TUSM & COMMUNITY BASED FACULTY

Tufts Department of Family Medicine Faculty

Robert Dickman, MD, Chairman
Wayne Altman, MD

Family Medicine Faculty Development Fellows, TUFMR

Molly Cohen-Osher, MD - Fellow, Tufts University Family Medicine Faculty Development Fellowship.

Kristen H. Goodell, MD - Fellow, Tufts University Family Medicine Faculty Development Fellowship and in clinical practice in Medford, MA. Dr. Goodell is a TUFMR graduate, Class of 2007

Ariella Ofran, MD - Fellow, Tufts University Family Medicine Faculty Development Fellowship.

Jennifer Sparks, MD - Fellow, Tufts University Family Medicine Faculty Development Fellowship.

Community-Based Faculty

Randy Wertheimer, MD, Chief of Medicine
Bari-Sue Brodsky, MD
Monica DiMasi, MD
Bonnie Engelbart, MD
Lara Hall, MD
Lisa Riccio Howe, NP
Bill Kinsey, MD
Amanda Klein, MD
Maurice Martin, MD
Kirsten Meisinger, MD
Katherine Miller, MD
Patrick Sabia, MD
Stanley Sagov, MD
Jonathan Snider, MD
Rachel Wheeler, MD
Pano Yeracaris, MD, MPH

Tufts University School of Medicine - Department of Family Medicine Faculty

Chairman

Robert Dickman, MD (is the Jaharis Family Chair of Family Medicine) at Tufts University School of Medicine and an attending physician in the new Family Medicine Center in Malden. He grew up in Buffalo, New York. He studied philosophy at Brown University and considered a career in that discipline. He graduated with honors and cum laude and went "home" to medical school at SUNY at Buffalo. There he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha and received the Merck Award for Outstanding Achievement in Internal Medicine.

Dr. Dickman's career includes serving as chair of Family Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Cleveland, OH, as Medical Director of a Blue Cross HMO, as Director of Managed Care in Israel where he was for three years, as well as being the founder of Family
Care Associates in Cleveland, OH. He has lectured extensively and authored numerous articles on family medicine, medical ethics, and geriatrics. He is board certified in family medicine and geriatrics.

Dr. Dickman has three married sons including one who is a practicing Family Medicine physician, three granddaughters, one grandson, and one on the way (all beautiful and brilliant of course!) He is traditional Jewish and loves sports. He tries to run three to four times a week.

Family Medicine Predoctoral Director

Wayne Altman, MD - Family Medicine Pre-Doctoral, Clerkship Director at Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed his medical school and residency training at Umass. His interests include Pediatric Obesity Prevention, his wife and sons, and Boston Sports Teams, but not necessarily in that order.

Community-Based Faculty

Randy Wertheimer, MD - Chief of Family Medicine, Cambridge Health Alliance. Dr. Wertheimer joined Cambridge Health Alliance in 2005 after a long career at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and UMass-Memorial Health system where she was Vice Chair of Family Medicine and Community Health.

Dr. Wertheimer is a graduate of Boston University School of Medicine who completed her Family Practice Residency in the UMass Health system. She is board certified in Family Medicine and is a practicing Family Physician.

Over the course of her career, Dr. Wertheimer has built a solid reputation as a physician, researcher, and educator. She is past President of the MA Academy of Family Physicians and is currently a Board Member of both the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation and the MA Board of Registration in Medicine. She is an accomplished author, and has contributed chapters in several Family Medicine textbooks including discussions of Pregnancy and Prenatal care for Family Physicians. She has also helped influence policy statewide and currently serves on the MA-Department of Public Health Task Force on Maternal Morbidity and Mortality. Dr. Wertheimer sees patients at Union Square Family Health Center in Somerville.

Bari-Sue Brodsky, MD - Dr. Brodsky is the Medical Director of the Riverside Health Center, an urban multicultural clinic in Cambridge. Her patient population spans newborns to the elderly, with an emphasis on chronic disease management and team care. Prior to her position at CHA, she has worked in a number of private practices in both urban and suburban settings in the Boston metro area. In addition to her private practice experiences, Dr. Brodsky was one of the initial members of the Boston University School of Medicine Department of Family Medicine. There, she assisted in setting up the first clinical Family Practice Department in a Boston teaching hospital. A graduate of Tufts University and the Medical College of Pennsylvania, Dr. Brodsky completed her Family Medicine Residency at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania, where she served as chief resident. Dr. Brodsky has an interest in preventive care, women's health, and dermatology procedures. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, also a Family Physician, and their two children.

Monica DiMasi, MD - works at Union Square Family Health. She is the medical student coordinator for that site. She went to both college and medical school at Case Western Reserve University. Her undergraduate degree was in medical anthropology where she focused on Latino Mental Health. During medical school she spent several months working in a clinic in a Mayan village in the Yucatan. She completely her residency in Family Medicine at Brown University. She is interested in primary care, medical education, international medicine, and immigrant health with a focus on underserved populations. She is a recipient of the Mass League loan repayment program. Dr.DeMasi is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. She is also active in an ongoing medical anthropology seminar at Harvard University Department of Anthropology. She is married to Justin Lodge, an architecture professor, and has a 2 y/o son Jack.

Bonnie Engelbart, MD - was born and raised in New Jersey. She earned a BA in Chemistry from Colgate University and attended medical school at The George Washington University. While in medical school she developed an interest in underserved patient populations that has continued to this day. She went on to family medicine residency at UPMC St. Margaret in Pittsburgh. During residency she completed an intensive Spanish course and spent time working in Peru, Honduras, and Mexico. After graduation she took a job at the Lynn Community Health Center where she worked for 6 years with a multi-ethnic patient population (primarily Domincan and Guatemalan) and perfected her Spanish. She also became very involved as a preceptor for Tufts medical students, coordinating all of the medical students working at the clinic and directing a 4th year family medicine elective, "Serving the Underserved". She recently took a position at CHA and is helping to open the new CHA office in Everett. While this site is getting off the ground she is working at Revere Family Health. She will be rounding with residents at the Whidden and will continue her work with Tufts medical students. Her clinical interests include dermatology procedures, caring for multicultural patient populations, and leading medical students to careers in Family medicine using clinical experiences in an underserved setting. Outside of medicine she enjoys cooking, running, and hiking. She lives with her husband Marc, a high school physics teacher, and their 1 year old son Noah, in Medford.

Lara Hall, MD - grew up in the Bay Area in northern California. She graduated from Brown University with a degree in Political Science, then worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Congo in Central Africa for 2 years. Before attending medical school at UC San Diego, she worked as a medical assistant and clinic coordinator at Planned Parenthood. She completed residency at the Lawrence Family Practice Residency 30 miles north of Boston.

Currently, Dr. Hall works at the Union Square Family Health Center in Somerville. She also provides obstetric and pediatric inpatient care at the Cambridge Hospital. She joined Cambridge Health Alliance in 2007.

Dr. Hall speaks French and Spanish and is learning Portuguese. She lives in Somerville with her husband who she met in the Peace Corps, their 1.5 year old son, and their cat.

Lisa Riccio Howe, NP - is a Family Nurse Practitioner who has a dual position at Everett Teen Health Center and Malden Family Medicine Center. She began her NP career in 1988, after graduating from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, at Somerville Family Health Service and Somerville High School's Teen Connection. She then spent the next dozen years in primary care on the North Shore. She served as the community medicine faculty coordinator at Beverly Hospital's Family Practice Residency Program. While there she continued to focus on the health needs of adolescents coordinating projects at local high schools and colleges. She has published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, and presented at conferences with resident teams on topics such as Teen Dating Violence. She was excited for the opportunity to return to a school based-health center when CHA opened the Everett Teen Health Center in 2006. She was even more excited to be able to combine that position with one on the primary care team in Malden where she plans to share her appreciation for teen health needs with the residents. She lives in Ipswich where she enjoys boating with her husband, walking her dog, and coordinating the social calendars of her two teenage daughters.

Bill Kinsey, MD, MPT - is a Family Medicine physician and Medical Director of the CHA North Cambridge Health Center. Dr. Kinsey joined CHA in 2007 from the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center. He is a graduate of the University of Vermont College of Medicine and completed his Family Medicine Residency at the University of Wisconsin. He also holds a Masters in Physical Therapy from University of Iowa College of Medicine and is currently working on his Masters in Public Health at Harvard.

Amanda Klein, MD - is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She completed her residency training at the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center where she also completed a faculty development fellowship on group visits and diabetes. Her practice for the last 4 years is at the East Somerville Family Health Center which serves a largely Salvadoran and Brazilian population. Her areas of interest include adolescent medicine, group visits, diabetes, integrative medicine and patient empowerment. In her practice she is the Reach Out and Read coodinator, and has a monthly Brazilian diabetic group. An additional area of interest is medical informatics and she is involved in a working group in this area. She speaks Spanish and is working on her Portuguese. Dr. Klein lives in Arlington with her husband who is a Massage Therapist. At home she enjoys playing with her newborn daughter and 2 year old son.

Maurice Martin, MD - graduated from Swarthmore College, NYU School of Medicine, and the UMass family practice residency, where, expecting to be a rural doctor, he trained at the health center in Barre. In 1979, veering from his anticipated course, he founded Somerville Family Practice, supported by three years of National Health Service Corps funding, and then ran it independently, as he still does today.

In the 1980s he helped establish the department of family medicine at Somerville Hospital and served as its leader. He continued as chief of the family medicine department of Cambridge Health Alliance from its formation in 1996 until 2005.

He plays the saxophone and clarinet and is musical director of the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, a fifteen-piece New-Orleans-style marching band. He is one of the founders of HONK!, the annual festival of activist street bands, held in Davis Square. He is married and has two adult children.

Kirsten Meisinger, MD - is Co-Medical Director of Union Square Family Health Center, a busy Cambridge Health Alliance practice in Somerville with 10 Family Medicine physicians. The clinic serves a primarily immigrant population with Brazilians, Salvadorans, Indians and Nepalis among the many ethnic groups served. Kirsten has worked there for 9 years, only serving as co-medical director since 2008. Her professional interests include Gyn procedures including colposcopy and dermatologic procedures, women's health, and group visits. Kirsten is originally from New York City, went to Brown University for a BA, Case Western Reserve U. for medical School and completed her Family Medicine Residency at the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center. She has worked in Mexico and Nicaragua. Dr. Meisinger is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, and French. She has 3 children ages 7, 4 and 2 and can be seen running around Arlington with them and the family dog.

Katherine Miller, MD (Associate Chief of Family Medicine Maternity Services,) Cambridge Health Alliance. Dr. Miller is a native of Tucson, Arizona, where she received her Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering followed by her MD from the University of Arizona. She decided to enter Family Medicine after working in a Mexican border town, and she completed her residency in Arizona in 1996. A strong interest in travel and international medicine has led her to Puebla, Mexico, Anchorage, Alaska, and Mendoza and Buenos Aires Argentina during her training. After graduation, Dr. Miller worked as Medical Director of a clinic in Tucson until leaving the country in 1999 to complete a Fullbright teaching scholarship in Argentina. After 5 months teaching medical education to family physicians in Argentina, she moved to Massachusetts to try Family Medicine in a new environment. After a few different experiences (including teaching in the Malden residency from 2000-2002) she has spent the last 5 years in Somerville working with a multi-ethnic (but mostly Salvadoran and Brazilian) population at Union Square Family Health. She is fluent in Spanish, speaks medical Portuguese and has particular interests in culturally competent care, maternal-child care, nutrition and exercise. Outside of medicine, Dr. Miller is an avid dancer (salsa, samba and flamenco) and runner. She and her husband Chris live in Somerville with their 4 cats.

Patrick Sabia, MD - is a graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook who completed his residency at St. Francis Hospital. He joined the Cambridge Health Alliance in 2004 and sees patients at Union Square Family Health in Somerville, MA. He provides the full range of family medicine care, including prenatal care and deliveries. Dr. Sabia served as a faculty member at the Lawrence Family Medicine residency for 8 years, where he was a member of the Outpatient Curriculum Committee and supervised residents in both the outpatient and all inpatient settings. He also served as the medical student clerkship coordinator at the Lawrence program for 4 years. He has a special interest in womens health, obstetrical care and pediatrics. He has been a colposcopist for almost 10 years and continues to provide these services at his current practice. He is board certified in Family Medicine and is fluent in Spanish and speaks some Portuguese as well. He is currently on the Perinatal Committee and Pediatric Quality Improvement Committee at the Cambridge Health Alliance. Dr. Sabia is married to a Swiss and has two young boys, Gian and Andrino. He is currently trying to add German and Rumansch to his language skills!

Stanley Sagov, MD - was born and raised in Cape Town South Africa. Graduated from University of Capeton Medical School and moved to New York City to do an extended rotating internship passing throughout Bellevue, New York Hospital and Grasslands County Medical centre in Westchester. His other reason for going to NYC was to play Jazz piano with many of my heroes. After 2 years there he came to Boston and did a degree in Jazz Piano and Oboe at the New England Conservatory of Music.

He then did fellowships in family medicine and community health at Children's Hospital, The Brigham and Beth Israel hospitals as part of the Harvard Family Health Care Program.

He came to the Cambridge side of the river and has been on staff at Cambridge and Mount Auburn Hospitals since the 1970's. He is currently Chief of Family Medicine at Mount Auburn Hospital

Dr. Sagov developed the Family Practice Group as a teaching community practice then and they are now located in Arlington after about twenty five years in Cambridge. They delivered babies for twenty seven years but now do just everything else that Family docs can do, including colposcopy, biopsies, D&C's, vasectomies etc…They accept students and residents from all four schools in the state and love the teaching and learning as they care for their patients. He is particularly interested in the politics of the doctor patient relationship and family systems opportunities in family medical practice.

He is married with two daughters and one feisty granddaughter. He takes photographs all the time and remains fanatical about playing and recording Jazz piano (check him out on itunes, CDBaby).

Jonathan Snider, MD - was born and raised on Long Island, NY. He attended Brandeis University where he graduated magna cum laude with high honors in Chemistry. He immediately went on to complete his medical degree with induction into Alpha Omega Alpha at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

He went on to complete his family medicine residency at UMass Worcester, serving as chief resident during his final year at the Hahnemann Family Health Center.

In addition to his office practice based in Wellesley MA, Dr. Snider enjoys teaching and regularly spends time at the Tufts University Family Medicine Residency program, teaching young doctors the ins and outs of office based medicine.

Dr. Snider's clinical interests include comprehensive primary care, preventative care with a focus on the patient. In addition to the full scope of health services for the whole family, Dr. Snider also performs some common, minor surgical procedures right in his office, such as skin
biopsies. He also is very interested in the use of technology to enhance the doctor - patient relationship. He loves caring for the entire family from the newborn in the nursery to the grandparent.

Dr. Snider was married to his wife Jen during his third year of medical school and has three daughters, Julia, Emily and Claudia.

Rachel Wheeler, MD - is a graduate of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology who counts herself lucky to have discovered an unanticipated career in family medicine during a fourth year elective with a family doc in central Massachusetts. After completing her residency at U Mass, she served as residency faculty for 7 years before leaving to join what is now the Cambridge Health Alliance system. She is Medical Director of Union Square Family Health in Somerville and enjoys practicing there in three languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese). She was one of the first physicians in this area to begin offering group visits and continues to work with a group of diabetic patients who have been together since 2001. She is passionate about culturally competent patient centered care and about creating systems to improve practice quality. She is a past president of the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians. She founded a Balint group with other experienced clinicians over15 years ago that still meets regularly to discuss challenging patients. Outside of medicine, she enjoys reading, travel and hiking and is the proud mother of two young women.

Pano Yeracaris, MD, MPH - is the VP and Chief Medical Officer of the Network Health, a state-wide HMO in Massachusetts where he provides medical leadership for the clinical quality, behavioral health, pharmacy, care management and utilization management programs. Prior to coming to Network Health in November, 2004, Dr Yeracaris was the Chief Medical Officer of The Health Services Partnership of Dorchester (HSP) from 6/98-11/04, a joint venture Medical Management Services Organization between two well respected community health centers in Dorchester, MA. Dr. Yeracaris was responsible for managed care contracting, care management, clinical quality, information technology, and served as the Medical Director for the two health centers providing leadership for the medical groups and leadership for improvement efforts in practice management processes.

Before returning to Boston in 1997 to attend the Harvard School of Public Health and pursue an MPH in health care management, Dr. Yeracaris practiced for 13 years from 1984-1997 as a primary care staff physician at an inner city medical center for a non-profit staff model HMO in Western New York, Health Care Plan (HCP). He also worked extensively in Quality Management, guideline development, quality measurement, utilization management and served as the medical advisor of HCPs outpatient chemical dependency program. Dr. Yeracaris also served as the Medical Director of Buffalo Community Health (a start-up joint venture Medicaid HMO) from 1996 to 1997 and was an NCQA (National Comm for Quality Assurance) physician reviewer from 1992-1998.

"Medical care provided in isolation from economic, educational, and community development issues, will never fully reach the potential to maximize the health status of society or individual patients". Dr. Yeracaris completed his BA at Harvard College with honors, received his MD degree from the SUNY at Buffalo, and completed a residency in Family Medicine at the UNC at Chapel Hill.