ASPIRE is empowerment... in the form of access to mentors, tremendous research resources, an energizing community of like-minded peers, and most of all, some breathing room to think, read, and develop inquiry! ~ ASPIRE Scholar
Current ASPIRE Scholars
Neeta Agarwal, MD
Neeta Agarwal, MD is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. She completed her residency in internal medicine/pediatrics at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California in 2007, worked at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California then joined Indiana University Medical Group (now Eskenazi Medical Group) in 2010.
She has practiced primary care at both Westside and Pecar Community Health Centers, serving as Chief Physician Executive at Westside CHC 2015-2017. Neeta is now involved in expansion of lifestyle medicine practice in primary care. She also enjoys teaching the IU School of Medicine first year course, Foundations of Clinical Practice. Neeta serves as a faculty co-chair of IU’s chapter of American Medical Women’s Association. Outside of work, she enjoys connecting with her husband and two children, volunteering with her daughter at Coburn Place, playing tennis, tending a vegetable garden, and experimenting with new recipes.
In her exploration of lifestyle medicine, Neeta became interested in the transformation of her own primary care practice to focus on preventative measures including exercise, nutrition, and mental well-being as the first-line treatment of many chronic illnesses and maintenance of good health alike. Her ASPIRE project is aimed at exploring current best practices within and outside Eskenazi Health, determining how to assess success of such practice transformation, and eventual piloting of a primary care model for lifestyle medicine based practice.
Contact: Neeta.Agarwal@eskenazihealth.edu
Diane Donegan, MD
Diane Donegan, MB BCh, is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. Prior to moving to Indiana, she completed her Internal Medicine Residency followed by a Fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester. During this time she obtained her Masters in Clinical and Translational Science. She joined the Endocrinology faculty in 2017 and holds a joint position with Neurosurgery. She has a special interest in neuroendocrinology, in particular pituitary related pathologies.
Given the unique potential complications of pituitary surgery, Dr. Donegan’ s ASPIRE project has focused on the optimization peri-operative care of pituitary patients through the development of evidence based standardization of practice and assess the impact such changes will have on patient care and team satisfaction. In recognition of the vital role patients play in their care, the project will also focus on enhancing and standardizing patient education through the development of novel educational tools.
Contact: diadoneg@iu.edu
Carrie Leathers, MD
Carrie Leathers, MD is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine and Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and practices in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. She is an active educator in the clinical setting, supervising residents from the Internal Medicine, Pediatric, and combined Med-Peds training programs, as well as IUSM medical students both in the hospital and in clinic. Her primary outpatient site is Pecar Health Center, where a large Spanish-speaking population is served. Prior to her career in medicine she worked in youth development in the non-profit sector with United Hispanic Americans and Boys and Girls Clubs of Fort Wayne, as well as Primeros Pasos clinic in Guatemala. She is currently part of team developing an advanced training program for pediatricians practicing in urban settings, “Our Kids Our Community.”
Her ASPIRE project seeks to better understand the mental health of Spanish speaking young adults who reside in the United States without a federally recognized lawful status. This vulnerable population has limited access to healthcare and recent immigration policy changes and continued violence in Central America pose additional threats to emotional and physical health.
Contact: caleathe@iu.edu
Kristi Lieb, MD
Kristi Lieb is a Geriatrician and Certified Medical Director specializing in post-acute and long-term care medicine. Kristi trained in internal medicine at Indiana University where she then went on to complete her Geriatric fellowship. Kristi has been involved with IMDA—Indiana Society for Post-Acute and Long Term Care Medicine since 2011. She served as the education chair for the organization for several years and helped to establish and organize quarterly educational meetings. Kristi is currently the immediate past president of IMDA. Kristi recently finished work on the Indiana SMART campaign which was a state-wide quality improvement project for Indiana nursing homes funded by the Indiana State Department of Health aimed at reducing polypharmacy in Indiana nursing home. She is a Geriatrician in Indianapolis, Indiana and serves as the Associate Medical Director for the OPTIMISTIC Program. Kristi and her husband, Jim, live in Bargersville, Indiana with their 2 children.
Antibiotics are frequently overprescribed in nursing home with the most common indication being urinary tract infection. This has led to a rise in antibiotic resistance in long term care facilities which affects not only the nursing home facility but also the hospital system which receives residents from the facility and the surrounding medical community. Kristi’s ASPIRE project will use the rich OPTIMISTIC database to evaluate antibiotic prescribing patterns in nursing homes for urinary tract infections with the long term goal of improving antibiotic prescribing in the nursing home setting. Urinary tract infections are the most commonly billed episodes of care since the start of the OPTIMISTIC project. The data obtained through my project will be used to inform clinical providers and develop education materials regarding best practices and can ultimately be used to develop a pilot program for antibiotic stewardship in the nursing home.
Contact: kreinack@iu.edu
Neetu Mahendraker, MD, CHCQM
Neetu Mahendraker, MD, CHCQM is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University School of Medicine. She was born in India and finished her MBBS from India. She pursued her residency at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a resident she had presented several posters at regional and National meetings and involved in several publications. She joined Indiana University Health Physicians in 2009 as an academic hospitalist. She is board certified in American Board of quality and Utilization Review of physicians and has been a diplomate of ABQAURP since 2016. She was chosen to be a Lead hospitalist for Accountable care unit at Indiana University Academic Health Center in 2016 and since then she has been actively involved in several quality initiatives at her Accountable care unit and has been actively involved in several steering committees at IU Academic Medical Center. She is Black belt certified in LEAN-Six sigma and has led several Rapid involvement events using Lean methodologies during 2016-2017. She is currently pursuing a certificate course in Safety, Quality, Informatics and Leadership from Harvard Medical School.
The goal of her ASPIRE project is to decrease the mortality index of IU Health Academic Medical center by recognizing patients who are at high risk for dying within 7 days of transfer from peripheral hospitals. By creating this mortality risk predictive model she seeks to involve palliative care team in a timely manner, set up realistic expectations for patient, families and all health care team members. By this strategical approach she hopes that IU Health Academic Medical Center will be able to achieve its goal to rise to top 5% on Vizient data for mortality index as soon as possible.
Contact: nmahendraker@IUHealth.org
Maria Robles, MD
Maria went to University of Wisconsin-Madison for her undergraduate education, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Molecular Biology. She then joined the Peace Corps and taught Mathematics and Health Education in a small rural high school in Ghana, West Africa for two years. After returning she earned a Master of Science in Biology. She then completed medical school from IU School of Medicine and moved to Rhode Island to do her residency in General Internal Medicine with Alpert School of Medicine/Brown University. After completing residency she returned to Indianapolis in 2011 and has been working with Eskenazi since that time. She became Chief Physician Executive of Adult Medicine and Ob/Gyn at West 38th Street in 2017. She teaches residents for one day a week and teaches medical students for one day a week. She also works with NP students.
She starting treating opioid addicted patient with medication assisted therapy in 2017 and realized that her learners really weren’t getting exposed to treating these patients. She is working with another physician, who is creating a curriculum for the residents, to study how this information is taught and look at some of the implicit bias that are associated with this population.
Contact: mspector@iupui.edu
Neshahthari Wijeyakuhan, MD, FACP
Neshahthari Wijeyakuhan MD, FACP was born in London, England and raised in Toronto Canada. She completed her Internal Medicine residency from NYU Lutheran in New York; Followed by Fellowship in Geriatrics at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania. She is both Internal Medicine and Geriatric board certified. Neshah worked as a hospitalist in Ohio prior to her marriage and move to Indiana, where she continues to work as a hospitalist at IU Methodist Hospital. She spends her times on teaching and non-teaching teams on the hospitalist service. During her practice, she combines her geriatric and internal medicine skills and knowledge to provide the best interdisciplinary care for her elderly patients and teach those skills to the students and residents.
Dr. Wijeyakuhan’s ASPIRE project focuses on how the current geriatric guidelines are practiced amongst the hospitalists’ group and to implement guidelines, which will help, improve the geriatric patient’s outcome in the hospital, promote comfort as outpatient, and possibly reduce readmission rates for the elderly patients.
Contact: nwijeyakuhan@IUHealth.org
2016-18 ASPIRE Scholars
Lyle Fettig
Lyle Fettig, MD is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. He directs the IUSM Palliative Medicine Fellowship and is a team physician with the Eskenazi Health Palliative Care Team. His interests include education to improve the communication skills of clinicians and care of underserved populations. Dr. Fettig directs IU Talk which provides VitalTalk based communication skills training to a variety of trainees and providers. The project started with a focus on IUSM trainees, including critical care and oncology fellows. In 2014, IU Talk joined Encompass, an IU Health palliative care education projected funded by the Methodist Health Foundation. Through Encompass, IU Talk has been able to expand to IU Health Faculty Physicians. He is a Senior Associate with VitalTalk. Dr. Fettig has written for the blog Pallimed and a few of his blogs have been featured on the popular site KevinMD. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and two kids.
Dr. Fettig’s ASPIRE study has explored the feasibility, acceptability, utility and clinician outcomes of a communication skills training workshop for an interdisciplinary group of clinicians in the intensive care unit setting. The workshop is geared towards improving the quality of both individual and team communication with patients and families about goals of care in serious illness.
Jennifer Hur
Jennifer Hur, MD is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine who also serves as one of the Department of Medicine’s Key Clinical Educators, representing General Internal Medicine. She came to Indy from New England and NY in 2006, started as an academic Hospitalist at Eskenazi, and in 2008, transitioned to running and teaching in the Pre-Admission Testing Clinic at IUH-University Hospital. When she is not evaluating, optimizing, and coordinating care for patients having complex surgeries, training medical residents or other faculty in preoperative medicine, collaborating with hospital leadership in perioperative quality improvement initiatives, or supporting the multiple hospitalist groups on campus with their educational endeavors, she is juggling schedules with her husband John, a busy orthopedic surgeon, as they raise their 3 kids.
In her role as a clinician educator, Dr. Hur’s interest is in finding efficient and effective ways to improve inpatient faculty's clinical teaching skills and her ASPIRE project explores harnessing online technology to do this. She has developed You Tube™ videos, using best practices in instructional technology, to improve academic hospitalists’ skills in feedback and evaluation, which will be shared on all of IUSM’s clinical campuses, as well as at the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine’s, 2018 Academic Internal Medicine Week spring meeting.
Areeba Kara
Areeba Kara MD, MS was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan where she attended medical school. She completed her internal medicine residency at IU SOM and joined IU Health Methodist hospital as a hospitalist in 2003, where she’s been ever since. In parallel with her enjoyment of the challenges of clinical hospital medicine, Areeba has developed a diverse set of skills and interests. Her focus is on hospital based care quality and safety which she feels is also embedded in clinical hospital medicine, teamwork and education . Her husband is also a hospitalist and their two children have inspired both to becoming better humans.
Dr Kara’s ASPIRE project has focused on delving deeper into the practice of Geographic Cohorting in the hospital to understand the benefits and downsides of assigning hospitalists by units.
Emily Machogu
Emily Machogu, MD, and Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine and Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. She is a med/peds hospitalist at Eskenazi. Clinically, she spends time on the teaching and non-teaching teams on the internal medicine service, as well as the teaching team on the newborn service. She also serves as the Associate Program Director for the Med/Peds Residency, where she runs the Clinical Competency Committee and works closely with residents in a mentoring role.
Dr. Machogu’s ASPIRE work builds on previous studies demonstrating a physician’s level of stress regarding uncertainty on validated scales is related to costs of care. Her project examines the relationship between the Stress Regarding Uncertainty scales for each physician member of six teaching teams on the internal medicine service at Eskenazi Health, as well as each team’s diagnostic test ordering practices. It also explores the ways team structure affects these results.
Amy Munchhof
Amy Munchhof attended IUSM completing the MD/PhD program in May 2008. She then completed a residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at IUSM in June 2012 and accepted a position as an academic hospitalist at Wishard/Eskenazi hospital as a med/peds hospitalist. The majority of Amy's clinical time is as a medicine hospitalist on teaching and non teaching teams with the remainder of her time in the pediatric urgent care and newborn service. Through her work as a hospitalist Amy has sought projects to improve transitions of care from the hospital to primary care focusing on the discharge process. Amy lives with her husband in Indianapolis and enjoys running, reading, and spending time outdoors.
The goal Dr. Munchhof’s ASPIRE project is to explore preferences of both hospitalists and primary care providers for direct communication at patient discharge to better understand the direct communication process between providers during transition of care. Her project aims to identify shared and different challenges to direct communication, modes of communication, and characteristics of hospitalized patients where direct communication is essential to safely transition care from hospital to primary care.
Shilpee Sinha
Shilpee Sinha MD,FACP is a Palliative Care Physician with IU Health . Dr. Sinha joined IU Health in October 2006. She completed her Internal Medicine Residency from Overlook Hospital, affiliated with UMDNJ in 2005 followed by a Fellowship in Palliative Care from Beth Israel Medical Center NY in 2006. Dr. Sinha is board certified in Internal Medicine and Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She has worked in the capacity of a hospitalist and Associate Hospice Medical Director for Ruth Lily Hospice following which she joined the Palliative care department in December 2011. She is currently the Service line leader for IUH Palliative Care Services.
Dr. Sinha’s ASPIRE project focuses on prevalence of advance care planning documents in patients undergoing a surgical procedure who are evaluated in a perioperative clinic for medical optimization. Patients undergoing surgery are under anesthesia and lack capacity for at least that duration and are at risk of complications but often lack any advance care plan or surrogate decision making documents which can impact their care if complications occur. She performed a retrospective chart review on a cohort of 400 patients at 2 sites in an urban tertiary care center.
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