A. Stone Freedberg Fund for Student Research
Benefactor Report
October 2025
Letter From
the Dean
October 31, 2025
Dear Dr. Freedberg,
Thank you for your and your family’s generosity to the Scholars in Medicine program at Harvard Medical School through the A. Stone Freedberg Fund.
The Fund supported 12 students during the 2024–2025 academic year. Their projects encompassed a wide range of subjects, from trials of new wound-care methods to studies of lymphoma and ankle-fracture treatment. This report contains information about each student and their mentors, and highlights one student’s project—a study of patient perceptions of physician empathy in dermatologic care—in greater detail.
For more than forty years, gifts from the Freedberg family and your friends and colleagues have immersed HMS students in the methods and tools of medical research, introduced them to mentors who have helped shape their careers, and provided them with unique opportunities to study a diverse range of research subjects. Thank you for your support. I hope you and your family continue to enjoy learning about the young physician–scientists whose careers you have helped launch, and I send you my best wishes for the fall.
With sincere gratitude,
George Q. Daley, MD, PhD
George Q Daley, MD, PhD | Dean of the Faculty of Medicine | Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine
25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115 | t: (617) 432-1501 | e: George_Daley@hms.harvard.edu
SCHOLARS IN MEDICINE
The HMS Scholars in Medicine Program provides every Harvard medical student with the opportunity to pursue a mentored scholarly experience analyzing a medical or health-related question, issue, or problem in depth. Students can approach issues through a wide range of disciplines in the biomedical sciences, clinical sciences, humanities, arts, or other fields. The following information about the projects students undertook in the 2024–2025 academic year reflects the varied interests of our students. Thank you for your support as we continue to inspire, and be inspired by, the next generation of dedicated physician–scientists.
Nadean Alnajjar, Class of 2027, "Analyzing Patient Perception of Physician Empathy in Dermatology Outpatient Visits: A Single-Institution Study" (Mentor: Vinod Nambudiri, MD, MBA, EdM)
Priya Amin, Class of 2026, "Characterizing Patterns of Recurrence after Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation with Total-Body Irradiation for Leukemia" and "Tackling Stigma with Storytelling: A Leprosy Documentary and Global Health Project" (Mentor: Raymond Mak, MD)
Nancy Anabaraonye, Class of 2027, "Efficacy of 0.25% Timolol Gel in Healing Surgical Open Wounds: A Randomized Trial" (Mentor: Abigail Waldman, MD)
Tomas Aramburu, Class of 2027, "Prognostic Implications of Copy Number Variants in Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma" (Mentor: Elisa Aquilanti, MD)
Kaleigh Beacham, Class of 2027, "Transcriptomics of Social Defeat in Humans and Nonhuman Animals" (Mentor: Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, MD)
Twisha Bhardwaj, Class of 2027, "Data-Driven Neuroethics for Consciousness Detection (DECODE): A Survey of Clinician Perspectives on Clinical Translation of Advanced Neurotechnologies in Disorders of Consciousness" (Mentor: Michael J. Young, MD, MPhil)
Anjali Chakradhar, Class of 2027, "Systematic Review of Emerging Technologies in Vascularized Composite Allotransplantation" (Mentor: Simon G. Talbot, MD)
Michael Chen, Class of 2027, "Clinical Characteristics Driving Hospitalization among Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma Patients: A Six-Year Retrospective Cohort Study" (Mentor: Steven Chen, MD, MPH, MHPEd)
Owais Fazal, Class of 2026, "Evaluating Clinical and Surgical Characteristics Associated with the Pars Plana Vitrectomy to Repair Retinal Redetachments " (Mentor: Nimesh Patel, MD)
Fielding Fischer, Class of 2027, "Clinical and Radiographic Outcomes of Deltoid Ligament Repair During Operative Fixation of Bimalleolar Equivalent Ankle Fractures" (Mentor: Arun Aneja, MD, PhD)
Ben Grobman, Class of 2026, "Predictors of Non-Arrival at Initial Study Screening Visits among Black Adults: Data from the GoFresh Trials," "Perceived Discrimination and Cardiometabolic Health in Mid-Life Women: Results from the Project Viva Cohort," and "Supine Hypertension Is Associated with Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality in the Absence of Seated Hypertension: Results from the Cardiovascular Health Study" (Mentor: Stephen P. Juraschek, MD, PhD)
Len Ho, Class of 2027, "Pleasure-Informed Care" (Mentor: Alex Keuroghlian, MD) [continuing support for 2023–2024 project]
Harvard MD students present their research projects at the 85th annual Soma Weiss Student Research Day (March 18, 2025) in the Tosteson Medical Education Center Atrium.
2024–2025 Awardees
In 2022, Nadean Alnajjar became, alongside Amal Altareb, one of the first two Yemeni-American women to graduate from Yale University
Studies have shown that patients who find their health care providers to be empathetic experience a higher quality of life and are more likely to adhere to their prescribed treatment; empathy is foundational to the physician–patient relationship. However, patient-perceived empathy depends on multiple demographic factors. For example, minority patients report lower-quality interactions with their physicians than non-minority patients do.
Nadean Alnajjar’s study is the first to investigate patient perceptions of empathy during dermatology visits specifically. Her single-institution, cross-sectional study sought to elucidate how demographic factors affect patient–provider communication in outpatient dermatologic encounters, and where gaps in delivering empathetic care exist. Recruiting patients on a rolling basis, her team employed the Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) Measure, a well-established survey metric, to evaluate variances in perceived empathy among different demographic groups in dermatologic consultations.
Alnajjar’s team collected completed survey responses from 303 patients receiving care in Brigham and Women’s dermatology outpatient clinic. No statistical difference in CARE responses
were found when stratifying patients by gender or age, but there were notable discrepancies in scores when considering race. Black respondents scored their providers lower than their white and Latino counterparts did, particularly in the “whole person interest,” “full comprehension of concerns,” “positivity,” “clear explanation,” and “plan of action” categories, and this remained a statistically significant difference when comparing the responses of Black female and white female patients. There were no statistically significant differences in empathy scores among Asian, Latino, and white patients. While the study was limited by the relatively low number of non-white survey respondents (just over 70% were white), the findings suggest that Black patients perceive their dermatologists to be less empathetic than other patients do. This reaffirms the need for further research focused on understanding the role of patients’ race and background in their clinical experiences to improve empathy-centered dermatologic care.