During the past few years, the topic of physician burnout has come to the forefront. While it was a problem long before the COVID-19 pandemic, the global health crisis exacerbated feelings of burnout among all frontline health workers. This issue of Medicine@Brown explores how alumni and faculty have dealt with burnout and discusses what The Warren Alpert Medical School is doing to address and prevent it.

Central to our strategy is the work of Kelly Holder, PhD, chief wellness officer for the Division of Biology and Medicine. Dr. Holder is a member of my senior leadership team and her input and expertise are integral to every decision we make. While we work to change systems and alleviate pressure points on our faculty, staff, and students, we are also helping our students and trainees develop personal resiliency and advocacy so that they can be successful wherever they go on to practice.

Along with wellness, we continue to focus on research and facilities, most notably the Integrated Life Sciences Building (ILSB). The ILSB will vastly increase available space for biomedical research. The architects are meeting with stakeholders this fall to develop a design for the building, which will house laboratories for our anchor programming (e.g., cancer, brain science), cross-cutting technologies (e.g., RNA, biomedical engineering), and human subjects research.

We are also continuing to add new researchers to the Division, focused on anchor programs including aging, cancer, immunity and infection, brain science, and RNA biology (among others). I look forward to sharing more about the impact of their research in future issues of Medicine@Brown.