Candidates
President-Elect
Kathleen A. Cooney, MD, MACP
Chair
Duke University School of Medicine
As Chairs of Departments of Medicine, members of the Association of Professors of Medicine (APM) have the opportunity to play leading roles in organizational change in academic medicine. The COVID-19 pandemic created many significant impacts to healthcare that are positive including novel vaccine strategies and treatments as well as increased access to care via telemedicine. However, the pandemic also created substantial challenges for healthcare workers and our communities that are long lasting. I am excited about the opportunity to lead the APM because I believe that we have the chance to create a better future by meeting the challenges in front of us head on. The collaborative nature of our APM community provides opportunities for expressing diverse perspectives and this discourse helps us find answers to the complex problems we are facing.
I have broad and diverse leadership experiences having served in a number of different roles in my career spanning three academic institutions in different parts of the US. My leadership journey included serving as the Division Chief of Hematology/Oncology for 8 years and the Deputy Director of Clinical Services at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. I have been a member of APM since 2016 and was appointed as Chair of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah before being recruited to be the Chair of Medicine at Duke University in the latter half of 2018.
Through AAIM/APM, I have served on the Program Committee, the APM Council, the AAIM Women Leaders Group, the AAIM ERAS Integration Work Group, and the AAIM Governance Committee. During my career as a leader, I have directed research strategic plans, studied and mitigated salary inequities, created new leadership roles, and sponsored GME and UME programs. I have also been involved at the system level in evaluating potential mergers and acquisitions, planning prospective integrations, and managing crises. I am a staunch advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism and I have sponsored a number of initiatives in this area. For example, our department supports the concept that mutual respect and civility are foundational to our work culture. Our leadership team established the Duke Department of Medicine Civility Champions program and we have trained over 100 individuals across our department to be able to address issues of bias/harassment and to promote civil behavior—the impact of this program has been remarkable.
Being a department chair has been an incredibly rich and rewarding opportunity and I would enjoy the opportunity to learn from others in leadership of APM and AAIM. I have a strong vision for academic departments of medicine now and in the future. I believe that APM provides an incredible opportunity for supporting chairs with professional development activities and I would be honored to serve as APM’s next President-Elect.
Thomas J. Wang, MD, MD
Chair
University of Texas Southwestern Medical School
I am honored to be nominated for the position of President-Elect of the Association of Professors of Medicine (APM). It would be a great privilege to serve and to represent my colleagues who lead internal medicine departments across the country.
The APM has been an invaluable resource for me during my tenure as department chair. I have benefited enormously from the exchange of ideas on how to sustain our essential missions during these challenging times. These experiences have reinforced my appreciation of the APM and have led me to seek ways to contribute to the organization. I have been honored to serve previously in several roles, as a Councilor, Vice Chair of the Program Committee, and Chair of the Program Committee.
I recognize that organizations like APM can provide an important voice for internal medicine departments to address key issues affecting medical centers and medical schools. My priorities are informed by my background as a physician and investigator and by my experiences as a department chair at UT Southwestern. These include a commitment to faculty development; a desire to balance clinical growth with our scholarly and educational missions; a focus on expanding the pool of physician-investigators; and a commitment to improving the diversity of our faculty, training programs, and staff. If elected, I would work diligently to promote these goals across the membership of APM, both through existing programs and by collaborating with the leadership to develop new vehicles.
I have maintained a clinical practice and an NIH-funded research program throughout my career as an academic cardiologist and investigator at three institutions. One longstanding passion has been mentorship. I have directed 2 NIH training programs and served as a member of the NHLBI’s study section for K grants. I received the Outstanding Mentor Award from Mass General-Brigham in 2012.
Although my career has been spent at academic medical centers, I have also gained an appreciation of the challenges facing non-university hospitals, particularly with the shifting landscape of healthcare delivery and financing. In my current position, our clinical partners include both a public safety-net hospital (Parkland) and a private community hospital system (Texas Health Resources). I have also served on the board of Southwestern Health Resources, which oversees our academic-private partnerships and the associated ACO.
Councilors
Vineet Chopra, MD
Chair
University of Colorado School of Medicine
I am excited and grateful for the opportunity to be considered for APM Council. If elected, I believe there is much that I can offer to APM Council. I will enumerate some of the ways my background and expertise can help Council advance.
As one of a few Department of Medicine Chairs in the country who is a practicing hospitalist I bring first-hand, in depth knowledge and experience regarding this expanding element of our workforce. In particular, I believe hospitalists have much to offer beyond clinical activities and that there are ways to harness this talented pool of individuals for academic aspects including research, education and workforce/workplace innovation. I have been fortunate to lead and now oversee some of the strongest academic Divisions of Hospital Medicine in the nation (Michigan and Colorado). I therefore have a wealth of experience navigating the academic challenges and opportunities for this group.
Few know that I am an international medical graduate (IMGs) who came to the US as an immigrant. Thus, I have first-hand experience of the many challenges IMGs face when searching for residency spots, obtaining visas for training and finding faculty positions including aspects related to permanent residency. These remain hotly contested and debated policy issues today, with ongoing debate about whether such providers could be fast tracked to practice in rural/underserved areas. I hope to provide Council with guidance and advice on how best to navigate these and related challenges from both a policy, provider-centric and pragmatic perspective. I believe there is much APM can do to lead in and influence national discourse in this realm.
As a leader, I have strived to create inclusive workplaces that are based on sound hiring principles (balanced committee composition, distinct perspectives, embedding of DEI values), mentorship and support of faculty and staff at all stages of their career, and a platform that deflects praise on to others. The composition of my leadership team of Vice Chairs, Division Chiefs and Department staff speak to this aspect – with more women than men in leadership roles, greater diversity in terms of race, ethnicity and religion, and a culture that is nurturing and supportive. This change has happened within 2 years and I believe comes in part from my leadership philosophy that is based on a simple principle: do the best for those around you so they can do the same for those around them. With all the headwinds that face us in academic medicine, I strongly believe this infusion of energy and optimism is needed. I will bring this positivity and “can do” mindset to Council, hopefully leaving it even better than when I started.
Arjang Djamali, MD, MS, FACP, FASN
Chair
Maine Medical Center
I am the Chair of the Department of Medicine at Maine Medical Center, Portland, ME. I earned my medical degree from Montpellier Medical School in Montpellier, France. I completed my residency in internal medicine at Wayne State University in Detroit and fellowship in nephrology at University of Wisconsin-Madison where I joined the faculty on tenure track and rose through the ranks to the position of Professor of Medicine and Surgery and Head of the Nephrology Division before moving to Maine in 2022. I am board certified in internal medicine and nephrology and practice as a transplant nephrologist. My research expertise resides in the area of antibody mediated processes and kidney transplant outcomes. I was funded by the NIH, Foundations, and Industry until the recent past, and I have been a member of the NIH, VA-H, and national societies’ grant review panels, and a member of advisory panels to the FDA. I am interested in serving as an APM Councilor to serve the Society achieve its mission and strategic priorities while learning in a collegial environment. My primary areas of interest and experience include academic integration, hybrid clinical and academic compensation models, academic citizenship, and new academic pathways that incentivize faculty and advanced practice providers (APPs) to promote their engagement and academic growth. Academic engagement and integration is one of the greatest challenges in all matrixed organizations where clinical productivity may be at odds with academic growth and excellence. Because all health systems are different, it is important to understand the culture and strategic priorities at local and regional level before developing a tailored multidisciplinary approach to address academic integration.
Barbara Jung, MD
Chair
University of Washington School of Medicine
I am currently professor and chair of medicine at the University of Washington and holder of the Robert G. Petersdorf Endowed Chair in Medicine. I am also president of the American Gastroenterology Association, the largest GI society with 14,000 members worldwide and over 100 staff.
I came to the University of Washington in 2019 from the University of Illinois, Chicago, where I served as division chief of Gastroenterology.
A native of Portland, OR to German parents, I completed my medical degree with thesis at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany before moving to the United States to complete post-doctoral studies in colon cancer followed by internal medicine residency and gastroenterology fellowship at the University of California in San Diego.
As a practicing gastroenterologist and physician-scientist with work both in clinical and basic research centered on activin, a TGFbeta family member and its effects in GI disease, I have been uniquely poised to support scholarly worl and foster research collaboration between basic, translational, and clinical research.
I am the first female chair of the Department of Medicine, which was established in 1948 and is one of the largest departments in the country. Under my leadership the department has grown significantly, with a focus on leading in innovative research, clinical care, and education, investing in employees, elevating teaching, and nurturing a supportive and collaborative culture where equity, diversity and inclusion are at the center. I have recruited a diverse leadership team of more than 70% women and/or minorities and we have increased the diversity of our residency class from 15% to 30% to 50% with each match.
I am proud of the comprehensive strategic plan that I launched for the Department that is centered on its academic mission. It has proven very useful as an anchor and vision uniting the Department during challenging times.
I am an academician at heart and passionate about leading with empathy and through empowerment of others and training the next generation of diverse clinicians, educators, scientist and leaders.
I have been a member of AAIM and APM since 2019 and serve on the program planning committee for incoming chairs of medicine. My vision for the APM is to continue to foster collaboration amongst academic leaders with a focus of training physician leaders of the future. Academic medicine is facing many headwinds including consolidations of employers and insurers and it is time we combine our collective knowledge and passion to work together to allow academic medicine to thrive.
Michael Kim, MD, MMM, FACC, FAHA, FHRS
Chair
Creighton University School of Medicine
I appreciate the opportunity to be considered a candidate for a Councilor position for the APM. The APM and AAIM are organizations at the forefront of higher medical education and strong organizational advocates for the traditional tripartite missions of academic medicine. My background includes 24 years as an Academic Cardiologist with prior roles as a Fellowship Director for Cardiac Electrophysiology and Cardiovascular Disease, Chief of the Arrhythmia Service and Cardiology, and my present role as Chair for over 5 years. My career has been as a Clinician-Investigator/Educator and I am recognized in the area of Cardiovascular Outcomes as it relates to arrhythmias, in particular atrial fibrillation. I have been fortunate to be an author or co-author on 215 publications or abstracts and serve on the editorial board of several high impact journals. My interests over the past 10 years have centered on building programs and better organizations within Academic Medical Centers and Health Systems. I obtained a management degree in 2016 to help with these goals. As a Chair, my task is to preserve and to grow my organization’s standing as an Academic Medical School/Center while aligned with our clinical partner which is not necessarily fully aligned or familiar with our academic missions.
Our 12-year partnership has been a journey and one that is or will be familiar to many of those in traditional academic or community-based programs.
The delivery of health care is continually and rapidly changing. In order to maintain and protect our core academic missions and focus, academic medicine needs to adapt and innovate. All of our situations are unique, but many common themes are present. My experiences in higher education, health systems/service lines, and physician enterprises are shareable as many of us are faced with balancing the academic and private sector side of health systems, physician enterprises, and University partnerships. Along with traditional university academic roles, I have served as the Chief Academic Officer for the Health System and as a member of the Physician Enterprise/Clinic Board. I have been focused on mission, strategy, and program building with the aim of improving organizations with alignment to the values of all the stakeholders.
Within APM and AAIM, I currently serve on the APM Winter Meeting Programming Committee and AAIM Business in Medicine Work Group. I look forward to contributing and learning through service that promotes our academic mission, values, and futures.