Chapter 23: Developing Training Opportunities in Gastroenterology
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Description
In a continuation of the discussion of the fellowship in the Department of Gastroenterology (see Chapter 21) Dr. Levin first talks about the existing fellowship program run in collaboration with the Medical School and the fact that there needed to be more input from MD Anderson faculty. Dr. Levin brought in more faculty to broaden the scope of the program; however, it could not be sufficiently developed because of lack of good will from people in other programs. He notes that there were discussions about setting up a fellowship program with the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, but this was never developed. Dr. Levin next notes that he was head of the combined Gastroenterology and Medical Oncology program, and he describes how the two faculties have different foci and roles. A training program for gastroenterology people will involve principles of early detection, prevention, and the management of the disease.
Dr. Levin notes that in 1994, when he became Vice President of Cancer Prevention, he substantially expanded the fellowship program with NIH support given to Dr. Robert Chamberlain. Dr. Levin explains that this was a nationally competitive program in which fellows were very deliberately mentored by chosen faculty. He discusses the content of the training and observes that fellows went on to become very successful academics. He also mentions that he received funds from a patient, to train international students.
Identifier
LevinB_03_20130531_C23
Publication Date
5-31-2013
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Building the Institution Building/Transforming the Institution Multi-disciplinary Approaches Growth and/or Change Obstacles, Challenges Education Beyond the Institution The Administrator Overview Definitions, Explanations, Translations Philanthropy, Fundraising, Donations, Volunteers
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, you just put it on. Female Speaker Yes, you're good.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. Well, actually, I'm going to turn it off. Hang on just a second, Bernard. Okay, I am Tacey Ann Rosolowski, and today is May 30, 2013, and I am on the phone recording an interview with Dr. Bernard Levin. He is in New York City, and I am in the Reading Room of the Historical Resources Center at MD Anderson. The time is noon, and we are recording a follow-up session to three sessions that we conducted in February of this year. Thank you, Dr. Levin, for agreeing to this supplementary session.
Bernard Levin, MD:
You're most welcome.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
As I mentioned to you before we turned on the recorder, a piece of information that I needed to pick up on was the end of the story about the fellowship in gastroenterology that you were so hoping to establish at MD Anderson, and I wonder if you could tell me why it was not possible to actually create that fellowship.
Bernard Levin, MD:
When I came to MD Anderson, there was a fellowship program in existence in collaboration with the University of Texas at Houston, and this fellowship program had been in existence for many years, probably started by Robert Nelson, MD, and then carried on by John Stroehlein with their counterparts at the University of Texas, Houston, the medical school. When I came, the fellowship was in a bit of disarray. Fellows were not that happy, and there needed to be some reorganization of schedules and programs and more active participation of faculty from MD Anderson, of which there were relatively very few left when I arrived. So part of my role when I came was to bring and recruit new gastroenterology faculty, which I did to some extent. And then I wanted to broaden the scope of the fellowship program so that it could take advantage of the richness of teaching and programs in the Texas Medical Center, thus involving faculty at Baylor College of Medicine as well as the University of Texas and MD Anderson. Unfortunately, this program couldn’t really be developed because there wasn’t a lot of goodwill between certain individuals who led these other programs, and try as I might, it didn’t really work out. We did try at one point to include the University of Texas medical branch in the program with the University of Texas, Houston. And some collaborations and some exchange of ideas and meetings did occur over the ensuing years, but the idea of a Texas Medical Center-wide program didn’t happen under my jurisdiction, and I always thought that was a shame because of the very great strengths that could have been developed with the programs at various centers. So the fellowship program, though, continued between the University of Texas Health Science Center, the medical school, and MD Anderson.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, thank you for following up on that. Another subject that we needed to talk about was some of the other training and education initiative in gastroenterology at MD Anderson and also beyond, and I wonder just with a general question, why did you feel that specific immersion and training in gastroenterology is so important? I mean, it may seem like kind of an obvious question, but it seems like there are some very specific dimensions that faculty and students need to be immersed in.
Bernard Levin, MD:
Yes, well, first of all, I need to distinguish my roles. When I first came to MD Anderson, I was head of a combined gastrointestinal oncology program, so there were two distinct tracks of faculty. There were gastroenterology faculty, and there were medical oncology faculty who specialized in the treatment and management of people with gastrointestinal malignancies. They’re very different, although we work together, or we try to work together as a team, but they have very different roles, and the training programs would be then those of a gastroenterologist who would be learning side by side with people who are treating cancer but would be learning the principles of early detection and prevention and management of some of the complications that occur in people with gastrointestinal cancer. They would be learning that in a very concentrated way at MD Anderson as opposed to going to the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston where they would be exposed to a much more general array of gastroenterological problems, most of which were not cancer related. It would include more of a common—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And in these contexts, was there training that the medical oncologists received that they would not normally have received? Or was it pretty much for gastroenterologists?
Bernard Levin, MD:
Well, the medical oncologists would become—because their colleagues were right across the corridor—could certainly avail themselves of knowledge of what was available, what techniques, what approaches a gastroenterologist would take to the management of certain types of complications of advanced malignancy. Nutritional support, relief of obstructions of hollow viscera, that sort of approach, so there was a give and take that definitely occurred between these different faculty members who of course were expert in their own particular areas. So the training programs that I was part of included gastroenterology, and the medical oncology faculty also were involved in training medical oncology fellows. Now, you ask about training programs beyond that. Well, my role then changed in 1994 when I became Vice President of Cancer Prevention. We expanded then substantially a training program that had already begun but substantially expanded it because of enthusiastic participation by faculty in Behavioral Science, Epidemiology, and subsequently Clinical Cancer Prevention. But the mainstay of the training program, which was NIH supported, was Dr. Robert Chamberlain, who was wonderful at organizing a nationally competitive training program, and we had applicants from all over the United States and some from abroad who were in the United States at the time and could sustain a substantial program of quite a large number of trainees. And they were mentored in a very deliberate way by chosen faculty whose work the fellows were particularly interested. The program was subsequently partly managed by Dr. Shine Chang, who then became the program director when Dr. Chamberlain retired.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So the focus of this particular training program shifted depending on the interests of the individuals who were selected to come to MD Anderson?
Bernard Levin, MD:
Yes, to a great extent that was true, although because it was a training program, there were also general elements provided to them. They learned about the work of others. They were given broader principles of understanding of cancer prevention, so it wasn’t only that they worked within the four walls of their mentors’ specific areas of interest. They were able to learn about other areas of cancer prevention in the division.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And what is the impact that you saw from that training program?
Bernard Levin, MD:
Oh, I think it was very successful because the people who went through the program subsequently became in quite a few instances themselves successful academics. I don’t have the data on the tracking of these, but they are carefully followed, because this was an NIH-supported program. We actually also had funds obtained through a generous gift by [Redacted] whose [Redacted] was a patient of mine and [Redacted], and he donated [Redacted] that were used to support the training of individuals who didn’t qualify for the NIH program, not because of lack of merit or academic qualities, but because they weren’t US citizens, didn’t have a green card. But they were still very meritorious and could still be trained, because we had the funds to do that.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Were there other training initiatives that you undertook via the Division of Cancer Prevention?
Bernard Levin, MD:
No, those were the only ones really that I was involved in.
Recommended Citation
Levin, Bernard MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 23: Developing Training Opportunities in Gastroenterology" (2013). Interview Chapters. 1359.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1359
Conditions Governing Access
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