|
|
HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
|
| The first woman to hold the chief of medicine position here, Gharib is also co-founder and was co-director of Brigham's Women's Health Center. (Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office) |
Appointees mark new integrate health approach
Chief of medicine Gharib to oversee physicians at UHS
Harvard News Office
Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) has tapped Soheyla Gharib, an internist with expertise in endocrinology, as its new chief of medicine. Gharib, co-founder and co-director of the Women's Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital, will oversee all family and primary care physicians at HUHS, as well as nurse practitioners, medical specialists, urgent care, and Stillman Infirmary. She is the first woman to hold the chief of medicine position, which she begins Nov. 15.
"Soheyla is an energetic woman who comes highly recommended," says HUHS Director David Rosenthal. "At the Women's Health Center, her strong clinical and managerial skills built up a very successful practice. I look forward to having those same skills and energy at HUHS."
Gharib, a graduate of Case Western Reserve University's medical school, began her medical career as a researcher in endocrinology before moving to clinical medicine in the early 1990s. An assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who frequently lectures internationally on women's health, she has developed a series of guidelines on women's health issues that are used by other physicians in the Partners Healthcare System.
Gharib launched the Women's Health Center in 1995 with Jane Sillman and has been its medical director since 1998. She notes that while her past experience will serve her well for her new duties at HUHS, she looks forward to the challenges of the much larger, unique facility HUHS offers.
|
For more information, http://www.huhs.harvard.edu |
"I see my new job as two-pronged," she says. Taking charge of the medical service at Harvard - a multisite facility serving 30,000 patients, including faculty and staff who choose the Harvard University Group Health Plan (HUGHP) for their health care as well as undergraduate and graduate students - is the more obvious and straightforward, albeit challenging, aspect of her responsibilities.
"The other part of my job is to really be a liaison to the University community in health matters, to serve almost a public health function," she says. That includes providing the community with information regarding the health topics that affect them most and playing a preventive role in major health concerns.
A collaboration toward health
Many of the health issues most concerning to the student community fall under the realm of mental health: stress, depression, alcohol and substance abuse, sexual conflict. Both Gharib and Rosenthal see opportunities to link medical services under Gharib with mental health services, newly restructured to fall under Paul Barreira (see related article).
"The students can come with their problems through a variety of portals," says Gharib, noting that students might present mental health symptoms to their primary care practitioners, at visits to Stillman Infirmary or after-hours urgent care, or while seeking academic support at the Bureau of Study Counsel. "Paul and I hope to work together ... to have very good communication between the mental health professionals and the physicians."
"We need to create close alliances between the academic support people and the medical people with mental health services," adds Rosenthal.
While Gharib saw many adolescents and young adults in her previous practice, she's looking forward to facing new challenges at HUHS. It's a much larger practice within the vast, often labyrinthine structure of Harvard University, which she acknowledges will take some getting used to.
And then there's working with a population that's relatively unfamiliar to her: males. Her patients as well as her colleagues at the Women's Health Center are almost all women, and she comes from a veritable matriarchy, with three sisters and three daughters. "There are days that go by when the only man I talk to is my husband," she laughs.
Gharib credits Rosenthal and her predecessor, Christopher Coley, for easing her learning curve by building a strong, successful health service. That said, she hopes to meet with students to learn how HUHS can do a better job of keeping them healthy.
"These guys are among the most stressed people on earth. When health problems happen for them, they can't necessarily just come to a doctor's appointment at 2 p.m.," she says, noting that for many students, after-hours care is the best or the only option. "I think our challenge is to work with that, to be in e-mail touch with the students, to be very receptive to however they want to seek their care."
Coordinating care for such a busy population - many of whom still maintain a doctor at home and view HUHS as only temporary or emergency care - may be a challenge to the job. Yet Gharib points out a unique advantage that the Harvard community offers to maintaining the health of its members.
"Our patients are from a very well-circumscribed area. We can make interventions by working with the Houses, the deans, and the tutors," she says. "In the University community, I think we're all on the same page. I think everyone wants the students to do well and I anticipate cooperation between the places that the students live and where they go to school and me. I'm really looking forward to that network and underscoring those lines of communication."
|