Wells Named Inaugural Director of Social Medicine

Christa Zehle, M.D., senior associate dean for medical education, has announced the appointment of Katie Wells, M.D., M.P.H., as the inaugural director of social medicine in the Office of Medical Education (OME) at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, effective April 3, 2023.

In her new role, Dr. Wells will collaborate closely with medical educators and colleagues in Larner’s OME, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI), Dean’s Advisory Committee on DEI, Medical Education Anti-Racism Task Force, and across the community and UVM Health Network. She will be responsible for reviewing and further developing the college’s social medicine curriculum, providing student and faculty mentoring on social medicine and health equity-related topics, and helping establish Larner as a leader in health equity and social justice research and education.

“It has been clear that our college would benefit from having a director of social medicine, and I congratulate Dean Zehle on this outstanding appointment. Dr. Wells’s experience in care and advocacy for equitable care of diverse and underserved groups, both here and abroad, make her the perfect candidate to fill this important inaugural role,” said Richard L. Page, M.D., dean of the Larner College of Medicine.

An assistant professor of emergency medicine, Wells was recruited to join the UVM faculty in 2018 as the first director of international emergency medicine. She also serves as the Department of Emergency Medicine’s network director of health equity, director of DEI, a member of the faculty and residency selection committees, and chair of the New American Indigenous Migrant Health (NAIMH) Task Force. A co-faculty advisor to the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) medical student leadership group, Wells co-led the implementation of the social determinants of health curriculum in the required fourth-year medical student emergency medicine rotation and pioneered the development of the health equity curriculum for the Department of Emergency Medicine. Her UVM honors include the Gender Equity Rising Star Award, the Alpha Omega Alpha Distinguished Faculty Award from the Larner medical Class of 2022, and co-recipient of a Frymoyer Scholarship for the development of a novel multidisciplinary gender-affirming care curriculum.

Read more about Wells and her new role as director of social medicine.

Sara Tourville, Medical Student Coordinator, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences

The UVM Libraries made a small but significant name change for Dana Medical Library. The new name, Dana Health Sciences Library, emphasizes the health sciences as a distinctive research strength for UVM. It also speaks to the breadth of health science services and resources that Dana librarians provide.

Despite the new name, what will not change for current partners in the College of Medicine is the quantity and quality of collaborative support. “We hope the name change will resonate with anyone who is doing work in the many disciplines of the health sciences,” said Denise Hersey, M.A., M.L.S., director of Dana. “This is your library, too.”

Katie Barker, Class of 2025 medical student, is first author on a March 2023 Case Report article titled “Cerebral Vasoconstriction and Vasospastic Angina Secondary to Pheochromocytoma” in the journal Practical Neurology. Co-authors include Carrie Mahurin, M.D., cardiology fellow and clinical instructor in the Department of Medicine; Bruno Soares, M.D., chief of neuroradiology in the Department of Radiology; and Adam Sprouse-Blum, M.D., who was senior author on the paper. Dr. Sprouse-Bloom (with whom Barker worked as a medical assistant prior to starting medical school) was her mentor for researching, writing, and publishing the case report. The report describes the first published case of pheochromocytoma — a neuroendocrine tumor in the adrenal medulla — associated with both reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome and vasospastic angina in the same patient. An interesting aspect of the case is that the patient’s headaches and chest pain could be triggered by applying pressure to a particular region of the back. This observation led to the imaging through which pheochromocytoma was discovered. In addition to the article, Barker created a poster that Sprouse-Bloom presented at an American Headache Society meeting in 2022. “Case reports like these are important because they help elucidate how different conditions can present, so that when a physician sees a symptom they can consider this as a differential diagnosis,” Barker said. 

Anisha Rimal, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics, and Miller Celestin, M.S.N., RN, clinical instructor of nursing, were recently awarded a $50,000 University of Vermont Health Network Medical Group Educational Scholarship Award to support their program titled Finding Affinity and Mentorship (FAM). FAM uses a “cluster mentoring” model to increase avenues of support for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) health care students, decreases the “minority tax” on BIPOC faculty serving as mentors, and creates an interprofessional framework that has the potential to strengthen a network of support for the entire BIPOC health care community. The Larner Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is proud to support this initiative.

Pictured at left (top to bottom): Dr. Rimal, Celestin

The Larner Social Justice Coalition (SJC) medical student leadership group has announced that the following Class of 2026 medical students have been named as SJC organizers: Ru Kambli, Mikaela Joy Mari, Wendy Memishian, and Krystal Ramos Barrera. 

SJC serves as a platform to coordinate and create accountability for already ongoing efforts in the Larner community aimed at promoting critical social dialogue in our training and establishing systems of justice and equity in the community. By pooling resources and seeking common ground between the efforts of different groups and individuals, we hope to encourage an atmosphere of critical social consciousness and reflection at Larner. In coalition, we seek to build sustainable curricular and extracurricular vehicles for making social justice and cultural competency a key tenet of Larner’s identity. 

Key accomplishments to date include major revisions to the social medicine curriculum, the creation of multiple events educating students and faculty about social determinants of health, co-creation of the anti-racism task force, deepened dialog regarding admissions equity, and beyond.

Pictured at left (top to bottom): Kambli, Mari, Memishian, Barrera

Margaret Tandoh, M.D., FACS, associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and the Richard L. Gamelli, M.D. ’74 Green and Gold Professor of Surgery, has been accepted to the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Healthcare Executive Diversity and Inclusion Certificate (HEDIC) program. HEDIC is designed for DEI leaders and focuses on applied skills that will assist participants in successfully implementing diversity projects at their home institutions. 

Learn more about HEDIC.