For twenty-two Young Investigator in Medicine Award applicants the end of November meant more than Thanksgiving travel and planning for the holidays. Maybe a phone call might help? An email? For them, the end of November meant finding out if they were among the recipients of this year’s award.

Like most good things in life, the award notice required a little more waiting. Finally, in early December, the selection committee which was made up of basic, translational, clinical and health services researchers, decided on two recipients: Sarkis Mazmanian, Ph.D., Instructor in Medicine and Microbiology and Molecular Medicine and the Channing Laboratory, and Thomas Sequist, M.D., Instructor in Medicine and the Division of General Medicine. Robert Handin, Chair of the Selection Committee said, “We had over twenty superb applications and could only fund two applicants. This made the selection process difficult and we found it hard to make the choice. We settled on two outstanding applicants with exciting proposals and diverse interests.”

The 2005 Young Investigator in Medicine (YIM) award is made possible by the generosity of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. The award enables investigators to explore their own independent research questions early in their career.
Dr. Mazmanian received the YIM award to further his research demonstrating how most human bacteria, known as symbiotic bacteria, actually produce molecules that are required for good health. In a recent conversation with Your Medicine Online, Dr. Mazmanian explains, “I’ve set out to establish a model where I can investigate the molecular interactions between commensal bacteria and the host’s immune system. My work not only demonstrates that the immune deficiencies in the absence of bacterial colonization extend to the entire systemic immune response; it goes on to identify direct host immune system maturation. Furthermore, it appears that this process is necessary for the overall health of the host as immune pathologies are observed in its absence.” Asked how he became interested in this topic, Dr. Mazmanian replies, “Prior to coming to the Channing Laboratory, my work was primarily focused on how bacteria caused disease as well as the immune system’s response which they elicit in their hosts. I arrived with the impetus to set up a system whereby I could measure the immune reactions to harmful and helpful bacterial species, and investigate the differences in host responses.”

For Dr. Sequist (who also recieved last year’s BWH Minority Career Development Award ), the question was: what’s the relationship between improving quality and patient’s satisfaction? After observing a variety of quality improvement activities at BWH and Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Dr. Sequist says that “health care systems, including Partners and BWH are increasingly publicly rated and paid on the basis of clinical performance measures and on patients’ experiences with the delivery of care. Therefore, my work will be to gather the information that policy makers are seeking, in order to interpret the relationships among these quality measures when they are applied at the level of the physician group and the individual physician.” With this award, Dr. Sequist will have the resources necessary to gather data from thousands of patients and over 100 primary care physicians over several years.

Both of our award recipients praise their mentors and colleagues for encouragement and support. Dr. Mazmanian especially cited Dennis Kasper, M.D, his mentor, for his “tremendously positive impact on my work, and also my career as a whole. He is extremely helpful and encouraging and his guidance has allowed me to flourish as a scientist and as a person.” Dr. Sequist, who worked closely with the faculty in the Division of General Medicine, notes especially Dr. Eric Schneider, his mentor along with Drs. John Ayanian, David Bates, and Thomas Lee, “all of whom have been incredibly supportive of my research and overall career.”

Hard to believe that Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s support for minority and female physicians touches on two centuries? This is up for debate, perhaps, but certainly true of the Minority Career Development Award, launched in 1997. Each year for the past decade, Brigham and Women’s Hospital has granted two talented minority and female physicians with $150,000 (to use over seven years) to support them throughout their fellowship and into their junior faculty appointment as an effort to encourage them to pursue careers in academic medicine. This year, the Department of Medicine was proud to see Cheryl Clark, M.D., S.D., M.S., as one of the winners.

A clinical fellow in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Senior Resident in Internal Medicine, Dr. Clark works on questions of gender and healthcare inequities. “This is an exciting time at the Brigham,” she says, “for those such as myself who are interested in correcting the conditions that lead to health disparities rooted in race, gender and social class.”

Dr. Clark recognizes the outstanding physicians and researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital who have guided and supported her throughout her career. They include Brian Hoffman, M.D., Judyann Bigby, M.D., Sylvia McKean, M.D., David Bates, M.D., Marshall Wolf, M.D., Stuart Mushlin, M.D., Diana Post, M.D., Joel Katz, M.D., Jane Sillman, M.D., Bruce Levy, M.D., LeRoi Hicks, M.D., Michelle Albert, M.D., Jennifer Furin, M.D. and Heidi Behforouz, M.D. She also acknowledges her colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health, including Lisa Berkman, Ph.D., Ichiro Kawachi, M.D., Ph.D., Louise Ryan, Ph.D. and Nancy Krieger, Ph.D.

What does Dr. Clark see herself doing in another seven years? By then, she says, her goal is to be a leader among the second and third generation of academic physician health disparities researchers who will expose the underpinnings of disparities and intervene to establish conditions for better health.