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2024 Naffziger Society Resident and Fellow Research Travel Award

The Howard C. Naffziger Surgical Society (NSS) resolves to award an eligible Surgical Resident or Fellow who is part of the UCSF Department of Surgery postgraduate training programs recognition for research and scientific writing that is rigorous and worthy of academic dissemination. One $2000 prize will be awarded at the 2024 Surgical Research Day.  The goal of this award is to promote completion of research projects through publication in peer-reviewed journals. This is aligned with the Society’s mission to promote scholarship, connection, and mentorship between UCSF trainees, alumni, and faculty.

Eligibility:

  • The awardee must be a resident or fellow who is currently enrolled in a UCSF Department of Surgery Training Program and is in good standing to complete a categorical clinical surgical training program (in general surgery or a surgical subspecialty) or clinical fellowship.
  • The bulk of the research submitted must have been either conducted by the awardee at UCSF or have been performed with the endorsement of UCSF Department of Surgery Training Program (e.g – research performed at an outside institute as part of planned laboratory years)
  • It must be presented at UCSF Surgery Research Day (or have been previously presented)
  • The resident or fellow must register (free of charge) as a member of the NSS.
  • This inaugural $2000 award may be used for reimbursing eligible travel costs incurred in attending an academic surgical meeting. The award period extends until completion of the UCSF training program or for trainees in their final year, 1 year from the award announcement date. Educational costs must be accompanied by timely submission of receipts and follow NSS governing bylaws and training program policies for taking academic/professional development leave.
  • Final reimbursement must be accompanied by proof that the paper has been submitted for peer review.

Application Materials:

  • Attached one-page Application/Cover Sheet
  • NIH Biosketch or CV
  • Submission of an original academic manuscript that is either ready for submission, nearing completion in final draft form (apart from minor formatting) or has been submitted within the past calendar year for peer-reviewed publication. The manuscript should be submitted in a single double-spaced PDF format with figures, tables, references, and formatted appendices to follow with the author and coauthors redacted. Works that have been recently accepted within the past 3 years and have entered the publication phase will be considered.
  • Applications may be submitted with the subject line “NSS Travel Award” to help@naffzigersociety.org.

The application process for the 2024 NSS Travel Research Travel Award Opened March 7, 2024.

The submission deadline for applications is Midnight, PDT, April 8, 2024.

Nisha Parmeshwar, MD

1. How did you get interested in your research topic?

Early in my residency with a particular interest in reconstructive surgery, I started looking into outcomes of our breast reconstruction patients at UCSF. I noticed that despite many surgeons routinely giving extended courses of oral antibiotics to post-mastectomy patients after implant-based breast reconstruction, our data showed relatively high infection rates, as did the literature. It made us wonder about the utility of antibiotics then in truly protecting against infections, or potentially breeding resistance for more devastating, untreatable implant complications. The field of microbiome science is a novel way to study this problem which had never been seen before in plastic surgery, and our group hypothesized there could be individualized differences in the breast and gut microbiome of certain patients that could predispose one to develop an infection and/or to benefit from prophylactic antibiotics.  Given its broad application in all surgical fields I was extremely interested in helping to carry out our prospective randomized trial looking at the effect of prophylactic antibiotics on a patient’s microbiome, and breast reconstructive outcomes.

Similarly, I wondered about other ways to improve our outcomes, and was curious about the application of topical tranexamic acid (TXA), something that is used frequently off-label in aesthetic surgery and pediatric plastic surgery to decreased bleeding. I think it has the potential, with minimal associated risks, to improve hematoma and seroma outcomes in breast surgery. After systematically reviewing the literature for supporting evidence, I helped start a new trial looking at the use of topical TXA in breast reconstruction patients.

2. How did you select your research mentorship team?

    I was fortunate to find an incredibly supportive research mentorship team of amazing female role models. I started working with Dr. Merisa Piper from my intern year with a few clinical outcome projects in breast reconstruction, and those projects looking at our institutional outcomes really served as the foundation for our inquiries on how/what we could do to improve our complication rates.  I was then connected with Dr. Laura Esserman as a result of previous microbiome work she had done among breast cancer patients, and she helped foster more creative thinking and design of studies to help solve our clinical problems. Additionally, Dr. Laura Barnes who is a plastic surgery resident one year above me spearheaded the microbiome project from the ground up, inspiring me to continue in her footsteps with this trial, and start another looking at TXA.

    3. How will you incorporate your research into your future career goals?

    I am interested in academic reconstructive plastic surgery and my dedicated research year in residency helped me develop translational research skills required to ask and answer questions that could affect clinical change, while working with multi-disciplinary groups to solve complex problems in health care. I am excited about the possibilities for microbiome science, and hope to leverage knowledge of this innovative area in my career for improved outcomes in the future.

    Scott L. Hansen, MD, FACS

    Scott L. Hansen, MD, FACS, was born in Tacoma, Washington, and spent his childhood in various locations, including North Dakota, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Virginia. After completing high school, he initiated his college journey at Radford University and later transferred to George Mason University upon choosing a Pre-Med major. Dr. Hansen continued his education at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

    For his General/Plastic Surgery Training, Dr. Hansen chose UCSF as his destination. During this period, he undertook a significant 3-year NIH sponsored research fellowship with David Young in the SFGH Surgical Laboratory, focusing on the study of wound healing. Following the completion of his Plastic Surgery training, Dr. Hansen pursued a Hand and Microsurgery Fellowship at UCLA.

    In 2007, Dr. Hansen returned to UCSF, taking on the pivotal roles of Chief of Plastic Surgery at ZSFG and Chief of Hand Surgery at UCSF. His clinical interests encompass a wide range, including hand and wrist surgery, microsurgery, and the treatment of sports-related injuries. Notably, he serves as the Hand and Wrist Surgeon for the San Francisco Giants baseball team.

    Beyond his professional achievements, Dr. Hansen is happily married to Christyna and is a proud parent to four children, consisting of two girls and two boys. During weekends, he can often be found on the sidelines of various sports events, including basketball games, water polo matches, soccer fields, or swim meets.

    1. How did you get interested in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery? I became interested in Plastic Surgery during my first year at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS).  I was interested in getting a research project and was paired up with a Plastic Surgeon doing wound healing and microsurgery research. I began shadowing him in the Operating Room and was immediately awestruck with Microsurgical Reconstruction.  I was able to observe complex nerve reconstruction with Dr. Julia Terzis who was one of the worlds experts at that time.  As it turns out EVMS had an incredibly prestigious Plastic Surgery program in the 90’s thus I was exposed to a wide breath of faculty and diverse cases.  I knew then that I wanted to pursue plastic surgery.

    2. How were you inspired to train at UCSF and now become the Chief of Plastic Surgery?  Who was your primary mentor to achieve that position? When I was at EVMS, one of my mentors- Larry Colen, was a former UCSF Plastic Surgery resident and suggested that I do a Sub-I at UCSF.  I came to UCSF in 1996 for a Sub-I and was extremely impressed with the training program.  At that time Stephen Mathes was the Chief of Plastic Surgery and would become my mentor.  Dr. Mathes was a giant in the field of Plastic Surgery and inspired me to become an academic Plastic Surgeon. I was the first resident at UCSF to match into Plastic Surgery as an intern.  Up until me, UCSF only trained fellows who had completed General Surgery first.  After return from my fellowship at UCLA in 2007, I was further mentored by Dr. William Hoffman who helped me rise to be the current Chief of Plastic Surgery as of 2/2/2024.

    3. What are your current research interests and what are some topical areas future Plastic surgeons should be investigate? Me and my research team study disparities in health care, specifically the care of patients with hand infections who are marginally housed or homeless.  We are doing a number of studies though our outpatient clinic at ZSFG (OASIS Clinic). Other areas of interest include sports-related injuries, upper extremity trauma, complex spine reconstruction, groin reconstruction and the surgical management of suppurative hidradenitis.  Our team collaborates with faulty in Dermatology, Vascular Surgery and Orthopaedic/Neurosurgical Spine surgery.  There many areas of Plastic Surgery to explore.  These include global health initiatives, lymphatic surgery, robotic plastic surgery and gender-affirming surgery.

    PCSA 95th Annual Meeting

    The PCSA 95th Annual Meeting was held on February 9-12, 2024, at the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort & Spa. UCSF help an alumni dinner during the weekend and few Naffziger members were in attendance.

    Julie Ann Sosa, MD MA FACS

    BIOGRAPHY

    Julie Ann Sosa, MD MA FACS is the Leon Goldman MD Distinguished Professor of Surgery and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where she is also a Professor in the Department of Medicine and affiliated faculty for the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. Dr Sosa came to UCSF in 2018 from Duke. Her clinical interest is in endocrine surgery, with a focus in thyroid cancer. She is an NIH- and FDA-funded investigator and author of more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and 80 book chapters and reviews, all largely focused on outcomes research, health care delivery, hyperparathyroidism, and thyroid cancer, with a focus on clinical trials. She has authored or edited 7 books. Dr Sosa is the immediate Past-President of the American Thyroid Association (ATA) and serves on the Board of Directors/Executive Council of the ATA and International Thyroid Oncology Group; for the ATA, she is chairing the committee responsible for writing the next iteration of differentiated thyroid cancer guidelines. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the World Journal of Surgery and an editor of Greenfield’s Surgery: Scientific Principles and Practice. She has mentored more than 90 students, residents, and fellows, for which she was recognized with induction as a full member to the American College of Surgeons Academy of Master Educators in 2020, and by the ATA with the Lewis E. Braverman Distinguished Lectureship Award in 2017 and its Distinguished Service Award in 2022. She received the Chancellor’s Diversity Award in 2022 for the Advancement of Women at UCSF. Dr Sosa was born in Montreal and raised in upstate New York. She received her AB at Princeton, MA at Oxford, and MD at Johns Hopkins, where she completed the Halsted residency and a fellowship.

    1. How did you get interested in endocrine surgery? I spent 6 months during residency on the breast and endocrine surgery service at the John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospitals in Oxford as a specialist registrar and loved it. My Halsted residency training program made me into a pancreatic surgeon but I retooled myself into an endocrine surgeon – and I haven’t looked back!

    2. How were you inspired to become a Chair of Surgery and who was your primary mentor to achieve that position? I had the strong sponsorship and encouragement of other women leaders who I’d met through ELAM and (literally) on a bus at a surgical meeting who counseled and supported me along the way. Becoming Chair of Surgery at UCSF is my dream job, and I’m so thankful.

    3. You have had a rich and successful research history, what are your current research interests and clinical trials and what area should budding endocrine surgeons be investigating? I love science. My research interests have evolved over time. I continue to do health services research, now focusing more on things like the impact of paid sick leave on health care utilization, and multi-institutional registry work to better understand the natural history of a rare disease (medullary thyroid cancer). Our newest R01 is focused around trying to develop ways to effectively diversify the surgical work force.

    Research Resident Profile- Alexis Colley, MD

    1. How did you get interested in your research topic?

    I first became interested in patient-doctor communication prior to medical school when I was volunteering at a local hospital. There, I began to see the importance of communication in shared decision-making and wondered about how to make things better for surgical patients. Since medical school, my research interests have centered around the role of patient preferences for care and integrating ethics into clinical practice.

    In residency, I wanted to understand more about how to align patient preferences and goals with medical and surgical care, which led me to my interest in Advance Care Planning (ACP). ACP discussions can help align treatment intensity with patient preferences to balance the short-term risks vs. longer-term benefits of surgery and post-surgical complication management. I am particularly interested in the components of ACP that can facilitate a shared understanding of patient’s goals and preferences and how surgeons can incorporate that knowledge into their treatment recommendations.

    2. How did you select your research mentorship team?

    I am lucky to have an incredibly supportive multidisciplinary research mentorship team with Dr. Elizabeth Wick and Dr. Rebecca Sudore. I knew that I wanted to work with Dr. Wick because she is an expert in quality improvement, change management, and organizational culture as it applies to surgery. We were connected via our interest in ACP in surgery to Dr. Sudore, who is a geriatrician, palliative medicine physician, and clinician investigator. Dr. Sudore’s work has focused on improving ACP and medical decision making for culturally and ethnically diverse older adults. With their multidisciplinary expertise, Drs. Wick and Sudore have helped me to look at my research questions from varying perspectives. They have also supported me with my diverse professional interests, particularly advocating for me to take an additional professional development year to complete a clinical fellowship in Palliative Care.

    3. How will you incorporate your research into your future career goals?

    As a future colorectal surgeon, I see myself practicing in an academic setting where I can continue to work towards integrating palliative care and surgery both in my clinical work and in teaching the next generation of surgeons. Clinically, I plan to have a surgical practice focused primarily on caring for patients with colon and rectal disease, but given my interest in palliative care, I also see myself as caring for patients with a need for a surgical palliative procedure and/or complex decision-making for surgical care. I plan to continue working on improving communication between surgeons, the surgical care team, and patients, including expanding the use of goals and preferences, as well as integrating plain, patient-centered language into surgical consultation. 

    Research Resident Profile- Nathan Brand, MD

    1. How did you get interested in your research topic?

    My interest in global health has always been inextricably tied to my interest in global health. As a middle schooler I was introduced to medicine while accompanying my father on medical trips to Nicaragua. In medical school my interest evolved, and I became focused specifically on helping to improve outcomes of cancer patients in low income countries. At UCSF I worked with my mentors Dr. Jablons and Dr. Ozgediz to create a unique research experience spending one year focused on developing novel therapeutics to treat esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, a disease that primarily effects people in low-income countries, and the second year on the ground in Tanzania working on assess the surgical oncology capacity and case volume in Tanzania, a lower-middle-income country in East Africa.

    2. How did you select your research mentorship team?

    UCSF provided me with an incredible team of mentors with an impressive diversity of expertise. During my rotations as a junior resident, I was introduced to both Dr. Jablons and Dr. Ozgediz. Each mentor was an expert in a specific skillset I wanted to acquire during my research time. The flexible and collaborative culture of UCSF then made it possible for me to pitch to both a non-traditional research experience based partially in the US at a basic science lab and partially in Tanzania working at a medical university.

    3. How will you incorporate your research into your future career goals?

    In the future, I aspire to become an academic colorectal surgeon with a primary focus on delivering healthcare to underserved patient populations, both within the US and abroad. Through my research experience, I have honed the ability to integrate a scientific and systems-based approach to enhance cancer care. My goal is to contribute by developing innovative treatments and bolstering healthcare systems to ensure that every patient receives the quality medical attention they rightfully deserve.

      Research Resident Profile-Audrey Brown, MD MAS

      1. How did you get interested in your research topic?

      I got really interested in the multidisciplinary nature of treating hepatobiliary malignancies in medical school and wanted to focus my research years on a topic in that space.  I was also particularly interested in learning how to manage and analyze large-scale datasets, particularly those involving genomics data.  With the help of my primary mentor, Dr. Stock, I put together a project focused on identifying patterns of differential gene expression in cirrhotic liver parenchyma that are associated with Hepatocellular Carcinoma development, which provided the perfect opportunity to marry both of those interests.

      2. How did you select your research mentorship team?

      I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with truly excellent mentors from multiple different departments at UCSF.  My mentorship team included Dr. Peter Stock (Transplant Surgery), Dr. John Roberts (Transplant Surgery)., Dr. Zoltan Laszik (Pathology), Dr. Neil Mehta (Hepatology), and Dr. Emanuela Zacco (Laboratory for Cellular Analysis).  While completing a Masters degree in Biostatistics, I was also connected with Dr. Adam Olshen, who specializes in complex transcriptomics analyses and was extremely helpful in guiding my own analysis for this project.  

      3. How will you incorporate your research into your future career goals?

      In my future career, I hope to continue to focus on the applied use of transcriptomic analyses in clinical practice.  Several prognostic gene signatures are commonly used in treating patients with breast cancer and colon cancer and I would love to contribute to the devlopment of a similar test for patients with hepatobiliary malignancies.

      Naffziger Announces Jennifer Wang, MD, is the Society’s New Vice President

      The Naffziger Society is pleased to announce that Jenny Wang, MD is the society’s new Vice President. Dr. Wang completed medical school at Yale School of Medicine & during her residency at UCSF she received a Master’s Degree in Clinical Research, with a focus on outcomes in colorectal surgery. After residency she completed a colorectal surgery fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Wang said, “I spent my first 8 years in practice developing the colorectal surgery subspecialty at Kaiser Permanente San Jose and robotic colorectal surgery at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara”. Read her spotlight questions below:

      1. How did you get interested in colorectal surgery?

      I had first become  interested in IBD following a medical student experience taking care of a very ill teenage girl with UC . I saw her remarkable turnaround after having a total proctocolectomy and J pouch and became interested in surgery and Gi diseases.   Colorectal was one of my earliest rotations as an intern at UCSF and I really enjoyed everyone I worked with—they were kind, wonderful people and clearly excited about their work. As I worked more closely with Dr Varma as my research and career mentor, I met other colorectal surgeons at meetings and appreciated the great collegiality within this subspeciality.

      2. How you achieved that interest and then evolved it into your current position & Diversity , among other roles?

      I worked with Dr. Varma during my research with a focus on pelvic floor diseases and also patient quality of life related to colorectal disease, leading me to pursue fellowship training for colorectal. What I enjoyed most about this subspecialty was the variety of cases (anorectal disease to abdominal operations, open and minimally invasive cases) and also the variety of patients young and old, healthy and sick. I appreciated that most colorectal disease was curable, even earlier stage cancers, and also many surgical treatments could bring signficant improvement in quality of life to patients.

      3.  Advice to Naffziger members who may want to pursue hospital or medical school leadership positions?

      My advice is to continue throughout your career to stay actively involved, not only in patient care but also finding opportunities within your medical system to participate in or lead projects, small or large. Whether you are in academics, community hospital, or group practice, find projects that excite you—whether it is at the local or national level to improve patient care, education, or enhancing relationships among colleagues. It can be easy to fall into a routine of just getting the day to day done, so look beyond the everyday tasks to see the broader picture.