The Maryland ACP Chapter is excited to share a few highlights from some of our recent activities.
2025 Maryland Annual Scientific Meeting
The Maryland ACP hosted our Annual Scientific Meeting January 24-25, 2025 with the theme Clinical Internal Medicine – Our Enlarging Role in Patient Care, and we're excited to share some highlights from our weekend.
Doctors Dilemma & IronMed Competition
Our Doctors Dilemma has been part of this meeting for over 25 years. This year, there were 11 teams including one from the Walter Reed program. As always an exciting all afternoon event featuring the knowledge of our residents. We are pleased to note that University of Maryland, Midtown Campus were our first place winners with Drs. Amin Abedini, Varun Lakhmani, and Smriti Gupta. The MHIM team took second place, with Drs. Yakubu Bene-Alhasan, Jerome Nelson and Anish Shrestha. Our third place team was the Walter Reed Team with Drs. Thomas Chameli, Jake Cresta, and Micayla Menchel. Congratulations to all of our teams including our state’s newest residency program at TidalHealth Peninsula, trekking 3 hours to come to participate! We are delighted to have the strong support of all of our programs in this contest.
Additionally, we want to thank our Dr. Jeff Gray IronMed chief residents from Walter Reed who spent much time to make the questions both informative and interesting! Congrats as the winners of this year's Governor's Service Award for their outstanding assistance for over 10 years in making the contest function.
This year, our IronMed Competition included our First Place winner Dr. Yakubu Bene-Alhasan from MHIM, and Second Place winner Dr. Smriti Gupta from University of Maryland, Midtown Campus program.
Workshops & Special Events
Once again our special events were not only well attended but brought to our audience a variety of activities for them to attend. These events included a Speed Mentoring Breakfast, Student corner and then interesting and informative sessions on well being and financial well being with featured speakers Drs. Mukta Panda and Stanley Liu. Again, we hope that you take the opportunity to view some of the pictures below.
Presenters
Our Program committee begins to plan this meeting in July and the depth of this year’s presenters certainly shows this. We hope that you will take this opportunity to view some of these pictures and also send your thanks to our presenters.
Awards Reception
Please send your congrats and kudos to the following winners. It was once again a difficult task for our Awards committee to select from so many wonderful candidates. Please see awards and names below. Also see the pictures featuring Dr. Ali Afrookteh’s Monacacy Jazz Band which always makes this a quality reception.
2025 Maryland Chapter Awardees
Melvin S. Blanchard, MD, MACP – Diversity & Inclusion Award
Joseph Cofrancesco, Jr., MD, MPH, FACP – Theodore E. Woodward Award for Medical Education
Rameen J. Molavi, MD, FACP - Samuel P. Asper Award for Excellence in Internal Medicine
Christopher J. Haas, MD, PhD, FACP - Mary Betty Stevens Award for Clinical Research
Christina Koch, MD - Early Career Physician Award
Gail Berkenblit, MD - Mid-Career Physician
Evelyn W. Gathecha, MD, FACP - Hospitalist Award
Jyotsna Gummadi, MBBS, FACP - Volunteer Award
Steven J. Kravet, MD, MBA, FACP - Mary Newman Advocacy Award
Lauren Bernard - Mackowiak Student Achievement Award
Dr. Jeff Gray, Ironmed Competition - Governor's Service Award
2025 Williams Student Conference - An Amazing Day For All
Our Williams Student Conference for the Mid-Atlantic Region was one of our most well-attended and engaged events held since we began hosting this meeting. There were over 80 in attendance at this meeting. We had students from across the region and from as far away as India, many presenting posters for the very first time. There were over 40 posters presented at this year’s AUA Poster Competition (see below the list of winners). The conference also featured several presentations from lecturers to Story Slams presented by students and a mentoring luncheon allowing students to discuss with our faculty some of their concerns and issues.
We also hosted the Dr. Jeff Gray IronMed Competition presented by Walter Reed Chief Residents which allows students to flex their medical knowledge with 12 questions provided for the contest. The day ended with a Student Dilemma with 8 teams participating in this event. Thanks to our Judges, Drs. George Lawrence, Mirian Michael, Dobbin Chow (Judge and Presenter), Thomas Horton, Ravitej KhunKhun (Judge and Presenter), Dave Weisman, Hari Devkota, Janaki Deepak (Student Dilemma Advisor), and Sapna Kuehl (Presenter). Special thanks to our 3 CRAB co-chairs this year, Drs. Rachel Hall (Luminis); Sakthi Gautham (MHIM) and Jayashrei Sairam (GBMC) who spent the entire Saturday with us and helped with all of the events from judging posters to being an important part of our Student Dilemma. Congratulations to all who participated in these many events and the conference. We hope to see everyone there again next year!
We are very pleased to announce the winners from our Clinical Vignette, Research, Iron Med and Student Dilemma contests
Clinical Vignette
1st Place
Khush Joshi – The Painless Paradox – GMS Surat
2nd Place
Ahmad Bahay, Radiologic Gadolinium Contrast – AUA
Research
1st Place
Lauren Russell – Medical Student Initiative to Improve Patient Experience – Johns Hopkins
2nd Place
Kyle Gunzy – Development of Safer CAR T Cells for Ewings Sarcoma – UMSOM
Iron Med
1st Place
Shawn Meepagala - Howard University
2nd Place
Gabriel Zabala – AUA
Student Dilemma
1st Place
Johns Hopkins – Lauren Russell, Sahithi Madireddy, Tarek Zieneldien, Lisa Young, Sophia Ma
2nd Place
UMSOM – Team 1 – Lauren Bernard, Cameron Amini, Ryan Lashgari, Apursa Raghu, Lila Berle, Kevin Xu, Ria Jha
3rd Place
UM/Midtown
Jashneet Pabila, Ashley Bersma, Gabriel Zabala, Morgan Osborne, Mackenzie Rod
Our Williams Student Conference was a major success this year. However, we could not do this without the assistance of all of our amazing judges and presenters.
IM 2024 Boston, Massachusetts
The Maryland ACP was very well represented at this meeting and our chapter received some very nice kudos including:
- Being mentioned at the Board of Governors (BOG) as having an International Medical graduate committee since 2009 with so many varied activities and workshops being provided by them.
- Recognition of Drs. Melvin Blanchard & Lisa Cooper become masters of our national ACP as well as our Maryland chapter.
- Hosting a very well attended joint reception with DC & Virginia with over 130 members in attendance.
- Cohosting with 10 other chapters an IMG reception at the IM24 meeting.
- Having our Doctors Dilemma team from the University of Maryland/VA Campus make it to 2nd place this year – the closest we have ever come to being crowned champions (and the first time that UMMC/VA has represented us at the Dilemma).
- Being awarded an Evergreen award for our amazing Resident Soccer Tournament with 8 teams this year and over 100 residents and students in attendance – it just keeps getting bigger and better.
Book Club
The WISE group of Senior members hosted a Book Club featuring the author, Patricia Merisol, who has written a wonderful biography about Dr. Helen Taussig from her childhood onward including all of her struggles and achievements. The Book Club is usually held at various homes of our senior group but is always open to EVERYONE!
2024 Mulholland Mohler Residents Meeting
The MD ACP was once again able to host an outstanding Mulholland Mohler Residents meeting on May 9, 2024 at St. Agnes Hospital. Ascension SAH graciously allowed us to host this meeting even after being cyber attacked with much disruption to their program. We had almost 200 research and clinical vignette posters, 20 oral presentations, the Profiles in Excellence awards as well as having 3 contests being judged throughout the day. Our keynote speaker, Dr. Steve Sisson presented a thought-provoking address on failure that was geared for our students and residents. Thanks to all who were part of this meeting from our super judges, judge leaders, Chief Resident group, oral moderators, and clerkship students at SAH.
Please save the date for our 2025 Mulholland Mohler Residents Meeting: May 1, 2025
Special Thanks to all of our state’s residency programs who not only allowed their Chiefs to participate in the Chief Resident competition by acting as judges but also made sure that we had wonderful Profiles In Excellence Video.
Leadership Day 2024
Over 20 Maryland members from students to residents to practicing physicians attended Leadership Day this year. This was the largest contingency we have ever had attend and hope this will continue in the future. Several items were discussed with our Maryland Congressional delegation including changes to the current drug STEP program, and the need for additional residency slots to ensure that the pipeline of IM docs continues to grow.
Story Swaps
On the second Thursday of each month, our MD ACP Wellness committee chaired by Dr. Hari Devkota, hosts Story Swap from 7:00 to 8:00 PM. Each Swap discusses a theme, and they range from Gratitude to Burnout and Recovery. You are able to share your 5 minute story and also receive feedback from those in attendance. Some stories are powerful and other are funny, but all are amazing and it is rejuvenating to be part of this incredible community. We hope you will join us for an hour that makes you feel so much better after hearing all the shared stories.
On The Road With Wellness
Dr. Devkota, our MD ACP Wellness chair, was able to take our wellness activities “On the Road” with a session for hospitalists at the Carroll County General Hospital. He provided some statistics and insight into ways to deal with burnout and gratitude. Those in attendance seemed to not only enjoy the lovely sandwiches provided by the chapter, but also the opportunity to discuss ways to cope with burnout, and gratitude. Look for additional “On the Road” workshops – and if you would like one at your hospital or physician’s offices, please be sure to contact Maryellen our chapter staff at mew4work@aol.com
Volunteering
Meals On Wheels
The Volunteer committee co-chaired by Drs. Panagis Galiatsato and Joytsna Gummadi was able to have a group of volunteers participate early on a Saturday morning at Meals on Wheels in Canton, MD. Almost 25 volunteers were in attendance at this activity, and we were able to do several useful projects in order to assist with the over 2500 meals needed each day for folks in the metropolitan area. We packed both hot and cold meals as well as ensuring that all were ready to go for the trucks to roll out. Meals on Wheels is just one of the many places our volunteers have donated their time so far.
Light House Homeless Prevention Support Center in Annapolis
In September, our Volunteerism group took their activities “on the road” to Annapolis, Maryland for a Health Fair that provided information on a number of topics from Blood pressure exams to diet and exercise. The residents at the shelter were also provided with hand outs and some healthy snacks as part of this activity. Residents from Luminis Health in Annapolis were able to help support our practicing physicians providing tips and information to those in attendance.
We plan to have a volunteer activity every 2 to 3 months, so please be on the look out for additional flyers as the year progresses.
Early Career Physicians and Senior Groups Mixer
Our first ever mixer sponsored by these two groups was held in June with over 40 in attendance from students to practicing physicians. We also had several children in attendance as we offered childcare for parents to be able to attend. Dr. Sujay Pathak, an amazing musical artist and practicing internist, was kind enough to provide the musical portion to this program. We not only had great food but some fun in playing an ACP bingo as well as allowing for some wonderful social and mentoring to take place. What a nice way to kick off summer!
Student Interview Workshop
This annual event provides the opportunity for medical students to get a broad range of information and knowledge to assist them during their upcoming interview process. We have both community and academic program directors providing information on pre, post and of course the day of the interview. The students all come away with some tipis that are helpful to them during this difficult process.
Board Course Review
For the past three years, our very active members of the Maryland ACP, Drs. Janaki Deepak and Ravitej KhunKhun, have co-chaired and moderated the ACP Board Course Review held in Pentagon City with over 300 on line and in person in attendance. The co-chairs have had speakers from our Maryland area present on a variety of subjects that encompasses 8 to 10 hour days for an entire week. It is a truly a tremendous undertaking for the co-chairs and was once again a tremendous success. Kudos to the co-chairs and our Maryland speakers!
CRAB- Chief Residents Association Of Baltimore
Chief Residents Association Of Baltimore (CRAB) Kick Off Meeting
Our Chief Residents Association of Baltimore (CRAB) hosted their “kick off” meeting for the new calendar year in August. A slate of activities is available on the CRAB webpage. The group is also hoping to sponsor a new Residents committee for those residents in their 2nd year of training to support activities suggested by this newly formed group.
CRAB Soccer Tournament
The CRABs recently hosted their annual Soccer Tournament, which gets bigger each year, with 7 teams participating with at this year's event along with the many “cheerleaders” in attendance. Kudos to the Ascension St. Agnes Team for coming in first place and the MHIM (Medstar Health) for being our second place winners. This event provides so many different goals from socialization among our programs to wellness as part of this contest.
Historical CPC
In May our Senior group had the opportunity to attend the Historical CPC(Clinicopathological Conference) at the University of Maryland. Each year for the last 25 years, Dr. Philip Mackowiak presents a CPC that highlights a famous name in history. This year's presentation was on Buddha. Our very own Dr. Colleen Christmas presented the facts surrounding Buddha's demise with very little information to review. We were able to see the presentation that is always interesting with the audience this year including some Buddhist priests. The group was also able to tour Davidge Hall which has an amazing history.
