Newswise — Marshall Chin, MD, MPH, the Richard Parrillo Family Professor of Healthcare Ethics in the Department of Medicine, is the new president-elect of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) for the 2014-2015 year.
Chin, associate chief and director of research in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine, was elected by the national medical society’s 3,000 members, who are the general internal medicine faculty at the country’s medical schools and teaching hospitals.
“I am honored and humbled to be elected president of SGIM,” said Chin, who is also the associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. “General internal medicine is the heart of our health care system, and patients recognize how important it is to have an excellent primary care physician who knows them and truly cares for them.”
As the nation’s health care undergoes fundamental change, a growing spotlight has been put on primary care to find innovations in care delivery.
Chin plans to mobilize SGIM’s extensive expertise in academic general internal medicine and capitalize on its members’ experiences in innovative care delivery models to improve the quality of care and outcomes for all patients, including the most vulnerable populations in society.
Health disparities are a major focus of Chin’s research. He is director of Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, a national program based at the University of Chicago and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It seeks evidence-based solutions to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities.
This dovetails with SGIM’s pioneering efforts to reduce unacceptable differences in care and outcomes based on the patient’s race, socioeconomic status, gender, and health insurance.
Chin’s priorities for SGIM include using the strengths and knowledge of general internists to improve health policy and population health management. He also wants to advance primary care training and identify priority areas for research funding.
As associate director of the MacLean Center, Chin was instrumental in organizing this year’s ongoing successful lecture series, Ethical Issues in Health Care Reform. He is also spearheading the MacLean Center’s increased focus in the coming year on health care policy and disparity issues.
“SGIM is fortunate to have Marshall Chin as our president-elect for the 2014-2015 year,” said SGIM Executive Director David Karlson, PhD. “Marshall brings SGIM a great deal of experience in governance and leadership, having served previously on the SGIM Council as well as on the governing bodies of other organizations. We welcome Marshall back into the SGIM leadership family.”
Chin will become SGIM president in the 2015-2016 year and lead its 18-member governing board. He will become past-president the following year, marking a three-year stay in the society’s top leadership. Through his tenure, he will support and promote the work of its more than 80 member-driven committees, taskforces and interest groups.
“Leading SGIM is a wonderful opportunity to improve patient care during a time of great change with health care reform,” he said. “On a personal level, SGIM is a special organization that has inspired, taught and nurtured me over the years, and so it is great to give something back.”
###About the University of Chicago Medicine The University of Chicago Medicine and its Comer Children’s Hospital rank among the best in the country, most notably for cancer treatment, according to U.S. News & World Report’s survey of the nation’s hospitals. University of Chicago physician-scientists performed the first organ transplant and the first bone marrow transplant in animal models, the first successful living-donor liver transplant, the first hormone therapy for cancer and the first successful application of cancer chemotherapy. Its researchers discovered REM sleep and were the first to describe several of the sleep stages. Twelve of the Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the University of Chicago Medicine. Visit our research blog at Sciencelife.uchospitals.edu and our newsroom at uchospitals.edu/news. Follow us on Twitter @UChicagoMed and Facebook.com/UChicagoMed
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