A public health program in Croatia gets a boost from the Program for Physician-Educators

Dr. Zvonimir Sostar

The Harvard Macy Institute’s annual Program for Physician-Educators (PE) is designed to help leaders in academic medicine better educate the populations they serve: students, residents, fellows, and faculty. Dr. Zvonimir Sostar, a public health official in Zagreb, came to Boston with a slightly different challenge: educating the people of his city about a potent health risk.

Sostar, a neurosurgeon by training, directs the Office for Health, Labour, and Welfare in Zagreb. He has undertaken an initiative to educate the citizens of Zagreb about the health risks associated with Ambrosia artemisifolia and ultimately eradicate it from the city. According to Sostar, seasonal allergies represent one of the most prominent public health problems in Zagreb, affecting between 15 and 20 percent of the city’s population. Twelve groups of highly allergenic plants have been identified in Zagreb—the most troublesome of these is ambrosia. The last few years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people allergic to this plant, commonly known as ragweed.

Mr. Ragweed, designed by HMS’s Trudy Van Houten, will be the emblem of the public health program that appeals to children.

The first phase of the project will be targeted to physicians and biologists, who will take the lead in educating the community about ragweed. The second phase takes this initiative into the schools, where teachers will learn how to convey the problem to their students.

Participants in the Program for Physician-Educators are required to work on a project of their own design. Sostar, who attended the first half of the PE program in January, is the first Harvard Macy scholar to join the program in order to develop a public health project, which raises an interesting question: what does the PE program have to offer such a project?

The PE program focuses on helping faculty members develop new teaching methods, implement new course strategies and tools, and drive educational reform efforts across the continuum, among other goals. But most of the scholars who attend the two-part program come from undergraduate medical education programs, where they teach students using a combination of lectures, case discussion, and tutorials, or post-graduate medical education programs, where their focus might be on bedside teaching and addressing the ACGME competencies. Sostar’s initiative is not confined to any such setting, but rather is designed to capture the attention of the public.

Dr. Elizabeth Armstrong, director of the Harvard Macy Institute, said that although at first glace, Sostar’s project may not seem like an obvious fit for the PE program, a closer look at the overall goals of the Institute shows the opposite is true. “Isn’t it all about learning, and changing behavior through learning?” she said. “Education is a critical component of public health initiatives, and in that spirit, a project that aims to improve the health awareness of a population of citizens is in line with what we are trying to accomplish through both of our annual programs.”

Armstrong added that diversity is an integral part of the Harvard Macy Institute community, which continues to grow. “One of our major goals is to have a diversity of professions, experiences, and approaches to education represented in the Harvard Macy network,” she said. “Dr. Sostar’s innovative project, which cuts across many professions and includes multiple audiences, helps to broaden the range of learning opportunities that the Harvard Macy programs expose to scholars.”

Trudy Van Houten, PhD

Trudy Van Houten, PhD, lecturer in the HMS Program in Anatomical Education, was Sostar’s project group leader during the January program session. The public relations component of his project drew upon her skill as an artist, and she produced the “Mr. Ragweed” logo for Sostar’s anti-ambrosia campaign. “The other scholars in Dr. Sostar’s group helped him to develop the educational components of his project,” said Van Houten. “Once the group understood what he was trying to accomplish, they were very enthusiastic about the opportunity to build an educational program from scratch.”

Sostar’s “consultant team” of Harvard Macy scholars was made up of Michael Kappelman, M.D. (pediatrics) of Harvard Medical School, Stephanie Oberhaus, Ph.D. (microbiology) of Boston University School of Medicine, and Prathibha Varkey, MBBS (preventive and internal medicine) of Mayo Medical School. Dr. Felise Milan, associate professor of medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, was, in addition to Van Houten, a facilitator of the group’s activities. Both Van Houten and Milan are Harvard Macy Institute alumni.

Before the second half of the PE program convenes in May, Sostar plans to organize, in collaboration with Zagreb-area health care institutions, education programs for a number of groups: primary care physicians, allergy specialists, nurses, teachers, and younger citizens. His experience with the PE program demonstrates how the goals of the Harvard Macy programs extend beyond teaching and curriculum to the broader areas of leadership and effecting change. “Leading without authority and negotiation skills were two themes covered in the Harvard Macy program that will be of great help and importance in my future work,” said Sostar.