Welcome to Annals Fresh Look!

Peer-reviewed medical literature aims to provide readers with knowledge that helps them be better clinicians, teachers, health care advocates, and researchers. In this spirit, we are excited to introduce the Annals Fresh Look blog, a new initiative by the Annals of Internal Medicine to feature perspectives and discourse among medical students and early career physicians. We believe that early career perspectives provide several benefits to the medical community:

First, as newer members of the profession, early career physicians both reflect and provide “fresh eyes” on the culture and institutions around them. In turn, their perspectives are barometers and spotlights for trends in the practice of medicine.

Second, these physicians interact with medical evidence in different ways than established providers. As “digital natives” accustomed to accessing information from a variety of electronic sources since the beginning of their medical careers, early career physicians’ experiences reflect the evolution in how clinicians use peer-reviewed content to provide patient care.

Third, topics like population health, “big data,” personalized medicine, and shared decision making are fundamentally changing how medicine is taught and practiced. Innovations in technology and social networks are also altering how physicians organize around and advocate for such issues as medical evidence and health equity. Early career physicians are important frontline observers and participants in these trends.

We are excited to combine the rich content from the Annals with these early career perspectives. The goal of Annals Fresh Look is not to summarize or review Annals articles. Rather, blog entries highlight the relevance of Annals content to our professional lives. In turn, we hope that perspectives contained in Annals Fresh Look will foster dialogue about topics in clinical practice, medical education, public policy, medical humanities, quality improvement, and the delivery of health care.

We hope that you’ll enjoy the blog as much as we enjoy contributing to and curating it.

Joshua M. Liao, MD, MSc
Fatima Z. Syed, MD, MSc
Sarah G. Candler, MD, MPH

Sarah G. Candler, MD, MPH

Sarah is the Chair-Elect of ACP's Council of Resident Fellow Members (CRFM). She completed medical school and her MPH at Emory University and residency at Tulane University. She is now a primary care physician at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. Sarah also serves as Assistant Professor of Medicine for Baylor College of Medicine, where she teaches on topics of health advocacy, health economics, and social determinants of health. Her quality improvement projects focus on patient experience and perceptions of care.

Joshua M. Liao, MD, MSc, FACP

Josh is a faculty member of the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where he is also the Associate Medical Director of Contracting and Value-Based Care. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his health services and policy training. He obtained his MD from Baylor College of Medicine and trained at Brigham & Women's Hospital, where he was also a Clinical Fellow in Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Fatima Z. Syed, MD, MSc

Fatima is a second-year fellow in endocrinology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where she also trained for residency. She is currently Chair of the Council and Resident Fellow Members of the American College of Physicians. She is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. She has a background in public policy, having received her MSc in comparative social policy from the University of Oxford.