A cure for pain
Pain is good. It’s what keeps a person with a broken leg from walking
on it. Pain is the signal that tells someone to pull his hand away from a hot stove. But sometimes this helpful system goes into overdrive, and pain lingers, instead of disappearing with the injury or disease that produced it. It can persist for months beyond its original cause, taking on a life of its own. Today, doctors consider such chronic, or persistent, pain a disease in its own right. And it’s a global problem. HMI World takes a look at what we are learning about the origins of pain, and what we might be able to do in the future to alleviate it.

HMI and Dubai Healthcare City launch Harvard Medical
School Dubai Center
The Harvard Medical School Dubai Center is part of a strategic collaboration to make Dubai a center of excellence for health care delivery, academic medicine, and research.

HMI and partners combat HIV/AIDS epidemic in China
As the number of infected in China approaches one million, frontline health care providers gather to learn the latest in care
and prevention.

First graduates of
emergency medicine
program in Italy now
ready to teach others

Enhancing knowledge to support the system:
Practi-Med goes to
Shanghai

HMI confers third
Klaus Peter International Teaching Award

Research and education to be focus of collaboration with XMU

Distance learning: Exchange programs
let students build knowledge, perspective

Program for leaders focuses on sustaining the academic mission
Complexity, disruption, culture, and vitality—
these are just a few of the concepts that leaders in academic medicine are thinking about while working to create environments where teaching and safe clinical practice thrive in tandem.

Upcoming courses
and events
AAMC Harvard Macy Institute
Annual Reception
Nov. 7, 2004
Washington, DC

Program for Physician-Educators
Jan. 9-19 and May 15-20, 2005
Boston, MA
Deadline to apply: September 10, 2004

Harvard Macy Institute website is online
Visit the site at www.harvardmacy.org

Women and depression
Harvard Mental Health Letter

Timing, target critical
for cholesterol-
lowering statins
Harvard Heart Letter

Hormone replacement, the male version
Harvard Health Letter

Treating depression: Update on antidepressants
Harvard Women's Health Watch

Mercury on the brain
Harvard Magazine

Brain aging found to
start at 40
Harvard Gazette

Damaged genes in
aging human brain
provide clues to
cognitive decline
Children’s Hospital
Boston

Study of proteins
offers insights into
organization of
biological networks
Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute