Massachusetts General Hospital

Daniel E. Singer, M.D.
Fellowship Site Director
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health
Chief, Clinical Epidemiology Unit, MGH
Associate Chief for Research, MGH General Medicine Division

Dr. Daniel E. Singer has directed the MGH Fellowship Program in General Internal Medicine for the past twenty-five years. Over that period he has served as research mentor to nearly 40 fellows, the vast majority of whom remain in academic positions, and many of whom are leaders in their chosen field of investigation. Dr. Singer also co-directs the introductory Epidemiology course in the intensive Summer Program in Clinical Effectiveness, a central element in the Fellowship's HSPH-based curriculum. Dr. Singer's research focuses on preventive medicine and also on increasing efficiency in the treatment of common clinical conditions. In particular, he is an internationally recognized leader in the field of stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation (AF). With his colleagues, Dr. Singer has helped establish the efficacy of anticoagulant therapy in AF, identified risk factors for stroke, and defined the optimal range of anticoagulation in AF. He was the chair and lead author of the Atrial Fibrillation chapter in the 2008 American College of Chest Physicians Consensus Conference on Antithrombotic and Thrombolytic Therapy. He has also conducted extensive investigations on the impact of hyperglycemia, impaired glucose tolerance, and diabetes on the development of vascular disease. Additional areas of investigation have included optimal management of community-acquired pneumonia and of lumbar spine disorders. Fellows have led many of these investigations. Dr. Singer was the 2003 recipient of the John M. Eisenberg Award, the Society of General Internal Medicine's highest award for career achievements in research. In addition, Dr. Singer was awarded the 2008 C. Miller Fisher Award from the New England chapter of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association for his research on stroke prevention. In large part reflecting his work in the Fellowship Program, Dr. Singer also received the 2007-2008 Harvard Medical School William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award.

Nancy A. Rigotti, M.D.
Fellowship Site Director
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Associate Chief for Academic Advancement, MGH General Medicine Division
Director, Office of Women’s Careers, MGH
Director, Tobacco Research & Treatment Center, MGH
Chair, Tobacco Task Force, Partners HealthCare System

Dr. Rigotti, Site Director of the MGH Fellowship Program in General Internal Medicine since 2007, is an Associate Chief of the MGH General Medicine Division and a Past President of the Society of General Internal Medicine (2009-10). She also directs the MGH Office of Women’s Careers. Dr. Rigotti’s interests are preventive medicine and behavior change for patients and physicians. Her current research focuses on using system-level and population-level interventions to translate evidence-based tobacco dependence treatment into routine clinical practice in multiple settings that include primary and specialty ambulatory care, prenatal care, and inpatient hospitalization. This work is facilitated by her role as Chair of the Tobacco Task Force for Partners HealthCare System and as Director of the MGH Tobacco Research and Treatment Center, a multidisciplinary team based in the General Medicine Division. Other areas of research are assessing tobacco control public policy, eliminating secondhand smoke exposure, and promoting tobacco treatment as part of global health. Her research methods encompass randomized controlled clinical trials, cohort studies, outcomes/health services research, and public policy assessment. Dr. Rigotti is Past President of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco, former Deputy Editor for Nicotine and Tobacco Research, and past editorial board member for the Journal of General Internal Medicine. She has mentored a number of General Medicine Fellows with a variety of interests and junior faculty from multiple medical fields. Most have gone on to successful careers as independent clinician-investigators. Her contributions have been recognized by the Educator of the Year Award from the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research, an innovation award from the Society of General Internal Medicine, and the American College of Physicians’ James K. Bruce Award for Distinguished Contributions in Preventive Medicine.

• Developing population-based methods to connect patients with providers of care
• Designing health IT systems that provide decision support to efficiently leverage a clinician’s unique knowledge about their patients to enhance care
• Optimizing care for lumbar spine disorders

• Epidemiologic and health services research focusing on the health and health care of homeless persons
• Access to health care services among homeless adults
• Tobacco use in homeless populations

• Health policy
• Future of academic medical centers in medical marketplace
• Impacts of managed care
• Application of industrial process control in medicine

• Performance and accountability of the social missions of academic health centers
• Academic industry relationships in the life sciences
• Conflicts of interest in science
• Data-sharing and withholding in academic science
• Issues related to patient safety

• Decision analysis with special emphasis on HIV disease
• Clinical epidemiology
• Quality of life research
• Studies of routine HIV testing

• Understanding barriers to effective primary care of chronic disease
• Controlled trials of new strategies to improve care

• Health Services research focusing on primary care delivery and care management of complex, socioeconomically vulnerable populations
• Primary care-integrated transitional care models for post-release prisioners
• The role of community health workers in primary-care integrated care management teams
• Physician quality reporting and potential impacts fo patient panel mix on physician quality ranking and pay-for-performance

• Risk adjustment methods for predicting cost and clinical outcomes of care
• Use of administrative data for assessing health care quality
• Health care experiences and outcomes of persons with disabilities.

• Quality of life measurement in oncology patients
• Health literacy barriers to care and outcomes measurement
• Health disparities
• Delivery of care in low resource settings

• Racial and ethnic disparities including language barriers and patient safety
• Quality measurement and improvement in hospital care
• The impact of health information technology on disparity reduction.

• Outcomes research related to benign and malignant diseases of the prostate gland with emphasis on functional status and on screening with PSA

• Etiology and prevention of type II diabetes, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular disease with a particular emphasis on genetic and biomarker approaches
• Quality improvement/disease management research in type II diabetes

• Development of decision support tools, such as patient decision aids, to support shared decision making
• Development and evaluation of decision quality instruments to measure the quality of decisions
• Implementation of shared decision making in primary and specialty care settings

• Physical activity and nutrition interventions
• Obesity prevention
• Metabolic syndrome
• Smoking cessation
• Depression

• Empirical and philosophical analyses of contemporary ethical issues in medicine
• Medical decision-making, video decision aids, health literacy
• Alzheimer's disease
• Health inequalities
• Improving decision making in end-of-life care

• Quality measurement, including adverse events
• Health policy; risk adjustment; access to care;
• Disparities and care of poor and underserved

Denotes faculty who have graduated from the Fellowship Program

Copyright © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College