249 Years Strong PS& SPRING/SUMMER 2016 Columbia Women at P&S 20th century pioneers in patient care Medicine and research Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons Alumni Profile Davida Cody’65, coal miner’s daughter, makes a difference MRSASTOPPING THE SUPERBUG • FROM THE DEAN ColumbiaMedicine Chairman, Editorial Board Thomas Q. Morris, MD Alumni Professor Emeritus of Clinical Medicine Dear Readers, Editor Bonita Eaton Enochs Visitors to our neighborhood this summer will be greeted with Science Editor the newest addition to our campus, our neighborhood, and the Susan Conova New York City skyline: the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center. Editorial Assistant We are enormously grateful to the Vagelos family Bayan Adileh and to all the donors who made this building Contributing Writers Jeff Ballinger Cecilia Martinez possible. Following its June 9 dedication, the Helen Garey Sharon Tregaskis building will be ready when the Class of 2020 Alla Katsnelson matriculates in August. Alumni News Editor Marianne Wolff, MD A virtual tour of the architectural vision of the building is available online at www.educationbldg. Alumni Writer Peter Wortsman cumc.columbia.edu/project/virtual-tour. Better Design and Art Direction still would be a visit in person to see how well the Eson Chan vision aligned with the final product. I invite you Editorial Board all to stop by the building the next time you are Alex Bandin’16 Stephen E. Novak MANHATTAN TIMES / MIKE FITELSON Ron Drusin, MD Carmen Ortiz-Neu, MD near campus. Kenneth Forde, MD Ajay Padaki’16 This new building symbolizes change, the very kind of change that Bruce Forester, MD Richard Polin, MD Benjamin French’17 Donald Quest, MD helps us measure the growth of our medical school and medical Oscar Garfein, MD Alan Schechter, MD center. At the same time that we celebrate this new building and the Sankar Ghosh, PhD John Schullinger, MD Lee Goldman, MD Elyse Seidner-Joseph, MD educational opportunities it will support, we also have started to reflect Angelina Gomes’16 Joseph Tenenbaum, MD on the medical school’s long, illustrious history as we begin planning Tom Hickernell, MD Emily Vail, MD for our 250th birthday in 2017. Our school’s geographic history in Jay Lefkowitch, MD Tyler Vestal’16 Lisa Mellman, MD Robert Zilinyi’17 many ways mirrors the development of Manhattan northward. After Stephen Nicholas, MD occupying several locations in downtown Manhattan, the school moved Columbia Medicine is published twice a year for alumni, faculty, students, to 23rd Street and what is now Park Avenue South in 1856; then to 59th and other supporters of the College of Physicians & Surgeons. It is published by the college and the P&S Alumni Association through the Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in 1887; and, in 1928, to 168th P&S Office of Communications. Additional content can be found in the Street and Broadway. The last move, which was the longest in terms online edition at columbiamedicinemagazine.org. of distance, was also the boldest because P&S joined Presbyterian Lee Goldman, MD Executive Vice President for Health and Biomedical Sciences Hospital in creating our historic partnership in education, patient care, and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine research, and community service that became known as Columbia- Catherine Freeland Presbyterian Medical Center. The medical center, built after Edward S. Associate Vice Dean Harkness and his mother, Mrs. Stephen Harkness, donated 22 acres Marketing and Strategic Communications College of Physicians & Surgeons of land in Washington Heights to Columbia University and Presbyterian Address correspondence to: Hospital, has grown and expanded in both size and scope over the Bonita Eaton Enochs, Editor years. Our boundaries now expand beyond those original 22 acres, Columbia Medicine College of Physicians & Surgeons and the new Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center is the latest, 630 W. 168th St., Box 27 but by no means the last, addition to our historical campus. New York, NY 10032 212-305-3900 Email: [email protected] With best wishes, Join the medical school’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/columbiaps Alumni should update their addresses by writing the Alumni Association at the address above or calling the alumni office at 212-305-3498. Faculty and staff should contact their departmental administrators to update their addresses, which are obtained Lee Goldman, MD, Dean through the Columbia University personnel system. [email protected] All others with address changes should contact P&S Communications at 212-305-3900. Vol. 36 No. 1 Spring/Summer 2016 in thisIssue departments features 12 Superbugs: Improving Citywide Surveillance and Our Understanding of Microbes By Alla Katsnelson P&S researchers seek ways to stop antibiotic-resistant bacteria. 20 2 Letters Women—Long Denied a Role at 4 P&S News 9 P&S—Helped 9 Clinical Advances Shape Medicine in • Fecal Transplants Are a Success the 20th Century for Kids with Severe C. Diff By Sharon Tregaskis • Helping Same Sex Couples Conceive As the 250th anniversary of • Neurosurgical Procedure Helps Columbia’s medical school Some Forms of Cerebral Palsy nears, Columbia Medicine profiles five of several 26 Alumni News & Notes women who were born between 1901 and 1920 • Profile: Davida Coady’65 and left an imprint on the school—and on medicine 36 In Memoriam beyond P&S—throughout Faculty and alumni who have died the 20th century. COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY R. PARULAN JR. / GETTY IMAGES. ARTICLE, PAGE 12. PS& letters Cover Art circumstances at that time (the Vietnam War, student unrest, etc.) there would I’m the husband of a Columbia-trained have to be students on the search committee. Four of us, one from each year, physician who went on to do cancer were placed on the committee and I was chosen by my classmates to represent research at an Ivy League school, then the Class of 1970. This turned out to be an incredible experience for all of us worked as an assistant dean at a medi- with drama, intrigue, a leak, etc. Dr. Herter had a key role in that process. cal school, and is currently the chief Henry M. Sondheimer’70 medical officer at a large women’s Via email hospital. Her sister is a surgeon who is also a bench researcher at an interna- Editor’s Note: Read more about Dr. Herter’s role on the 1967-70 search tionally respected institution, and she committee that chose Dr. Merritt’s successor in an article in one of next currently holds three RO1s and was year’s 250th anniversary issues. instrumental in creating a one-of-a- kind tissue bank for cancer research. Only the Names Have Changed The point of saying this isn’t that they’re great, it’s that despite their accom- I learned a lot from reading the current issue of Columbia Medicine [Fall/ plishments, as females they get much LESS respect and recognition in their Winter 2015], and it was enjoyable. However, I found myself struggling fields for what they do than their male counterparts. Your cover [Fall/Win- with page 6, because, although healthy in most respects, I am almost 83 ter 2015 issue] is a perfect example of this. and hardly au courant with academic medical matters in New York City, If the female on your cover picture was meant to be a surgeon it wasn’t especially those at “P&S,” my alma mater (Class of 1959). clear by her white nurses shoes (instead of clogs) and the lack of the white The first paragraph (“Chair of Pathology”) and the final three paragraphs coat that she earned. You offered that dignity to both males and then you on p. 6 (“Development SVP”) are the cause of my confusion, which has put the female at the back of the pack as if the men were carrying most of nothing to do with Professor Roth’s range of pathologic expertise. He is cer- the weight. It may sound picky but in the cancer research field white males tain to be a star academic and a busy man, chair of the P&S Department of used to be at the forefront carrying most of the weight. Many of them have Pathology & Cell Biology and pathologist-in-chief at an organization that been replaced by women. My wife once told me, “When I did clinical work, is new to me: NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. despite me having a white coat on, 90 percent of patients and staff treated Under an appointment reported at the bottom of page 6, I realize that I’m me like I was a nurse first and then I had to re-qualify myself almost every really “in deep water”; Ms. [Lynne] Roth has become the “senior vice presi- single time I met someone new.” Bias clearly exists, and it actually pervades dent for development” at “Columbia University Medical Center,” after a the industry from the top down. So whether it’s thrown at them by their top career at “NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.” male leaders, institutions, medical societies, magazines, or patients, it creates In my day, and for some decades thereafter, the Washington Heights an obstacle that female MDs are constantly challenged to overcome. medical “world” was known as Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Your cover doesn’t help; in fact it actually feeds the problem. Female Downtown on the east side were Cornell University medical school and physicians need to be recognized as the leaders in medicine that they are New York Hospital. Does the latter still exist? and you need to help break that bias rather than feed it. And with the Is there a document on file that explains, for medical folk “raised” on number of female physicians and world leaders that Columbia puts out, Washington Heights, how we got to where we appear to be? Is there truly if anyone should be at the forefront of killing these misperceptions, it an entity known as “New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical should be the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.