Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, who will also run the biology program, takes over at a time of unprecedented investment by the university.

02:10 AM EST on Thursday, December 2, 2004

BY FELICE J. FREYER
Journal Medical Writer

In an academic appointment with significance beyond the ivied walls, Brown University has chosen a new dean of medicine and biological sciences -- and challenged him to bring in more research money and coax cooperation from seven hospitals.

Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, the chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center, will take the helm of the Brown Medical School, the university's program in public health and its biology program on Jan. 18.

His appointment will resonate statewide because the medical school plays a central role in the health-care system. It attracts higher-quality doctors than would otherwise settle here and its doctors-in-training care for Rhode Islanders at local hospitals. Also, Brown researchers are critical to the state's push to build a biotechnology industry.

"It's going to be an adventure," the Isreali-born Adashi, 59, said of his new job during a visit to Brown yesterday. He said one of the position's attractions is the challenge of working with -- and harmonizing -- the diverse interests of the medical school's affiliated hospitals and faculty.

Adashi said that when he received the prospectus describing the Brown job about a year ago, he dropped it on his wife's desk, seeking her opinion. The verdict from Toni Adashi: "I think this job was created for you."

Adashi replaces Dr. Donald J. Marsh, who retired in July 2002. Dr. Richard W. Besdine has served as interim dean since then.

Brown Provost Robert J. Zimmer, who led the dean search committee, described Adashi as an eminent medical researcher who also has knowledge of public health, administrative experience and a "collaborative" leadership style.

Adashi will need all those skills, Zimmer said, to accomplish Brown's ambitious new agenda, which includes expanding the program in public health, getting hospitals with divergent interests to cooperate in joint research projects, and overseeing the writing of a new medical curriculum.

But, most likely, the new dean will also be buoyed by a sense of momentum as the university invests as never before in its 30-year-old medical school -- an institution that the Brown brass has only recently come to perceive as a key source of money and prestige.

"Everyone's excited right now," said Dr. Roy Aaron, professor of orthopedics and a member of the search committee. Aaron said he has not seen so much "dynamic activity among the hospitals and the university" in his 23 years in Rhode Island. "It's an exciting time. It bodes well for the new dean."

Journal photo / Kris Craig

At the University of Utah, Dr. Eli Y. Adashi built the obstetrics and gynecology program into one of the top recipients of federal research money.

Brown President Ruth J. Simmons announced in April that the university planned to invest $475 million in the life sciences over the next 10 years, including increasing laboratory space by 70 percent with the construction of two research buildings.

In Adashi's eight years at the University of Utah, his department became one of the top obstetrics-gynecology programs in the country, going from 32nd in the amount of money it received from the National Institutes of Health to reaching the top 10 for the past three years.

For Brown, which aspires to join the top quartile of medical schools in National Institutes of Health financing (and which currently ranks 40th -- in the middle of the second quartile), Adashi's grant-winning prowess "was definitely an important consideration," Zimmer said. "We wanted someone who could be very entrepreneurial at the interface of the medical school and hospitals."

Adashi said his office would take responsibility for identifying financing opportunities that might interest Brown researchers. He will also offer faculty assistance in seeking grants and incentives for doing so. And he'll bring people together to "dream up possibilities."

Central to this effort -- and probably his biggest challenge, Adashi acknowledged -- will be that often-testy "interface" with the hospitals.

The medical school is affiliated with Rhode Island Hospital and six other private hospitals. Some 800 doctors who have just graduated from medical schools around the country come to these hospitals for their residency training. Additionally, Brown has recruited nearly 500 doctors who do research and teaching, but who also work at the hospitals administering programs and caring for patients.

Unlike at other medical schools, which either own their teaching hospitals or employ the faculty who work there, most Brown faculty are in private practice or in large academic medical groups called foundations. The hospitals are often in competition with each other -- even if it means duplicating services -- making it difficult for Brown to marshal its hospital-based faculty for joint research efforts.

In such an environment, said George Vecchione, president and chief executive officer of Lifespan, the hospital group that encompasses three Brown-affiliated hospitals, "his particular skill set of being collaborative and trying to drive toward consensus will be very useful."

In the past, the dean's office has lacked the clout to corral the fractious hospital community and oversee its far-flung clinical faculty. But Brown has developed new affiliation agreements that better delineate the lines of authority and give the medical school greater control over quality.

The dean will be chief academic officer at each hospital. He will also get a $2.5-million-a-year discretionary fund, financed by the university and the hospitals, that he can use for faculty recruitment, research, or whatever he deems necessary.

The hospitals' willingness to fork over that money, Adashi said, is tangible evidence that times have changed in their relationship with the medical school. Additionally, hospital CEOs were on the search committee and "every step of the way, their input was sought," Adashi said.

The final ingredient, some say, will be Adashi's personality. "He's very sensitive," said John J. Hynes, chief executive officer of Care New England, a hospital group that includes two of Brown's affiliates -- Women & Infants and Butler. "He's very tuned in to dealing with people who have differences of opinion. He sort of embraces that -- he's stimulated by the opportunity to bring people together."

Adashi is working toward a master's degree in health-care management at the Harvard School of Public Health. His course work has brought him an intimate knowledge of the New England health-care marketplace, because the case studies were hospitals in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

As Brown's dean, Adashi said he will probably give up his own research, which has focused on ovarian cancer, ovarian function and infertility. In Utah, he headed the ovarian cancer program at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. He has written more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and more than 120 book chapters, and edited or coedited 13 books. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science.

Adashi earned his medical degree from the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University in Israel in 1973, and came to Boston the following year for residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at New England Medical Center. He did additional postdoctoral training in reproductive biology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine. He worked 15 years as director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Adashi's wife, Toni, was an actress at Habima, the Israeli National Theatre, and their son, Judah, is a composer studying at the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore. Judah Adashi is married to a physician.