The administrative offices of the Primary Care Service Line are located at the University Drive Division of the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System in the Oakland region of Pittsburgh. Driving directions to these offices can be found by following this link.

Links to other VA facilities in Pennsylvania, including driving directions, can be found here.

• Borrero, Sonya, MD, MS
• Brooks, Robert C., MD, PhD, Associate Program Director, Internal Medicine Registry
• Burke, Timothy R., MD, Physician Leader, Green and Purple Primary Care Teams
• Coax, Warren, MD
• Fine, Michael J., MD, MSc, Director, Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion
• Gellad, Walid, MD, MPH
• Gerber, Lawrence, MD
• Good, C. Bernie, MD, MPH
• Gordon, Adam J., MD, MPH
• Herrle, Scott, MD, MS
• Hoffman, Erika L., MD, Physician Leader, University Drive Primary Care Team
• Inagami, Sanae, MD, MPH
• Lee, Edward, MD
• Ling, Bruce S., MD, MPH
• Malek, Siamak, MD
• McNeil, Melissa A., MD, MPH, Director, VA Women’s Health Program
• Muluk, Visala S., MD, Director, Medical Consultation Service
• Preisner, Ruth M., MD
• Schenker, Yael, MD, MS

The VA section faculty contribute greatly to the clinical training of medical students at the University of Pittsburgh. Many first-year and second-year students rotate through the VA during their clinical skills courses, learning history and physical examination skills under the tutelage of VA section faculty. The VA site coordinator for these courses is Dr. Ruth Preisner. Many students then return to do their core third-year medicine clerkships and fourth-year acting internships on the VA wards, sharing the inpatient teaching rounds and conferences described above for medicine residents. Several elective courses are also offered to medical students by section faculty, including courses on substance abuse (Dr. Adam Gordon), women’s health (Dr. Melissa McNeil), and advanced outpatient internal medicine (Dr. Robert Brooks).

VA faculty also contribute to undergraduate medical education as mentors through the Faculty and Students Together (FAST) Program and through small group facilitation or lectures in courses on topics such as medical decision making.

The VA offers one postgraduate general medicine fellowship position each year, in a program overseen by Dr. David Macpherson. It also offers a women’s health fellowship position under Dr. Melissa McNeil. The Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP), a large research institution and VA Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) Center of Excellence, is based at the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia VA medical centers. VA section faculty, under the direction of Dr. Michael Fine, contribute to the education of research fellows at the University of Pittsburgh as project mentors, as collaborators, and as instructors in programs sponsored by the Institute for Clinical Research Education (ICRE). Section faculty members also teach in programs designed for fellows interested in careers as clinician-educators.

CHERP is based at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS) and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center (PVAMC) and is under the leadership of Michael J. Fine, MD, MSc, in Pittsburgh, and David Asch, MD, MBA, in Philadelphia.

CHERP’s core faculty base includes 41 investigators: 20 MDs (3 with PhDs and 13 with master’s degrees), 19 PhDs, and 2 PharmDs. An additional 10 affiliate investigators from the VAPHS, the PVAMC, the University of Pittsburgh, RAND Health, and the University of Pennsylvania collaborate with core faculty to achieve CHERP’s strategic goals.

The core faculty consists of general internists as well as investigators from several clinical specialties, including nephrology, nursing, pharmacology, psychiatry, pulmonary care, rheumatology, surgery, and women’s health. Academic disciplines represented within CHERP include psychology, medical anthropology, communication, sociology, health services research, epidemiology, biostatistics, health economics, and health policy. Together, the clinical and academic investigators provide broad expertise in quantitative and qualitative research methodology, including geocoding, bioinformatics, clinical trial development, quality improvement, community-based participatory research, clinical epidemiology, large database analysis, pharmacoeconomics, psychometrics, econometrics, decision and cost-effectiveness analysis, meta-analysis, and technology assessment.

CHERP has leveraged generous core funding from the VA HSR&D, the Veterans Integrated Service Network 4 (VISN4), the VAPHS, the PVAMC, and the academic affiliates (University of Pittsburgh and University of Pennsylvania) to successfully compete for new investigator-initiated research support from the VA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and private foundations. The overall funding increased from $19.3 million in 2009 to $24.3 million in 2010.

In fiscal year 2010, CHERP’s core investigators published 160 peer-reviewed articles and made 144 presentations at national scientific meetings.

CHERP’s Competitive Pilot Research Program has funded 49 projects to date, resulting in 38 peer-reviewed publications and contributing to successful applications for over $21 million in intramural and extramural funding.

In Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, CHERP hosts postdoctoral health services research training programs sponsored by the VA Office of Academic Affiliations.

To read more about CHERP, click here.