Category: News

Joel S. Weissman, PhD, has been awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for his study “Identifying barriers, facilitators and outcomes of Advanced Care Planning conversations with Medicare patients“.

The study will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to provide a unique scientific examination of the use of Advanced Care Planning (ACP) discussions and their impact on the intensity and outcomes of care received by seriously ill patients nearing the end of life.

Joel S. Weissman, PhD
Deputy Director and Chief Scientific Officer, Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Professor of Surgery (Health Policy), Harvard Medical School

Joel S. Weissman, PhD, is deputy director and chief scientific officer of the Center for Surgery and Public Health (CSPH) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of surgery in health policy at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Weissman received his doctorate in health policy from the Pew Fellows Program at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management – Brandeis University. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles and has led numerous externally funded studies.

In addition to surgical health services, his research interests lie in the areas of patient-centered quality and safety, payment reform, disparities/vulnerable populations, uncompensated care, drug policy, comparative effectiveness research policy, and academic-industry relationships. He was the lead evaluator for the roll-out of Consumer’s Union Best Buy Drugs program, and his early work on access to care by the uninsured led to a co-authored book, “Falling Through the Safety Net: Insurance Status and Access to Care,” with a forward by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

During 2008-10, Dr. Weissman served as senior health policy advisor to the secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services (HHS), followed by two months as visiting faculty at the Mexico National Institute of Public Health in Cuernavaca. During his time with Massachusetts HHS, he led the planning effort for a multi-million dollar statewide all-payer medical home pilot and examined the budgetary impact of universal health coverage in Massachusetts (NEJM perspective). In addition, he provided strategic thinking on public reporting of re-hospitalizations, non-payment for serious reportable events, improving care transitions, comparative effectiveness research and reducing racial and ethnic disparities.

Dr. Weissman is co-director of a course on health services research methods at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health (portions of which have been taught in Singapore, Puerto Rico and Mexico), and serves as a tutor/seminar leader in the health policy course for HMS students.

Matthew J. Carty, MD, has been awarded a $2.8M Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Orthopaedic Research Program (PRORP) grant for his study “A Novel Approach to Lower-Extremity Amputation to Augment Volitional Motor Control and Restore Proprioception”.

This clinical trial will evaluate a fundamentally new surgical approach to lower extremity amputation, with the goal of providing significantly improved voluntary motor control and restored sense of position (proprioception) in the residual limb. The proposed study is aligned with the PRORP-CTA Surgical Care Focus Area, specifically Surgical Techniques to Optimize Gait.

Matthew J. Carty, MD
Associate Surgeon, Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Director,  Lower Extremity Transplant Program, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Matthew J. Carty, MD, is an associate surgeon in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab Center for Extreme Bionics.

Dr. Carty’s clinical expertise is in complex reconstruction of the extremities and trunk, for which he serves as the director of the BWH Lower Extremity Transplant Program and the co-director of the BWH Microsurgical Breast Reconstruction Program.

His primary research interests involve surgical approaches to maximize limb function in the setting of severe traumatic injury, including novel procedures related to limb amputation, limb salvage and bioprosthetic neural linkage systems.

This year’s honorees and their abstracts include:

• Marko Boskovski, MD, MHS, MPH, PGY-4 General Surgery Resident: “De novo Genetic Variants and Post-Operative Outcomes in Congenital Heart Disease”
• David Harris, MD, PGY-3 General Surgery Resident and Research Fellow: “Sleeve gastrectomy restores mucosal immunity and improves metabolic phenotype in a weight-independent manner”
• T. Konrad Rajab, MD, BChir, PGY-6 Resident in Cardiothoracic Surgery: “Intralipid Improves Oxygenation after Rat Orthotopic Lung Transplantation”
• Kaspar Trocha, MD, T32 Research Fellow in Vascular Surgery: “Pre-Operative Short-term Protein/Methionine Restriction Attenuates the Surgical Response to Injury via Hydrogen Sulfide Up-Regulation”