Leadership

Howard Beckman, M.D., FACP, FAACH

Since 1998, Dr. Beckman has served as Medical Director for the Rochester Individual Practice Association (RIPA), and Crossbridge Physicians. He is also clinical professor of medicine and family medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Denistry.

Dr. Beckman's research has focused on effective physician-patient, teacher-learner and colleague-colleague communication. His research has been published in JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, JGIM, the Archives of Internal Medicine and Academic Medicine. Recently, his research has turned to creating effective organizational relationships. As part of RIPA's work, special attention is being paid to the way levels of relationships in a community affect clinical outcomes.

William T. Branch, Jr., M.D., MACP

William T. Branch, Jr., M.D., is Vice-Chairman for Primary Care, Carter Smith, Sr., Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of General Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. He founded the Primary Care Residency at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1974, among the first primary care residency programs. He was a key leader of the New Pathway project at Harvard Medical School, appointed first as Curriculum Coordinator of the required first year Patient Doctor Course in 1988. He became Director of Faculty Development for the Patient-Doctor courses in 1988, and Director of the required third year Patient Doctor Course from 1989 to 1995.

He is a facilitator in the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare and was a co-director of their highly successful national faculty development course, Teaching Medical Interviewing, from 1988 until 1993. He is currently President of AACH through 2008.

Rita Charon, M.D., Ph.D.

Rita Charon is Professor of Clinical Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine. She is a general internist in practice in the Associates of Internal Medicine in Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Charon graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1978 and trained in internal medicine at the Residency Program in Social Medicine at Montefiore Hospital in New York. She completed the Ph.D. in the Department of English of Columbia in 1999, writing on the late works of Henry James and on literary analyses of medical texts. Dr. Charon has designed and directed Columbia's teaching programs in medical interviewing, humanities and medicine, and narrative medicine and teaches seminars on the works of Henry James in Columbia's English department. She has published and lectured extensively on linguistic studies of doctor-patient conversations, narrative competence in physicians and medical students, narrative ethics, and empathy in medical practice. Dr. Charon's research has focused on doctor-patient communication, methods of teaching medical interviewing, and the outcomes of narrative training in medicine.

Dr. Charon has held national leadership positions through the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Society for Health and Human Values, the Society of General Internal Medicine, and the American College of Physicians. She is a member of the founding faculty of the Certificate Program in Ethics and Humanities sponsored by Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She has been the recipient of a Henry J. Kaiser General Internal Medicine Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar-in-Residence position in Bellagio, Italy, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her teaching methods and curricular designs have been replicated in many medical schools internationally. Her research has been supported by the NIH, the NEH, and several private foundations.

Dr. Charon is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); co-editor of Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (Routledge, 2002); and co-editor of Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine (SUNY 2008). Her essays and reviews have appeared in Narrative, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Literature and Medicine, Lancet, and The New England Journal of Medicine. She is curently working on a book on Henry James.

William D. Clark, M.D., FAACH

Dr. William D. Clark is a past president of th AACH, the retired Medical Director of the Addiction Resource Center, and has just retired from practice as a general internist in Bath, Maine. Bill is now a Fellow of the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare, past President of AACH and doc.com's Managing Editor.

After finishing Harvard Medical School, residency in Seattle and Boston, Fellowship in Health Services research, and a hitch as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in the Public Health Service, he began pursuit of interest in physician-patient relationship and communication with substance abuse work in 1970. For several years he was Program Director of the Cambridge General Internal Medicine Residency, and active on the Harvard faculty, but then decided to move family/ career to a quieter setting in coastal Maine left in 1987.

Presently, Dr. Clark is continuing intensive efforts to develop and promote both faculty development and clinician course offerings of the AACH. Bill has recently completed facilitator training with Parker Palmer and is planning courses on physician renewal based on Palmer's model. He is also editor of an Arthur Vining Davis Foundations funded AACH project to create an interactive, web-based, comprehensive textbook and teaching resource for students and practitioners, on physician-patient communication and relationship and the psychosocial aspects of medical care.

Marc Feldman, MBA

Marc Feldman is employed as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Prior to joining ABIM, Marc was a management consultant and interim manager. His clients were middle-market companies in a variety of industries. He has broad experience in finance, management, marketing, strategic planning, business development and mergers and acquisitions. His main client focus has been with health care and not-for-profit entities. In more than 150 client engagements, he has worked with business owners, board members, executives and their professional advisors.

Earlier in his career, he held a number of increasingly responsible positions in finance, marketing, and business planning and development at Glaxo SmithKline, formerly known as SmithKline Corporation. He then served as a Chief Financial Officer and Chief Executive Officer at two HMOs, one a not-for-profit and one for profit.

Marc holds a B.S. in Economics, summa cum laude, from Lehigh University, and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School. He and his wife, Nancy, have two children and reside in Philadelphia.

Richard M. Frankel, Ph.D., FAACH

Richard M. Frankel is Professor of Medicine and Geriatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. He is also a Senior Research Scientist at the Regenstrief Institute there and holds an appointment in the Health Services Research Unit of the Richard L. Roudebush Veteran's Administration Medical Center.

After completing his Ph.D. in Sociology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, Rich was a post-doctoral fellow in qualitative approaches to mental health research at Boston University. In 1986, he was a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow in Social Medicine and Communication Studies at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He has also held Visiting Professorships in Holland, Great Britain, Canada, Finland, Norway and the United States. In 1999-2000 he was the recipient of the American Academy on Physician and Patient Award for outstanding contributions to research and teaching on communication, and is a 2005 recipient of a Pfizer Visiting Professorship in Clear Communication; one of ten in the U.S.

Dr. Frankel has published more than 125 research papers in the area of clinician patient, and other forms of face to face communication. His research interests include qualitative research methods; non verbal behavior; the effects of exam room computing on physician patient communication, psychosocial aspects of medical care; the relationship between clinician patient communication and medical malpractice and communication dimensions of disparities in health care.

David Hatem M.D., FAACH

David Hatem is a General Internist at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He obtained his Bachelor of Science from Boston College in 1981, majoring in Biology, and then attended Tufts University School of Medicine obtaining his MD degree in 1985. He served his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Michael Reese Hospital, finishing in 1988.

Since then he has practiced Internal Medicine at the University, maintaining a busy outpatient practice. He has been involved in teaching at the Residency and Medical Student level since he came to UMASS and his involvement and responsibility has gradually increased, initially functioning as a small group facilitator in the Medical Interview and Clinical Problem Solving course.

His involvement with the American Academy on Communications in Healthcare dates back to 1989. He has attended courses since 1991, is a graduate of the Facilitator Training Program which he took part in from 1994 through 1998. He hosted and directed the National Faculty Development Course on Teaching the Medical Interview in 1999 at UMASS. He has served on the Executive Committee as president (2006) and treasurer.

Charle B. Inlander

Charles B. Inlander is President of the nonprofit People's Medical Society. Since its founding in early 1983, Mr. Inlander has guided the People's Medical Society to its status as the most influential consumer health advocacy organization in the United States.

Mr. Inlander is also President of the Charles Inlander Organization, Inc., an international health marketing, media, and communications consulting firm.

Mr. Inlander is a faculty lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine, an adjunct faculty member at the Chicago-Kent College of Law and a Fellow of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

He is a health commentator on Public Radio International's MARKETPLACE, heard throughout the country on public radio stations. He has also hosted his own program, the Charles Inlander Show, on WPEN in Philadelphia.

He is a founder of the Civil Justice Foundation and serves, or has served, on the board of directors of Consumers for Civil Justice, the National League for Nursing, the Pennsylvania League for Nursing, the American Academy on Physician and Patients, and the Lehigh Valley Business Conference on Health Care. His articles regularly appear in such publications as The New York Times, Glamour, and Boardroom and he is the co-author of many best-selling and award winning books.

A native of Chicago, Mr. Inlander is a graduate The American University in Washington, D.C. He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs including Oprah , Donahue, Today, Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, 20/20, Geraldo, NBC Evening News, CBS Evening News, ABC Evening News, and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Norman Jensen, MD

Norm Jensen is grandfather to four, father to two, and husband to Nancy. He enjoys family, work, gardening, home remodeling, biking, skiing, fishing, hunting and thinking-writing-teaching about health care reform in Wisconsin. He works as a general internist, teacher-clinician at the University of Wisconsin (UW) - Madison where he was the founding director of the academic general internal medicine programs in 1970s. A mid career focus on clinical skills resulted in a MS and ABD in Social-Psychology from UW; he credits a distance fellowship with AACH, guided by Dr. Mack Lipkin (FIT program) as the launching experience for many years of leadership in facilitating patient-physician communication skill development in medical students, residents, fellows, practicing physicians, faculty and himself. He looks forward to the possibility to giving back something of value to AACH and is currently serving as President-Elect. He will assume the presidency in 2009.

Beth Lown, M.D., FAACH

Beth Lown, M.D., is a board-certified internist, and a Past President of the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare. Dr. Lown is a graduate of the AACH facilitator training program in healthcare communications and group facilitation. She is a Harvard - Macy Institute Scholar, and an Institute Scholar at the Carl J. Shapiro Institute for Education and Research at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She serves on both the Grant Programming and Compassionate Caregiver Committees of the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center, an organization housed in Massachusetts General Hospital, and dedicated to strengthening the patient - caregiver relationship.

Dr. Lown is co-director of the Mt. Auburn Hospital residency course in advanced medical interviewing. She is the Harvard Medical School Senior Fellow for the Francis Weld Peabody Society, Faculty and member of the Policy Group for Patient - Doctor I, and member of the Harvard Medical School Communication Skills Steering Committee. She has written a communications curriculum for medical students being used at Harvard Medical School.

She has taught faculty development workshops nationally in medical interviewing, patient - clinician collaboration, and motivational interviewing to promote behavioral change. Dr. Lown has been a primary care internal medicine practitioner in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., for seventeen years.

Gregory Makoul, PhD

Gregory Makoul, PhD, is professor and director of the Center for Communication and Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, where he oversees communication education and research. Dr. Makoul is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Ethics and Communication in Health Care Practice and a member of Northwestern's Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research focuses on communication, decision making, and health promotion in medical encounters, as well as communication skills teaching and assessment. Over the past several years, Dr. Makoul has helped put health communication on the national agenda though his work with the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American Board of Medical Specialties, and the Department of Health and Human Services. He developed North America's most widely used model for teaching and assessing communication skills. In 2003, he received the American Academy on Communication and Healthcare - Lynn Payer Award for outstanding contributions to the literature on the theory, practice and teaching of effective health care communication and related skills. He moved to Chicago from the East Coast, earning his PhD (Communication Studies) at Northwestern in 1992.

Shakaib U. Rehman, MD, FACP

Dr Rehman is the Physician Manager, Primary Care, Ralph H. Johnson V.A. Medial Center and Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina Charleston. He is also program director for Office Practice of Medicine course at the Medical University of South Carolina and program director of CME at the Ralph H. Johnson V. A. Medical Center.

Dr. Rehman was elected a Fellow in the American College of Physicians in 1999. American Society of Hypertension designated him a Clinical Specialist in Hypertension. He has received David E. Rogers Junior Faculty Award from Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) twice and Department of Veterans Affair excellence in medical education award. He has been elected Chairman for the Medicine section of SMA and member of ACP Council of Young Physicians (CYP). He also chairs the ACP-SC chapter CYP. He has chaired the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare (AACH) 2004 Annual Forum Research committee and AACH 2006 Annual meeting's scientific committee and 2007 International Conference in Communication in Healthcare. He is also the associate editor of Medical Encounter.

He has given ~250 presentations/grand rounds/workshop around the country as well as in many countries outside the USA. Dr. Rehman has authored or co-authored ~ 50 scientific publications and book chapters. He has been a presenting faculty at the American College of Physicians (ACP), Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM), American Academy on Communication in Healthcare (AACH), Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and Southern Medical Association (SMA), annual and regional meetings for the last many years. He is also a national faculty for communications courses for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He has been a member of the scientific committees for annual sessions of SGIM, AAPP, SMA, ACP (South Carolina chapter) for the last many years. He has been involved in many research studies.

Elizabeth A. Rider, MSW, MD, FAACH

Dr. Rider is Director of Programs for Communication Skills at the Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Course Director, Difficult Conversations in Medicine Course, Program to Enhance Relational and Communication Skills (PERCS), at Children's Hospital, Boston. An Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Rider completed her medical degree at Harvard Medical School, pediatric residency at Children's Hospital, Boston, and fellowship in general academic pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital. She also holds a Master's degree in clinical social work from Smith College. A former child and family therapist, she is board certified in both pediatrics and clinical social work (LICSW, BCD), and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She practices pediatrics at Roslindale Pediatric Associates in Boston.

At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Rider serves as Faculty for the Patient-Doctor III course and the Harvard Macy Program for Educators in the Health Professions, and teaches medical students, residents and faculty. She developed and co-directed the Communication Skills Teaching Program that implemented a communication skills teaching and assessment model in the core medicine and nursery clerkships, and assessment in communication skills across all four years. She was also Coordinator of Faculty Development for the Resident as Teacher Programs. Dr. Rider is Reflective Practice Editor for the international journal, Patient Education and Counseling, and Associate Editor and Pediatric Perspective Editor for Medical Encounter. She is an active member of various national committees and advisory boards, and was a member of the Kalamazoo Consensus Group on Physician-Patient Communication in Medical Education.

In 2003, Dr. Rider was elected to the National Academy of Practice in Medicine as a Distinguished Scholar, one of 100 physicians in this Academy. She was also selected by her peers to be included in Best Doctors. Dr. Rider has won various teaching awards and is a Scholar of the Academy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rider teaches and consults locally and nationally on communication skills, reflective practice, patient-doctor relationships, humanism, and medical education program and curriculum development.

William H. Salazar, M.D., FACP

Dr. Salazar is a graduate of the National University of Colombia in Bogota. He trained in Internal Medicine at St. Mary's Hospital, an affiliate of the University of Rochester in New York. After completion of his training in Internal Medicine, he did a Fellowship in Primary Care with emphasis in Psychosocial Medicine and Education at NYU-Bellevue.

After his fellowship Dr. Salazar decided to pursue a longtime desire for dual training in Psychiatry and Internal Medicine for further integration of these fields. Once he finished his Psychiatry training at NYU-Bellevue centers, he enrolled with the Primary Care Division at NYU where he directed the Psychosocial Division and created and directed the Consultation and Liaison Service from the outpatient perspective.

Dr. Salazar is Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry and Health Behavior at the Medical College of Georgia. He is Co-Director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program. He created and directs the Psychosocial Program for the Internal Medicine Residency. He is chair for the Faculty Development Committee and he is a member of the committee for Graduate Medical Education.

Dr. Salazar is active at a national level with the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare where he serves as a national facilitator for faculty development in Psychosocial Issues and Medical Interviewing. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for the AACH. He works with the Society of General Internal Medicine where he is a member of the Committee for Psychosocial Medicine's workshops and abstracts. He is also a member of the Committee of Doctors of Color.

Dr. Salazar's areas of professional interest include: Teaching and Faculty Development, Ambulatory Education, Cross-cultural issues in Medicine and Psychiatry, Consultation Liaison Psychiatry, Depression and Anxiety in Primary Care, Sexual History Gathering and Sexual Dysfunction, and The Medical Interview.

Anthony L. Suchman, M.D.

Anthony L. Suchman, M.D., is a practitioner, teacher, writer and consultant whose work focuses on partnership and emergence across all levels of healthcare. His work brings together a diverse array of interests and experience. After earning an undergraduate degree in psychology and a medical degree, both at Cornell University, he completed a residency in Internal Medicine and fellowships in General Internal Medicine (clinical epidemiology and research methods) and Behavioral and Psychosocial Medicine (mind/body interactions and medical interviewing), all at the University of Rochester.

Subsequently, Dr. Suchman studied, taught and wrote about the patient-clinician relationship, medical decision-making, physician satisfaction, and the spiritual dimensions of medical care. Through his teaching and writing he has become known as one of the leading proponents of a new partnership-based approach to health care known as Relationship Centered Care.

Dr. Suchman is Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Rochester and is pursuing graduate studies in organizational change with Ralph Stacey at the University of Hertfordshire's Centre for Management and Complexity. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American Academy on Physician and Patient, and was elected to membership in the National Academies of Practice in 1997.

Maysel Kemp White, Ph.D., M.F.T.

Dr. White is an advisor to administrators of hospitals, HMO's, group practices, and individual physicians to improve clinician-patient communication, decrease malpractice risk, improve customer satisfaction scores and overall performance. Additionally, she teaches coaching and coaches leaders to improve their emotional intelligence.

Maysel previously worked full-time for 13 years with the Bayer Institute for Healthcare Communication where she continues to serve as a consultant and faculty member. Prior to that Dr. White was a practicing family therapist. Dr. White earned her Ph.D. in Child and Family Development & Marriage and Family Therapy. She is a faculty member, Board member and Vice President of Education for the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare. In addition, Dr. White has published several articles on clinician-patient communication in peer reviewed journals.