Richard Pels, MD
Director, Internal Medicine Residency
Cambridge Health Alliance

Assistant Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School

Dr. Richard Pels trained at Cambridge Hospital (now CHA) and completed two Harvard Medical School fellowships in General Internal Medicine as well as medical education. As Program Director since 1994, he has been widely recognized as a superb teacher, preceptor, and mentor.

In 1999, Dr. Pels became Director of Graduate Medical Education at CHA, with responsibility for overseeing all CHA training programs. In 2005, he became Associate Director for the Harvard Medical School Primary Care Internal Medicine week-long continuing education course. He was recently honored for his years of dedication to education as recipient of Harvard Medical School’s 2008 Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award (learn more).

Over his career, Dr. Pels has published on a broad range of medical education topics in many journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and Academic Medicine. His current interests in medical education relate to integrating experiential learning in quality improvement and public health training into the residency curriculum (learn more).

Dr. Pels serves as a role model for many aspiring physicians who seek to combine their passion for social justice with their medical careers. In the early 1990’s, he was awarded a Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship, which he used to study displaced peoples in Central America, eastern Europe, and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. He is currently very active in Physicians for Human Rights with a particular interest in assisting torture victims.

Maren Batalden, MD
Associate Residency Director
Cambridge Health Alliance

Instructor in Medicine
Harvard Medical School

Dr. Maren Batalden came to medicine after a brief stint as a public high school English teacher, an MPH, and a few years designing and evaluating community based youth violence prevention programs.

After completing medical school at Harvard, and an internal medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Batalden was thrilled to join the CHA faculty as a hospitalist in 2004. CHA - with its public health mission, commitment to caring for the whole patient, and spirit of innovation in teaching and learning – is a perfect fit.

Medical students and residents value Dr. Batalden as a creative and committed educator and excellent clinical role model. In her first year on the faculty, she was honored by residents as Teacher of the Year and the following year accepted an Associate Program Director position. As a Harvard medical education fellow, Dr. Batalden crafted an innovative service learning program for the residency.

In 2007-8, Dr. Batalden received a prestigious Harvard Medical School-sponsored Miles and Eleanor Shore Faculty Scholar Award to support her work in developing practical methods to evaluate clinical competence of students and residents.

Dr. Batalden also nurtures an interest in reflective practice and the interface between medicine and narrative. She completed a Harvard Medical School fellowship in ethics and has for several years taught a literature and medicine course in the school’s Division of Medical Ethics. She co-facilitates a reflective monthly seminar for CHA residents entitled, “Food for the Soul."

Pieter Cohen, MD
Associate Residency Director
Cambridge Health Alliance

Instructor in Medicine
Harvard Medical School

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Dr. Pieter Cohen became interested in the interplay of the environment and human health while trapping red side-necked turtles in Amazonia. Without health insurance, a subsistence farmer was required to sell his only mahogany tree to pay for his child’s appendectomy. This story and many others like it led Dr. Cohen to pursue a career in Internal Medicine devoted to caring for the underserved.

Dr. Cohen is the Associate Program Director and Director of Ambulatory Education at CHA. His innovative ambulatory programs have included redesigning continuity clinic, creating a required core ambulatory didactic series for residents, and spearheading the introduction of a novel year-long tutorial for third year Harvard Medical Students. His educational work has been featured at plenary sessions at national meetings including at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Society for General Internal Medicine (SGIM) and Association for Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM).

Dr. Cohen's teaching is highly respected by students and residents. He received the 2007 Society for General Internal Medicine's New England Regional Medical Educator Award and the 2009 Harvard Medical School Charles McCabe Prize for Excellence in Clinical Teaching (learn more about Dr. Cohen's teaching).

Dr. Cohen's clinical research involves adulterated dietary supplements (learn more in NEJM) and immigrant healthcare. Dr. Cohen is actively involved in educating the public and has contributed his expertise to reports of adulterated dietary supplements in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio (podcast), Popular Science, and CBS.

In our local community, Dr. Cohen's research has demonstrated the high prevalence of use of imported amphetamine-based diet pills among Brazilian immigrants (learn more). Dr. Cohen also works closely with the local Brazilian community as an educator of Brazilian health volunteers as well as a regular contributor to community print, radio, and television programs. His recent educational work has focused on obesity, domestic violence, and mood disorders, all pressing health issues among the immigrant community.