Lynne Stevens Memorial Program
About Us
Lynne Stevens was the Director of the Responding to Violence Against Women Program, and an Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, Department of Family Medicine. Lynne was a clinical social worker who was a tireless advocate as well as clinician and researcher in the field of improving health care’s response to women experiencing violence. She specialized in evaluation of the quality of care offered in medical settings to women impacted by partner and sexual violence and died in 2009 at the age of 63. Working with such groups as the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), she developed and implemented programs in many countries, including Nepal, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Armenia. Educational materials that she developed for program developers and staff have been widely distributed by UNFPA, the CDC, and state anti-violence programs, and been translated into a variety of languages.
On moving to Boston University in 2005, she championed the integration into medical settings of programs responsive to victims of violence. She led initiatives evaluating and strengthening services for victims of violence in a variety of settings, including the Family Medicine Department’s Ambulatory Care Clinic and other Department practices, Manet Community Health Center, and Boston University’s student health services, and dental clinics. Lynne maintained active and substantial community commitments, supporting programs offering free yoga for women with issues of poverty, homeless, domestic violence or substance abuse histories. She also served as a member of the boards of directors of several domestic violence organizations in New York State and in Boston where she became Vice-President of the Board of Casa Myrna Vasquez.
To keep Lynne’s voice and work alive for us, the Family Medicine Dept started a dedicated annual Grand Rounds, inviting a speaker to remind, instruct and inspire us to improve the care we provide to the women who were her life work.. Thanks to a generous donation in Lynne’s memory, our ambitions expanded to include providing the kind of lovely lunch that she always offered her friends and inviting some of the wider community of service providers and coalitions that Lynne participated in across the campus and city.
An additional exciting development was the establishment of a grant program for a research or practice improvement project. Funded in 2011 for to provide annual $5000 grants for 5 years or the life of the fund, the focus is on evaluating, studying and improving care for women who experience partner and sexual violence receiving care in any of the hospitals, student health services and community health centers affiliated with Boston Medical Center or Boston University. This is a University-wide program, so that all faculty, staff, trainees and students of the University and affiliated services are eligible to apply if they receive endorsement by clinicians regarding clinical relevance. Like Lynne, we want to make sure that what we do makes a difference.
Dr. Paula Gardiner and team introduce resiliency training to BU providers
Congratulations to Paula Gardiner for her leadership of the BMC “Resilience and Mindfulness Program for Clinicians”.
Publications/Presentations
July
- We Must Be Sure to Keep Primary Care Path Well Tended (letter published in The Globe)- Dr. Jeffrey Samet and Dr. Brian Jack
June
- A Public-Private Partnership Improves Clinical Performance In A Hospital Network In Lesotho -Nathalie McIntosh, Aria Grabowski, Brian Jack, Elizabeth Limakatso Nkabane-Nkholongo, and Taryn Vian
- The Call To A New Kind Of Care: Integrative Medicine Group Visits Offer Promise In The Treatment Of Chronic Pain And Depression- Katherine Gergen-Barnett, MD
- Stress Management and Relaxation Techniques Use Among Underserved Inpatients in an Inner City Hospital- Paula Gardiner
May
- Doug Comeau, the Sports Medicine Team, and the FM residents were shouted out in an article on the Boston Globe. The article talks about facilitating sports physicals for the Boston Public Schools' athletes
- Boston Medical Center to Provide Acupuncture Services for People Living With HIV/AIDs - Katherine Gergen Barnett and the Integrative Medicine Team
April
- "Impact of clinical pharmacy services on quality care measures for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in an outpatient family medicine clinic", presented by Brian Kopcza PharmD and PGY2 PharmD student Toni Zahorian at the New England Institute of Ambulatory Care Pharmacists (NEIAP) meeting and at Massachusetts Society of Health-System Pharmacists (MSHP) meeting
March
- Sunday letters: Miffed about contract terms. Sunday letters: Campus carry- Dr. Bich-May Nguyen
- The Power of the Group: Integrative Medicine Group Visits- Dr. Pamela Adelstein
- Hospital public private partnerships in low resource settings: Perceptions of how the Lesotho PPP management transformed management systems and performance - Vian T, McIntosh N, Grabowski A, Limakatso Nkabane-Nkholongo E, Jack B.
February
- Viewpoint: Doctors Punished for Protecting Children- Dr. Bich-May Nguyen
Awards Wrap-up, Spring 2015
Congratulations to Stephanie Charles for Receiving the PEI Scholarship
Stephanie Charles received a scholarship to work in Haiti this summer funded by Project Medishare
Click below for more information:
http://www.projectmedishare.org/
http://www.cirpei.org/haiti-relief-program/
PCORI Award for TARGET Trial
Congratulations to Dr. Saper for the funding of a new 13.9 million dollar five-year award from PCORI for the TARGET Trial. BMC will be one of five national sites comparing physical therapy versus usual care for preventing the transition from acute to chronic low back pain. Dr. Saper is Co-PI with Dr. Anthony Delitto from the University of Pittsburgh, the primary awardee. The project summary is available to read here.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Health Recognizes BUSM for Building Capacity in Hospital Nutrition
"Carine Lenders, MD, MS, ScD, Associate Professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Physician Nutrition Specialist at Boston Medical Center (BMC), and Elizabeth Henry, DrPH, MHS, who will graduate from BU’s School of Public Health (BUSPH) in September, have received the People’s Health Medal from the Social Republic of Vietnam’s Ministry of Health for their work on behalf of the Abbott Fund Institute of Nutrition Science (AFINS)."
Click here to read more.
Congratulations to the Gabe Team!
The Gabe team got funded by the Kellogg Foundation for $769,472 over three years. This funding will build a project like Gabby for African American men! Please click here to review the Kellogg award letter
New Faculty/Staff
Faculty:
- Welcome Meredith Amos, MD! Meredith is recently finished her residency here at BU and will be working at Uphams Corner and on 6 West.
- Welcome Lindsay Corse, MD! Lindsay finished her residency as well this past May and will spend the upcoming year as the chief resident. She will have a clinical practice at East Boston.
- Congratulations to Jen Pfau, MD, our new MCH Coordinator. Jen is an East Boston provider and has been very active with our MSE group. She'll be an excellent addition to the MCH team!
Staff:
- Welcome Jordan Yarnell, the new DFM project coordinator!
- The ACHIEVE team is now full with the arrival of Melanie (from Tulane) and Jonathan (from BU)
- Team Mitchell now has Maekhila and Jenna who will be working on Suzanne’s CBT project and finishing up the shared decision making work.
- Rob is our new Discharge Coordinator
- Anupriya (BU student) is joining RED-D as a recruiter
Congratulations to the Class of 2015!
The Healers’s Art: Inspiration Continues
The Healer’s Art, originally developed and offered by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen at UCSF in 1993, is a curriculum designed to address the human dimension of medicine. This 15-hour elective course is now offered at over 60 medical schools in North America and is now in its tenth year at BU Medical School. Course topics include: maintaining personal-professional balance as a physician; learning how to help patients grieve loss; fostering an appreciation for the intangible mystery inherent in life and death; and medicine as a calling to service. My own path on Healer’s Art started years ago when I was a first year medical student at Yale. The course left me more certain than ever of the kind of physician I hoped to be and the kind of people with whom I hoped to work. (It was also where I met and befriended our now Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy). I am now honored to serve as the Course Director and am amazed, so many years later, to witness and experience how students continue to open and be impacted by this completely voluntary five evening session course. This year was no exception.
We had 4 faculty leaders (Dr. Robert Saper, Dr. Oscar Cornelio-Flores, Dr. Rick Long and Dr. Jennifer Siegel), 4 student advisors, and 30 medical students. Some comments from students about the course included:
“This was an amazing avenue to look into my own life and path.”
“The course gave me the opportunity to connect with other medical students in a way that I had not done before. I think that all medical students should take this class to become more connected to not only their career but to each other and to themselves”
“Brings us together in a safe setting where we were not graded to talk about REALLY important things.”
As part of the final class, each student was given a hand-sewn heart to carry in their white coat pocket as a reminder of what they had learned. These hearts were sewn by a beautiful and committed group of seniors who come together weekly to sew hearts for students, patients, soldiers, and refugees. On a snowy and numbingly cold wind swept day, 13 of these seniors drove to the medical school campus to meet us for lunch and to present our student leaders with these soft hearts for the course. Though they had sewn hearts for our students for years, they had never stepped foot on campus. They were a sight to behold. The oldest- 93 years of age- was walking faster than the rest of us and was quick to help herself to a large plate of spinach. Inspiration indeed!
-Katherine Gergen-Barnett, MD
STFM Launches Interprofessional Leading Change Fellowship
STFM has launched a new yearlong fellowship for mid-career and senior faculty in clinical leadership roles. The inaugural class of the Leading Change Fellowship will begin at the 2015 STFM Conference on Practice Improvement in December.
The fellowship curriculum and resources will educate and empower family medicine faculty to lead change within their institutions, larger surrounding environments, and at the national level. Throughout the fellowship year, teams will interact with mentors and attend training sessions at STFM conferences and via teleconference.
Fellows will participate as interprofessional dyads and will implement a practice change. “The dyad format recognizes that leadership, especially leadership around change, must include a highly-functioning team and the dyad is the first step in that process,” said John Franko, MD, chair of the Leading Change Task Force. Dyads can include medical directors, clinical directors, clinical managers, practice coordinators, nursing leaders, behavioral health providers, or others in clinical leadership roles.
Teams interested in the fellowship should have a transformational goal in mind when applying.
The fellowship will be chaired by an interprofessional dyad: Jennifer Johnson, MSHS and Michael Mendoza, MD.
Application materials are due August 3. Teams selected for the inaugural fellowship will be announced in mid-September. For more information and application materials, visit the fellowship website or contact Melissa Abuel.
Spring 2015 Updates: Lynne Stevens Memorial Programs from the DFM
The Lynne Stevens Memorial Committee is very pleased to announce the winner of the 2015 Stevens Award for Research or Practice Improvement, a program to improve the health care system's response to women impacted by gender-based violence. This year’s winner is Naomi Ko MD MPH. Dr. Ko is an oncologist and health services researcher seeking to learn from interpersonal trauma survivors through qualitative interviews how to improve their experience of breast cancer screening and treatment and make the entire spectrum of care more trauma-informed. Dr. Ko's co-investigators are Tracy Battaglia, MD MPH, who is chief of Women's Health, Emily Rothman, ScD , a researcher and BUSPH faculty member, and Megan Bair-Merritt, MD, MSCE , pediatrician and Medical Director of the Child Witness to Violence Project.
This award which will also support training tips for providers, holds promise of extending the impact of the Stevens programs into the world of oncology screening and treatment. Previous Stevens award winners have identified barriers and facilitators in the VA system in addressing the needs of female veterans who have experienced sexual or intimate partner violence , have set up expedited follow up care in the Dept of OB-GYN for women seeking emergency care following sexual assault, have done some of the first ever trainings for physicians and healthcare providers in the BU affiliated healthcare facilities in the African country of Lesotho , and are working to identify ways to understand better and improve healthcare for Boston area Muslim women with experiences of intimate partner violence.
Additionally, on April 21, 2015, the Department of Family Medicine hosted the 6th Annual Lynne Stevens Memorial Lecture, delivered by Juan Ramos from A Call To Men, a national advocacy organization working to engage men as active participants in ending men’s violence against women. Open to participants from across the BUMC and wider campus and community, attendees paid rapt attention to Mr. Ramos during his lecture in Heibert Lounge with an interactive discussion following the talk.
Mr. Ramos brings extensive experience working with men from all backgrounds including having just returned from an extensive training with Major League Baseball players, coaches and staff. He has worked with leading organizations serving women survivors of violence as well as perpetrator intervention programs and brings additional depth of experience with courts and community programs regarding gang violence, housing and other social problems.
In his talk, Mr. Ramos reviewed several relevant statistics and other information about gender-based violence from his work with both victims and perpetrators. Participants gained a broader understanding of how the attitudes and beliefs that lead some men to use violence against women negatively impact women, men, children and whole communities. The “call to men” is for men to take responsibility and follow the lead of women to build a society that respects the dignity, safety, and humanity of all.
More information about the Lynne Stevens Memorial Programs, including past years’ award winners and lecturers, can be found by visiting https://www.bu.edu/familymed/programs-and-research/lynne-stevens-lecture/annual-lectures/. For more information about A Call to Men please visit http://www.acalltomen.org.
The BU DFM and Lesotho Boston Health Alliance (LeBoHA) Cut the Ribbon on the Bill Bicknell Academic Center at Motebang Hospital in Leribe, Lesotho
It gives me great joy to report that the newest class of five registrars (residents) have begun their training in our Lesotho-based Family Medicine Specialty Training Program (FMSTP). Following a model similar to that of South Africa, these physician trainees are based in four different hospitals throughout the northern districts of Lesotho and come together one week per month for four years at Motebang Hospital in the Leribe district for focused group education sessions. The FMSTP is the first accredited physician training program ever in Lesotho.
I had the honor of introducing this promising, new class of Basotho physicians to a crowd of over 160 people who gathered for a special ceremony in Leribe to honor the memory of Bill Bicknell and commemorate the opening of the house that is named in his honor. It was an emotional moment for those attending to see the faces of these young physicians returning to serve their country, which has less than 150 physicians (and only 37 Basotho physicians) for its 2 million people. With donations made in Bill’s memory and contributions from other supporters of our work, we were able to complete construction this month on the Bill Bicknell Academic Center. Minister of Health Honorable Pinkie Manamolela gave the keynote speech at our opening ceremony. You can hear an excerpt from her speech and see some photographs from the ceremony here.
The Bicknell Academic Center will serve as home to the FMSTP trainees during their weeks in Leribe and will house other health professionals traveling to Motebang Hospital for training including clinical volunteers from BU and elsewhere. This includes the nurse-midwives, who will participate in our IZUMI-funded nursing education program, which also began this month. The completion of the house will make a huge difference in sustaining these and all of LeBoHA’s efforts, which rely so much on visiting students, residents, physician educators, and other volunteers and visitors to the hospital. The house has sleeping space for up to eight people in four bedrooms, each with its own full bathroom, along with a kitchen, dining area, living room, library and a conference area. There is plenty of room for clinical volunteers, so if you are interested in volunteering, please contact Lauren Babich at lbabich@bu.edu for more information!
-Brian Jack MD