'60s

Among the interactions he had with Jack Myers, chair of medicine from 1950-1970, a few stand out for Steven Roth (MD ’67, Internal Medicine Resident ’71) that were cringeworthy at the time but now make him laugh. Roth says Myers was known to be all-business and could be gruff. He remembers Myers once asking him to quiet a conversation in the hospital hallway at Presbyterian Hospital (now UPMC Presbyterian) during morning rounds. Myers wanted the exam room door open to help with ventilation. After Roth made sure all was quiet and walked back into the room, another resident walked in and closed the door, not knowing about Myers’ request. Roth says of that event, “Myers assumed that I had closed the door to keep things quiet. His face reddened, and he pointed at me directly and said (and this is not a direct quote), ‘When you can keep this floor quiet and orderly, I will conduct teaching rounds again.’ Then he stormed off the floor.

“Dr. Myers was a fantastic clinician and a very good educator and teacher, and I had a very good relationship with him despite a few episodes,” says Roth, who later became chief resident. Now a retired cardiologist, Roth, 81, plays tennis three days a week near his home in Pasadena, California.

'70s

For decades, retired urologist Ray Brodie (MD ’77) has had an outsized presence in the Maryland medical community. In addition to his private practice and work as an attending at a number of hospitals, he was a clinical instructor at the University of Maryland, regional medical director for Prison Health Services, policy specialist for the Maryland Department of Mental Health and Hygiene, quality assurance director for Alternative Homecare, chair of the board of directors for Total Healthcare (a 40,000-member Medicaid HMO) and president of the board for Constant Care Community Health. He was also a physician advisor for the American Cancer Society. Recently, Brodie was honored by the Baltimore Alumni Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity as one of its Centennial Achievers.

About a decade ago, Joseph Purpura (MD ’76) started jotting down ideas on a legal pad and kept fleshing them out until he felt he had enough to create a novel. It took about a year for him to convert those notes into “Code Crisis,” which features a gynecologist who becomes entangled with a CIA officer. The novel, his first, became an Amazon top-seller in the medical thriller and medical romance genres. Purpura, himself an ob/gyn who practiced in Chicago before moving to Montecito, California, where he’s an associate vice president and head of medical device safety at Abbvie, says the book isn’t autobiographical. “I love reading spy novels and love doing research,” he says. “So, I needed a female protagonist, and I drew from this idea. . . . I had a few patients in my gynecology practice that I never got straight answers from. They traveled a lot, and I got the feeling they just couldn’t say anything about it. And that’s the beauty of fiction. You can add a disclaimer but still write something that can be believable.”

'00s

Michelle Thompson (Family Medicine Resident ’06) is not only board-certified in family medicine, lifestyle medicine, mind-body medicine and integrative medicine, but she also trained as a massage and neuromuscular therapist. She runs trauma-informed mind-body skills groups for health professionals and patients and is considered a de-prescribing specialist for patients with polypharmacy. She cites her grandfather having died at 36 from diabetes as informing her desire to understand and practice lifestyle medicine. As medical director of the UPMC Lifestyle Medicine Program, she is especially excited for the new generation of physicians to recognize that “if we care for ourselves, we will take better care of our patients.”

While 5% of surgeons in the United States are Hispanic or Latino, estimates are that women make up only 1% of that group, and Paula Ferrada (Critical Care Fellow ’09) wants to help change that. Efforts to promote equity, diversity and inclusion are part of the legacy she’s creating for herself, as are her contributions to trauma resuscitation and ultrasound. Ferrada, the division and system chief for acute care surgery and trauma for Inova Health System and a professor of medical education at the University of Virginia, took an active role in the #ILookLikeASurgeon social media campaign about eight years ago; she says the message that surgeons can look like her and share a similar background continues to be important. “When underrepresented minorities see that one of us is able and capable, and that there are opportunities to grow academically, they see that there’s hope, that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

The Tennessee Department of Health recently appointed Tobi Adeyeye Amosun (MD ’04, Pediatric Resident ’07) as its deputy commissioner for population health. Amosun previously served as assistant commissioner for Tennessee’s Division of Family Health and Wellness, where she focused on improving maternal and child health and reducing injuries and chronic diseases. She oversees a $1.5 billion departmental budget and is invested in creating a collaborative workforce culture for more than 2,900 employees and implementing state health policy to protect, promote and improve the health of Tennessee residents.

'10s

After Dana Previte (PhD ’17) finished as a postdoctoral associate at the Eye and Ear Institute in 2021, she joined Krystal Biotech as a scientist in product development. The Pittsburgh-based company focuses on gene therapy for rare skin diseases and other indications and tissue areas. Krystal has developed the first redosable gene therapy and only FDA-approved medicine for dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, which causes skin to become fragile, blister and tear with minor friction or trauma.

Many of the patients that Emmanuelle Yecies (MD ’14, Internal Medicine Resident ’17, MS ’19, Women’s Health and General Internal Medicine Fellow ’20) treats at the VA Palo Alto Healthcare System approach medical care with some distrust. “A lot of them have had negative experiences in the past and have not felt respected,” she says of the female veterans in her care. Yecies, a staff physician at the VA and a clinical assistant professor of primary care and population health at Stanford University (affiliated), says her passion is making sure her patients not only get the best treatment but get compassion, as well. The veterans she sees often endured trauma before and during their time in the military, and her mission “is to be a positive force for them and get them the care” they deserve but have been hesitant to seek out.

Read more from the Fall 2023 issue.