University of Michigan Scholars

Oluseyi Aliu, M.D.
University of Michigan

Oluseyi Aliu, M.D. (VA Scholar) is currently a plastic surgery resident at the University of Michigan. He is a naturalized US citizen born and raised in Lagos Nigeria. He received a BA in biochemistry and molecular biology from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine at the Texas Medical Center. His research interests include devising ways to make more efficient use of capacity and expertise present in the current healthcare workforce in response to projected shortages, especially in primary care. He is especially interested in investigating the role task shifting or delegation can play in driving efficiency of use of healthcare workforce capacity.

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Katherine Auger
University of Michigan

Katherine Auger, M.D. is a pediatrician who completed her residency and a pediatric hospital medicine fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.  She received her undergraduate degree in Mathematics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and her medical degree at the University of Alabama School of Medicine.  She is interested in investigating the system factors that affect outcomes in hospitalized children, including determining how the outpatient setting influences inpatient care.

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Tammy Chang, M.D.
University of Michigan

Tammy Chang, M.D., M.P.H. is a family physician who completed her residency at the University of Michigan.  Her interests include using popular culture and media to improve health as well as investigating the relationship between the social determinants of health and current health policy. She received her Masters of Public Health in Health Management and Policy and Medical Degree from the University of Michigan. 

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Sidney Coupet, M.D.
University of Michigan

Sidney Coupet, D.O., M.P.H. is an Internal Medicine physician who completed his residency at Geisinger Medical Center. He completed a Masters in Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and his Medical Education at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine.  His research and professional interest surrounds the impact of Global Health on America’s Healthcare Professionals.  More specifically, he will investigate whether the utilization of an International Clinical Experience/ Rotation would influence physicians to choose primary care professions, encourage them to practice in underserved communities and/or influence their style of practice. He intends to use his findings to impact policy on medical education and practice.

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Adam Sharp, M.D.
University of Michigan

Adam Sharp, M.D. is an emergency physician who received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Utah.  He completed residency and was elected chief resident at Indiana University.  He is interested in quality improvement and cost containment for underserved populations visiting emergency departments.  In particular he is interested in evaluating violent injury prevention programs for adolescents through community based participatory research.

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Gordon Sun, M.D.
University of Michigan

Gordon Sun, M.D. (VA Scholar) completed residency at the University of Cincinnati Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery in 2011. He is interested in addressing inequalities, inefficiencies, and fragmentation within the current American healthcare system. His research will analyze various outcomes in the US veteran population diagnosed with head and neck cancer. Using specific knowledge gained during this research, he will work towards improving health policies within integrated healthcare networks such as the VA and pursue important public health initiatives both within the VA system and the general US population.

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Alan Teo, M.D.
University of Michigan

Alan Teo, M.D. is a psychiatrist who completed his undergraduate education at Stanford University, and medical school and residency at the University of California, San Francisco.  His research interests include the training of mental health clinicians and cultural aspects of psychiatry.  His previous research has examined the relationship between accuracy of violence risk assessment and level of training, and the description of a form of social withdrawal in Japan called hikikomori.  He hopes to further examine the influence of, and develop mental health interventions for, social isolation.  In addition, he plans to explore the relationship between type of clinical training and mental health outcomes.

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James Burke, M.D.
University of Michigan

Jim Burke, M.D. (VA Scholar) is a neurologist who completed residency and a stroke fellowship at the University of Michigan. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame and his medical degree from the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine. He is interested in understanding how physicians use the complex information acquired from modern diagnostic tests and improving decisions to order such tests.

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Zachary Goldberger, M.D.
University of Michigan

Zachary Goldberger, M.D. is a cardiology fellow at the University of Michigan Health System. He received his undergraduate degree in English and American Literature from Brown University, and his medical degree from Yale University School of Medicine.  He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington. He hopes to affect the development of clinical protocols and guidelines in costly and poorly-managed problems overlapping cardiology and other disciplines within general internal medicine. Specifically, his research interests center upon understanding the attitudes and experiences of patients receiving implantable cardioverter-defibrilators (ICDs), and creating a decision aid to enhance shared decision-making for patients receiving ICDs for primary prevention of sudden cardiac death. In addition, he is examining patterns of care in resuscitation during in-hospital cardiac arrest. His teaching interests center upon improving ECG literacy and cardiac physical examination skills in trainees.

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Adrianne Haggins, M.D.
University of Michigan

Adrianne Haggins, M.D. is an emergency medicine physician.  She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from University of Michigan and medical degree from Michigan State College of Human Medicine.  She completed her residency in emergency medicine at University of Chicago. Her research interests are access to care and improving long term health outcomes for inner city African-American populations with chronic diseases that utilize the emergency department.  Her goals include looking into examining ways to incorporate low cost interventions into the emergency department visit to improve not only patient’s health acutely, but that also improve on patient’s health literacy and management of their disease in the longer term.

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Stephen Patrick, M.D., M.P.H.
University of Michigan

Stephen Patrick, M.D., M.P.H. is a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow who completed his residency in Pediatrics at the University of Michigan.  He received his undergraduate degree in Microbiology from University of Florida and his medical degree from Florida State University College of Medicine.  He holds a Master of Public Health in Health Policy from Harvard University School of Public Health.   As a resident, his work focused on evaluation of resource allocation in the nation’s Medicaid program.  As a Clinical Scholar, he hopes to focus on healthcare financing and delivery to neonates.  He is especially interested in the long-term outcomes of neonatal ICU graduates.  In particular he hopes to investigate how insurance status and social determinates of health might have an effect on clinical outcomes.

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Erika Sears, M.D.
University of Michigan

Erika Sears, M.D. (VA Scholar) is currently a plastic surgery resident at the University of Michigan. She received her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University and her medical degree from the University of Michigan. Her research interests include decision-making in the surgical specialties, including both patient and provider factors. Specifically, she is interested in studying patient expectations and using decision analysis to evaluate competing treatment strategies.

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Nishant Sekaran, M.D.
University of Michigan

Nishant Sekaran, M.D. completed residency and a clinical teaching fellowship at the University of Washington, Seattle.  He received his undergraduate degree from the Human Biology, Health & Society program at Cornell, and his medical degree from Vanderbilt.  Dr. Sekaran's research and professional interests include improving the safety and quality of care for patients with complex chronic medical illness, population health planning, and the role of media in reducing health disparities and influencing health policy.

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Jennifer Walter, M.D., Ph.D.
University of Michigan

Jennifer Walter, M.D., Ph.D. is a pediatrician who received her bachelor's degree in Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.  She also completed her medical degree and PhD in Philosophy at Georgetown University.  Her dissertation was in political philosophy and developed a normative model for public discourse that relied upon a relational notion of autonomy.  Dr Walter completed her pediatrics residency at University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital.  Her research interests include improving communication between health care providers and patients with a focus on motivational interviewing and patient empowerment.  She is particularly interested in issues of communication with underserved communities and with discussions at the end of life. 

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Stephen Henry, M.D.
University of Michigan

Stephen G. Henry, M.D. (VA Scholar) is a general internist who completed residency at the University of Michigan and medical school at Vanderbilt University.  His research goals center around promoting patient-centered care and improving patient-doctor communication.  Some of his specific interests include improving pain management in primary care, advancing qualitative and mixed methods for studying doctor-patient interactions, assessing communication quality, and exploring the role of medical epistemology in clinical judgment and medical decision making.

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