Volume 18 Number 1 Winter/Spring 2001

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new dean

Philip Pizzo, MD, plans to champion the cause of academic medicine.

BY RUTHANN RICHTER

PHILIP PIZZO, MD, ADMITS being surprised when the call came in October from Stanford President John Hennessy, who wanted to know whether he would accept the dean's job at the School of Medicine. Pizzo, physician-in-chief at Boston Children's Hospital, says Stanford hadn't been on his radar until last spring when the university search committee had contacted him about the dean position.

Initially, he says, he had been reluctant to submit his CV because he was knee-deep in major initiatives at Children's Hospital, including the proposed construction of an 11-story, $94-million basic science research building and a number of educational and clinical care programs. And he had found a home at the Harvard-affiliated hospital, where he had trained in the early 1970s and expected to spend the rest of his career.

But the Stanford opportunity suddenly rose up before him. And Pizzo said it was too important to ignore."What persuaded me [to come to Stanford] was the uniqueness of the environment -- the opportunity to work more broadly, not just in pediatrics but in the full scope of academic medicine, and to help redefine academic training and education in the new century," he says.

Pizzo, 56, professor and chair of pediatrics at Harvard, officially arrives on the Stanford campus April 2. But he has made several visits here since accepting the job, getting his bearings and spending time just listening to people as he develops his goals and priorities. At a meeting with some faculty members this winter, he told them he was concerned that academic medicine had "lost its moral compass" in recent years at many institutions.

That was largely the reason he joined Boston Children's and the Harvard faculty in 1996, leaving what he describes as a wonderful and exciting job at the National Institutes of Health where he had worked in various leadership capacities for two decades. He had been on the sidelines watching medical schools and academic medical centers approach one of the most critical periods in their 150-year history.

"I decided I wanted to take on a new challenge: the preservation of the integrity of academic medicine," he says. When he came to Boston Children's Hospital, he realized children's hospitals nationwide suffered from a lack of government funding for training pediatric residents, on the order of $285 million. He
became an advocate for children's health, organizing pediatric chairs around the country and testifying before Congress on the need to support graduate medical education in pediatrics. The result: a bill signed into law in December 2000 that provides $235 million for pediatric residency programs nationwide. The funds will help close the gap on some $3.5 million spent each year at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital on these programs.

"It was through his leadership and persistence and his ability to work with politicians that he was able to get the government to support the training of pediatricians," says Harvey Cohen, MD, PhD, Stanford professor and chair of pediatrics, who has known Pizzo since the two were residents at Boston Children's.

Pizzo says he believes the funding bill "has made a huge difference. These are the kinds of things that to me are important. I see that as an important role the dean's office should play -- sort of a bully pulpit."

He said he expects to use his contacts in Congress to continue advancing the cause of academic medicine. In addition to being a tenacious advocate and organizer, Pizzo has a distinguished career in clinical research, where his focus has been on childhood cancers and immune disorders. A graduate of the University of Rochester School of Medicine, he trained in both hematology/oncology and infectious disease at Boston Children's Hospital and the NIH's National Cancer Institute.

IN 1976 HE JOINED THE NIH, where he became director of the infectious disease service in 1980 and chief of pediatrics at the National Cancer Institute in 1982. When HIV came to the forefront in the early 1980s, he says few people in his group were interested in the disease's impact on children. But he decided to shift the focus and retool the entire program to help develop treatments and prevention strategies for the young victims of the virus.

In 1988 the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of the first major study on HIV therapy in children, in which Pizzo and colleagues found that the drug AZT could reverse some of the neurologic damage caused by the virus in infected youngsters.

"He really took on the issue of treating these kids -- he took the position that we're not just going to let them die from HIV," says Ann Arvin, MD, Stanford professor of pediatrics and of microbiology and immunology. "That takes a certain kind of courage to really just move forward. Those drugs had all types of toxicities. Nobody really knew, but it was important to try. And he did that."

Arvin, a member of the search committee for the new dean, describes Pizzo as a clinical investigator of the highest order and notes that he is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

"I think what is most notable about him immediately is his energy and his level of enthusiasm for both basic and clinical research," she says. "What's striking about him is his attitude and approach and his inclusiveness in how he goes about what he does."

PIZZO SAYS HE'LL continue to do research at Stanford, focusing on infectious complications in patients with compromised immune systems, especially as a result of cancer and transplantation.

He also plans to be very active on the educational front and will meet faithfully with students, from whom he says he learns a lot. He says he's also proud of the number of fellows he's trained who have gone on to key positions at medical centers around the world. His resumé lists some 83 former trainees now in leadership roles.

Education is the first thing he mentions on his list of 10 key areas, or "investments," that he sees as important in his new job as dean. Education is followed closely by research and clinical care; advocacy and community service; academic and career development; infrastructure and facilities; administration and finance; communication; development and philanthropy; and Stanford as a global model. He is just beginning to work out his priorities among these key areas.

"I try to set a series of goals and objectives," he says. "I'm willing to modify them. But once things are set, I'm pretty tenacious in achieving them, even if it takes a long time."

When he arrives in April, Pizzo will live in rented housing on campus with his wife, Peggy, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School who conducts research in early childhood education and public policy. He has two daughters, one of whom is completing her training in pediatric emergency medicine at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard. The second is a Harvard College graduate who teaches wilderness survival to children. SM