of Trauma, Burn, Surgical & Critical Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and instructor in surgery at Harvard Medical School. She received her medical degree from the University of California San Francisco (USCF) School of Medicine in San Francisco, CA and completed both her General Surgery Residency and Critical Care Fellowship at BWH.

Dr. Rangel is board certified in both General Surgery and Surgical Critical Care. Her clinical interests include: acute care surgery, biliary tract disease, minimally invasive hernia surgery, abdominal wall reconstruction and diverticular disease. Her academic research focuses on surgical education, parenting and work-life integration during residency and improving outcomes for geriatric patients after emergency surgery