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Zon heads stem cell program
Leonard
Zon, MD, one of the hospital’s Howard Hughes
Medical Institute Investigators, was recently named Director of
Children’s new interdisciplinary Stem Cell Research Program.
Zon came to Children’s in 1987 as a research fellow in the
lab of Stuart
Orkin, MD, who is currently the Chairman of Pediatric
Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He has spent the last
17 years studying blood development, stem cells and cancer. Zon
says his primary goal for the new program is to “investigate
the basic biology of stem cells with a mandate to use this knowledge
to develop therapies for the treatment of childhood diseases.”
New MEHC medical director
David
Holder, MD, MPH, has been appointed medical director
of the Martha Eliot Health Center after serving as interim director
since August. He has been a physician at the center since 1997,
and has served as the Director of Adolescent Services for almost
three years.
Holder also is the Director of the Harvard Mentoring Project at
the Center, which pairs second-year medical students with inner-city
pre-teens. This January he received the Children’s Hospital/YMCA
Black Achiever Award for his commitment to community service for
youth. His research interests include determining the contributing
factors of adolescent resilience, preventive health in inner-city
populations, and the importance of spirituality and religion in
the lives of African American urban youth.
“I’d like to see the Martha Eliot more intimately involved
with health education and motivation in the community,” says
Holder. “There are long-standing and deep-seated problems
with obesity, diabetes, asthma and substance use that I hope to
continue to address.”
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