On Wednesday, July 27, Timothy Barreiro, D.O. (’97), is the featured lecturer of the Alumni Research Series sponsored by the offices of Alumni Affairs and Research. Barreiro is the second speaker in the series, which began May 4.

Barreiro, Health Disparities Scholar and assistant professor of medicine at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM), Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, visits OU-COM Tuesday evening to talk about health disparities to the Prematriculation Program and Wednesday will lecture third-year students on the importance of a career in academic medicine.

“How to get started in an academic career,” Barreiro’s Wednesday noon lecture, will examine the need for physician scientists and what to do to get established — preferably earlier in one’s career, says Barreiro — in an academic medicine career.

Doctors should pursue academic careers as clinical educators or clinical scientists, he says. The first are those who will train residents and help maintain and improve the quality of medical care. The second are those who are going to find and cure disease and take patient problems and examine them in a research setting.

Unfortunately, he says, not enough doctors are entering academic medicine. According to Barreiro, only 14 percent of medical school graduates say they are interesting in academic careers as opposed to 50 percent interested in entering private practice.

“Of course, we need both,” he says.

Barreiro says there will be a growing need for clinical educators and scientists because of the increase in life expectancy, which will increase the population. The increase in the older population will most likely lead to a host of new medical problems and concerns developing at the same time that there are fewer physicians trying to solve these problems.

Also, he says, the osteopathic profession is losing some academic centers. This means the profession must rely more on physicians within the community to help train new physicians. But managed care has placed a tremendous burden on established physicians to see as many patients as possible, he says, which can be a detriment to mentoring young physicians.

“Mentoring young physicians is being lost,” says Barreiro. “Teaching them how to properly do physical exams, teaching them about health disparities, teaching them proper skills and diagnostic techniques are being lost.

“Everyone is relying on a diagnostic test. So bedside teaching and academic mentorship is being lost. As the aging population grows, there will be more and more people who have problems, and we won’t have the right amount of people or won’t have them taught the best that we could.”

On the path to clinical scientist/researcher, he says his goal is to keep people from being “late bloomers.” An interest in pursuing research, he says, should be cultivated early in one’s medical training. He really didn’t get hooked until a four-year pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship at University of Rochester in New York School of Medicine and Dentistry.

“I thought to myself, ‘This is really interesting. How come I’ve never really been exposed like this to research?’” says Barreiro.

“I want people to get involved in research earlier in their education and training. It will also help them move up the ranks faster.”

Tueday evening he will speak to the 2005 Prematriculation Program participants and a group of underrepresented minority students being hosting at the Center of Excellence for Multicultural Medicine (COEMM). “I’m very interested in talking to the participants of the Prematriculation Program at the center because I completed this program before starting OU-COM,” he says.

He will speak to them about health disparities and minority health, issues in which he is an expert. As a member of the American College of Osteopathic Interns, he was part of a group assembled from across the country that helped to shape American Osteopathic Association (AOA) policy.

“We recently got our health disparity proposal approved by the AOA House of Delegates,” he says. Now as official AOA policy, he says, the way is paved to be adopted by AOA-sanctioned programs and curriculum. OU-COM, with the presence of the COEMM, has been way ahead of the curve in addressing minority health matters, he says.

“OU-COM is above and beyond most places that I’ve seen. Too many people recognize minority health disparities as a problem but don’t address it. Or address it a rather ineffectual way. There are very few medical facilities that have health disparity programs or centers to promote minority health. OU-COM deserves much credit.”

In addition to being in the Prematriculation Program, he was a Summer Scholar, also a COEMM program, and he was a family medicine fellow, spending an addition year teaching and researching while a student. After graduating from OU-COM in 1997, Barreiro completed a three-year internal medicine residency at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh and a four-year pulmonary and critical care fellowship. He has been teaching at NEOUCOM for one year now.  

Barreiro will speak from noon to 1 p.m. in Irvine 194. Lunch will be served. He is the second of four speakers to lecture this year for the series. The series, says Sharon Zimmerman, director of alumni affairs, will provide OU-COM alumni an opportunity to inspire and mentor students interested in research.