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Vineet Arora, MD, AM'03, named Dean for Medical Education
BY AMANDA PARKER, PHD
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Vineet Arora, MD, AM’03
“Times are tough, and medical education is no exception. We are in a pandemic, facing structural inequities and racism, and an epidemic of gun violence, including at the hands of those who should protect us. We need future doctors to be ready to not only treat and lead with science, but also lead with and treat with humanity.”
Vineet Arora, MD, AM’03 Nationally recognized medical educator Vineet Arora, MD, AM’03, has been named Dean for Medical Education of the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division.
Arora is Herbert T. Abelson Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, Assistant Dean for Scholarship and Discovery and Associate Chief Medical Officer for Clinical Learning Environment. She is a Master of the Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators—a lifelong membership that honors University of Chicago faculty for extraordinary contributions to medical education.
As Dean for Medical Education, she will oversee all aspects of the medical education continuum, including undergraduate, graduate and continuing medical education, and will be a key leader in the simulation program. In collaboration with faculty, program directors and department chairs, she will ensure active engagement in providing an outstanding educational experience for students and trainees.
She will also serve as the leader and voice for medical education both within the institution and with key outside stakeholders, including the Association of American Medical Colleges, Liaison Committee on Medical Education, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and others.
Arora’s appointment is effective July 1, 2021— 20 years ago to the day from when she finished her own medical training. She received her MD from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and completed her residency in internal medicine, a year as chief resident and fellowship in general internal medicine at the University of Chicago. She also received a master’s degree from the University’s Harris School of Public Policy. She joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.
She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and serves on the board of directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the Joint Commission.
Throughout her career, Arora has demonstrated profound personal and academic investment in the quality of medical education. With a particular focus on the learning environment for medical trainees, she works to simultaneously improve the quality of learning and clinical care delivered by trainees in academic hospitals. Her pioneering work on resident sleep, fatigue and handoffs has informed changes in residency duty hours. She is the principal investigator of an AMA Accelerating Change in Medical Education grant to integrate health systems science into medical education and is a Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation Faculty Scholar for her work improving the interprofessional clinical learning environment at UChicago Medicine. Her academic work, including studies on improving sleep for patients as they transition from hospital to home, has been cited over 10,000 times.
“I am humbled by this prospect of working with an amazing team to shape the future of our profession with the ultimate goal of improving the care for the patients they will serve,” Arora said. “Thank you to the amazing professional and personal teams who have supported, coached and mentored me so I can use this opportunity to pay it forward.”
Arora’s dedication to the highest standard of medical care and training is deeply connected to her commitment to equal opportunity in medicine. She has received NIH R01 funding to study novel methods for using social media to expose minority youth to medical research careers, and leads an NIH grant funded by the Diversity Program Consortium to improve mentor training for women and minority medical students at eight medical schools. She is a member of many groups working for gender equity in medicine, including Women of Impact, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education.
She succeeds Halina Brukner, MD, who has held the position of Dean for Medical Education since 2018.
The search for a new dean was informed by a faculty search committee, led by Jeffrey Matthews, MD, Dallas B. Phemister Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery.
Dean Halina Brukner, MD, retires
Halina Brukner, MD, Professor of Medicine and Dean for Medical Education, is retiring at the end of this academic year after over 35 years of distinguished service as an outstanding clinician, educator and leader.
Brukner came to the University of Chicago for her internal medicine residency in 1982. She remained for her entire career, contributing in many major and substantive ways to the education and career development of thousands of medical students, residents and faculty members.
Among her many leadership positions, she served as the Director of the Primary Care Group and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine. In 2004, she became Associate Dean for Medical School Education for the Pritzker School of Medicine, where she spearheaded a major curriculum reform and was the Founding Director of the Academy for Distinguished Medical Educators. She has served as Dean for Medical Education Halina Brukner, MD since 2018.
“I would personally like to commend Dr. Brukner for her wisdom, commitment to fairness and deep engagement to ensure that our students receive an education of the highest quality,” said Kenneth S. Polonsky, Dean of the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine. “She will be greatly missed, but the impact of the positive changes she has initiated and led will be felt for many years to come.”
GRADUATE SCHOOL RANKINGS
Diversity metrics added to annual USNWR survey
The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine
maintained its No. 17 ranking among research-intensive schools in the recent U.S. News & World Report ranking of top medical schools.
Pritzker tied at this position with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. For primary care training, Pritzker was ranked No. 34, compared to No. 24 last year. U.S. News surveyed 191 accredited medical and osteopathic schools. This year U.S. News also released student diversity metrics for the first time, providing the percentage of students considered underrepresented in medicine within each student body. Although this metric was not considered for rankings, Pritzker achieved No. 11 overall for medical school diversity, second highest among the top 20 schools. Notably, only four of the top 20 schools achieved a top 20 score for diversity: University of California-San Francisco (No. 9), Pritzker (No. 11), and University of Pennsylvania and Duke University (tied for No. 20).
5th
most selective school (tied with Harvard)
521
median total MCAT
3.92
median undergraduate GPA
4.1%
acceptance rate
Medicine on the Midway receives AAMC writing honors
The story “Pritzker School of Medicine Alumni Confront the Epidemic of Gun Violence in America,” written by Jamie Bartosch, received a Gold Award for Excellence in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Robert G. Fenley Writing Awards—General Staff Writing category. “Taking on Gender Inequity— Women in Medicine” by Nancy Averett— the magazine’s Spring 2020 cover $.76 Female physicians make 76 cents for every dollar earned by men. story—received Taking on a Silver Award. gender inequity The gun violence story also was 40% of residents have to plan to have children during residency 50.5%~6%Just over half of medical students today are women but only a quarter in 10 surgical specialties are women and women make up only 6.5 percent of orthopaedic surgeons ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● nominated as one of seven finalists for Men Women Medical school General surgery Orthopaedic surgery <25% AFTER FIVE YEARS ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● but there is no standard national parental leave policy 33% female physicians are able pay off of their medical school debt the honor of Best of male physicians versus 44% in Show in the 2021 uchicagomedicine.org/midway MEDICINE ON THE MIDWAY SPRING 2020 15 AAMC Group on Institutional Advancement Awards for Excellence competition. The nomination recognizes entries that that exemplify the highest level of professionalism and achievement within the academic medicine community.
A young physician who lost his brother to gun violence on the South Side.
A gun violence researcher whose cousin’s child died at Sandy Hook.
An emergency medicine specialist embedded with the Pittsburgh SWAT team.
A violence prevention visionary with global impact.
Four Pritzker School of Medicine alumni confront the epidemic of gun violence in America.
STORIES BY JAMIE BARTOSCH
20 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICINE AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DIVISION After midnight, in the University of Chicago Medicine emergency department, Abdullah Pratt, MD’16, was tending to a gunshot wound on a man’s forearm when the patient’s girlfriend suddenly tapped him on the back.
“Hey,” she asked. “Did you use to go to Jesse Owens Park?”
Yes, he told her, he used to hang out at the South Side park as a kid.
“I knew that was you! We remember you! We used to go to the same programs together!” she shouted, throwing her hands up in the air. “See? I told you that was him!”
Scenes like this happen regularly to Pratt, who lived in the Woodlawn neighborhood, near the hospital, for most of his childhood. But geography is just part of his unique, personal connection to the gun violence victims he treats nightly.
Pratt owns nearly a dozen T-shirts memorializing friends shot to death on Chicago’s streets. His older brother, Rashad, is among them. Pratt was a student in the Pritzker School of Medicine in 2012 when his beloved 28-year-old brother was gunned down while sitting in a car. Rashad was proud of his little brother’s accomplishments, but he always reminded Pratt never to forget where he came from. Community is everything, he preached.
Those words stayed with Pratt. So when local Adult Trauma Center to UChicago Medicine’s Hyde Park campus, Pratt, still in medical school at the time, got involved.
He became a prominent figure in the debate. He served as a liaison between the neighborhood and hospital administrators, because he had the unique ability to represent, understand and communicate school to learn the dynamics of the situation, do research, work with the Urban Health Initiative and start the Medical Students for Health Equity group. They celebrated when UChicago Medicine launched adult trauma services in May 2018.
The 30-year-old attending physician, whose friends call him “D,” is easily recognizable in the emergency department—and not just because he
uchicagomedicine.org/midway ABDULLAH PRATT, MD’16 The trauma center’s familiar face
Emergency department physician Abdullah Pratt, MD’16, grew up on the South Side. “The root of everything I do,” he said, “is wishing I could change this gun violence. ”
MEDICINE ON THE MIDWAY FALL 2019
Bartosch’s story profiles four Pritzker alumni and how they are addressing the problem of gun violence as a public health epidemic.
One of the judges commented: “Powerful and compelling storytelling on one of the most important issues facing us today. The treatment was nuanced and sophisticated, allowing the reader to discover new ideas from different perspectives. Congratulations on finding these stories and telling them in such a beautiful way.”
Read interviews with Bartosch and Averett at: aamc.org.
