Caroline Harada, M.D., has been named the new associate dean for Strategic Initiatives, Medical Education.
Since 2015, Dr. Harada has served as assistant dean for Community-Engaged Scholarship. In that role, she formalized community outreach and service-learning opportunities as part of the medical school curriculum. She also oversaw the school’s Learning Communities program, small groups of medical students paired with faculty mentors that promote medical students’ personal wellness and professional development. She will transition her leadership of the program over the next academic year.
In this newly created role, Dr. Harada will lead strategic projects to improve the quality of medical education at the Heersink School of Medicine, with a focus on addressing concerns raised by the 2022 LCME site visit, as well as taking on new initiatives in partnership with the Continuous Quality Improvement Committee. She will continue to direct the Office of Service Learning, the Patient, Doctor, and Society course, and Project AHEAD, the medical school’s longitudinal health equity curriculum. She will also continue her involvement with Equal Access Birmingham, which provides necessary care to the medically underserved in our community.
“I am very excited to be given the opportunity to work with our school’s amazing medical education team to ensure that every student at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine has the best possible educational experience and graduates with the knowledge and skills to be the best doctor they can be,” she says. “I am looking forward to developing initiatives that can address the urgent health needs of our state while also making us a national leader in medical education.”
Dr. Harada earned her medical degree from the Yale School of Medicine and completed an internal medicine residency and two-year geriatrics fellowship at the University of Chicago. She joined the Heersink School of Medicine faculty in 2008. Dr. Harada is an associate professor in the Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics, and Palliative Care, and cares for patients in the outpatient geriatrics consultation clinic.
She officially assumes the new role of associate dean for Strategic Initiatives, Medical Education on May 1, 2023.