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New appointments

Leonard Zon, MD

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

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.”