Elections: APM

Candidates

President-Elect

Thomas Wang, MD

Thomas Wang, MD

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.  

Organizations like APM 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, served as a member of the NHLBI’s study section for K grants, and received mentorship awards from both my home institution and national organizations such as the American Heart Association.  

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.

Once again, it would be an honor to serve the APM as President-Elect. I am grateful for your consideration.

Treasurer

Monica Kraft, MD

Monica Kraft, MD

I am writing to express my strong interest for consideration as Treasurer for the Association of Professors of Medicine (APM). I first attended the APM meeting in 2015 as a new chair, and then became a consistent attendee in 2019. From July 2021-June 2024, I served as a member of the APM Council and now serve on the APM program planning committee. I also serve on the AAIM research committee and had the pleasure of serving as co-chair of the AAIM UME-GME task force, where we evaluated the “Ideal State” of the UME to GME transition. As a Chair of the Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, Tucson, University of Arizona from 2014-22 and now as System Chair, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai since July 2022, I feel I bring the financial expertise needed for the role as Treasurer.

Outside of my role as Chair, I also have served in progressive leadership roles of the American Thoracic Society (ATS), a professional society for pulmonologists, sleep and critical care providers where financial acumen was required. The ATS has over 20,000 members and I had the honor of serving as a member of the leadership including Secretary-Treasurer, Vice President, President and Past President from 2009-2014. In addition to serving in the leadership, I also served on the ATS finance committee, international conference committee as chair and the Allergy, Immunology and Inflammation assembly program chair. During my service to ATS, the organization had to address multiple challenges, including diversification of revenue streams, effective clinical and scientific education of our members, innovative ways to attract a diverse membership and address policy changes around clinical care and lung health worldwide and through our state and federal governments. By the end of my leadership term in 2014, the ATS was mission focused, in excellent financial health and continues to flourish today.

The skills I have developed can be directly applied to the APM Treasurer position. As we move forward, the role of Treasurer will be critical to address the disruptions brought by the pandemic and those most affected, including our junior faculty and women. With my experience managing clinical and academic budgets at Mount Sinai of over $400M and my role as Treasurer of a large professional organization, I understand and appreciate the balance between investment with fiscal responsibility and financial stewardship. Having been a Chair of Medicine before and during the pandemic, I am in a unique position to ensure that APM and AAIM remain robust and vibrant organizations that support diverse faculty and trainees through this tumultuous time.

It would be an honor to serve as Treasurer of the APM and thus serve as the Council representative to the AAIM finance committee. I have the bandwidth and expertise to be an effective Treasurer. I will monitor the financial health of the APM/AAIM and advocate for fiscally responsible decision making. I am committed to the APM as an organization that aligns with my interests to include providing the primary leadership and direction to academic internal medicine, including education, research, and patient care.

Councilor

Victoria J. Fraser, MD

Victoria J. Fraser, MD

Victoria Fraser is the Adolphus Busch Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. She is an infectious disease specialist and her research focuses on healthcare epidemiology and the prevention of healthcare associated infections  and antimicrobial resistance. She also has expertise in patient safety and quality and the epidemiology and prevention of non-infectious adverse events in healthcare. Her research has been funded by the CDC Prevention Epicenters Program, NIH, and AHRQ. Dr Fraser also has led career development awards and clinical and translational research training programs through her role in WashU’s CTSA, KL2 Career Development Award and her leadership of the Clinical and Translational Research Training Center.  He has held leadership roles in the Society of Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the Infectious Disease Society of America. The Department of Medicine at Wash U has 750 faculty, more than 2000 staff and an annual  budget over $1B dollars. During her tenure as Chair, the department’s clinical, research and educational programs have grown significantly. As the first female clinical department chair at WashU, Dr Fraser has played an important role in DEI and gender equity efforts at the School of Medicine. She is an active clinician, educator and researcher.  As an APM Council Member she will advocate for APM initiatives, including educational programs and  research to advance the success of APM, Dept of Medicine chairs and Departments of Medicine across the US.

Councilor

Karen Freund, MD, MPH

Karen Freund, MD, MPH

I am honored to be considered for the APM council.  In the past four years since becoming Chair of the Department of Medicine at Tufts University, APM has been an amazing resource as I navigate the needs of the Department.  Having the opportunity to gain the perspective from seasoned chairs, and the perspectives from multiple locations across the country has been invaluable for a host of issues from addressing compensation plans and funds flow models to building my leadership team.

In my effort to pay back the benefits I have gained from APM, I volunteered for the planning committee after my first winter meeting.  Last year I served as chair of the New Chair’s meeting, and this year, I am serving as Chair of the overall winter meeting.  Working with our colleagues these past three years has been a great joy.  I am gratified by what we have accomplished, including the greater focus on DEI and gender issues within the meeting, and during the round table sessions.

As a member of Council, I hope to work to continue to build the camaraderie and support that APM affords us as individual Chairs.  I believe that APM is the place for us collectively to discuss and help to lead the national conversations as we move through these challenging times of reduced research and education resources and reliance on clinical revenue, and the discussion on the structure and function of Medicine Departments.  

Councilor

Jennifer A. Koch, MD, FACP

Jennifer A. Koch, MD, FACP

As a general internist and Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs and Education at the University of Louisville, APM has quickly become a highly valued group of colleagues from which I believe all Vice Chairs have much to learn. To the Council I will bring extensive experience and interest in faculty affairs gained by chairing my School of Medicine's Promotion, Appointment, and Tenure Committee.  Having spent 17 years in residency program leadership (9 as APD, 8 as PD), I continue to be closely involved with educational issues and faculty development.  I am an advocate for women and URiM faculty and learners and engage in medical education research which elucidates bias in graduate medical education.  

I believe that a fundamental issue we must face is the tension between RVU-based compensation models and the now-outdated concept of "protected time."  Our educational and research missions are threatened by this seismic shift and having worked diligently to understand funds flow and its downstream effects on our faculty, I look forward to contributing to discourse on these issues.   My roles in other national organizations, such as the AAMC Council of Faculty and Academic Societies and the Society of General Internal Medicine's Women and Medicine Commission, position me to bring ideas to the APM Council from a variety of perspectives.   Moving forward, I envision APM as an organization whose core mission continues to be to serve the needs of Department Chairs while also supporting the development of Vice Chairs in their various roles.

Councilor

Gary Rosenthal, MD

Gary Rosenthal, MD

Interest in Serving on the APM Council
I have served as Chair of Internal Medicine at Wake Forest since 2016 and appreciate the vital role APM is poised to play during a time of significant change. The consolidation of health systems, verticalization of insurers, intrusion of private equity, and persistent inequities in healthcare delivery and academic opportunities pose challenges to traditional academic models, but also offer opportunities for chairs to be agents of change. As Chair, I have guided my department through two major health system integrations (with Atrium Health in 2020 and Advocate Aurora in 2023) and have greatly benefited from the wise counsel of other chairs. I would relish the opportunity to work on the APM Council to identify a range of potential strategies to address the challenges ahead that chairs can tailor to the unique circumstances of their departments. 

Strengthening the Academic Mission
I have devoted a substantial part of my career to healthcare research and leading interdisciplinary research programs. As Vice Dean for Translational Research in the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, I have worked to integrate research and practice and utilize our health system as a laboratory for testing new care models. As Chair, I have shaped our research programs around the vision of a Learning Health System (LHS), which offers a framework for engaging health systems, driving care innovation, and growing externally funded research. I believe the LHS may be particularly salient to departments with limited resources to grow traditional research programs. As a Council member, I would be delighted to nurture efforts within APM to develop strategies for operationalizing LHS models in internal medicine departments. 

Promoting Inclusiveness
Nurturing an environment that values JEDI is a core personal value. Working with a dynamic JEDI Vice Chair, we launched initiatives in bystander and implicit bias training and implemented best practices for recruiting URM faculty and trainees. We have also supported the career development of women and address prior imbalances. A successful initiative has been our launch of WoW! (Women of Wake), which promotes networking among women faculty and house staff and supports social events and visiting professorships by women leaders in academic medicine. These efforts increased the proportion of women in our residency from roughly one third to one half.  

Prior Organizational Leadership Roles
I would bring experience to the APM Council from leadership roles I have played in other organizations, including serving as President of the Society of General Internal Medicine and Association of Chiefs of General Internal Medicine and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Clinical and Translational Science and Clinical Research Forum. Each of these organizations have their own unique challenges and have imparted in me the importance of setting realistic and actionable organizational goals.  I would be honored to bring these perspectives to the APM Council.