TUSM & Community Based Faculty

Professor of Family Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine
Jaharis Family Chair of Family Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine
Foundations of Patient Care Course Director
Clinical Skills Interclerkship Director
Undergraduate: Brandeis University
Medical School: University of Massachusetts
Residency: University of Massachusetts/Hahnemann Family Health Center

Dr. Altman has received 17 teaching awards during his 19 years at Tufts, including the Milton and Natalie Zucker Prize for Teaching Innovation, the Special Faculty Recognition Award, the Dean’s Outstanding Mentorship Award, the Outstanding Teaching in the Clinical Sciences Award, and the Dr. Jack Mitus Special Faculty Recognition Award. He has also been recognized as a Boston Top Doc five times. Dr. Altman served as the Family Medicine Clerkship Director for 17 years during which it was a top-ranked clerkship at Tufts. In 2009, Dr. Altman began directing the Foundations of Patient Care Curriculum and led a team of faculty to create the Competency-based Apprenticeship in Primary care (CAP) Course. In his roles leading CAP and the Family Medicine Clerkship, Dr. Altman recruited and collaborated with over 300 community primary care faculty in New England. Dr. Altman has been teaching at the Tufts Family Medicine Residency for 17 years and has also collaborated with faculty at Tufts-affiliated residencies at Maine Medical Center and Greater Lawrence Family Health Center. Dr. Altman has been the Director for the Primary Care Precepting Faculty Development Conference over the last 19 years, hosting about 100 TUSM primary care faculty each year. In 2001, Dr. Altman joined Family Practice Group, The Sagov Center for Family Medicine. He became co-owner and President of the practice in 2006. The practice received Level 3 NCQA certification in 2012 as a Patient Centered Medical Home. At FPG, Dr. Altman has co-led over 50 Wellness Groups over the last 9 years. Dr. Altman is the Co-Founder of Wellness Campaign.org, a non-profit created to support patients and providers with practical online resources in their attempts to increase wellness and lose weight. Dr. Altman cofounded Care That Matters, a multi-disciplinary group of health care professionals across the country advocating for pay for performance quality measures that are both patient-centered and evidence-based. Dr. Altman’s research interests include wellness groups, medical scribes, disability, medical education, and vaccination. He has been invited to speak on these subjects both nationally and internationally. Dr. Altman has helped support faculty at Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore, India (one of India’s top medical schools and sister school of TUSM) to form one of India’s first Departments of Family Medicine. He was also asked to be an Advisory Board Member for the Academy of Family Physicians of India (AFPI).

Clinical Instructor, Tufts University School of Medicine
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Undergraduate: Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Medical School: Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Residency: Tufts University Family Medicine Residency at Cambridge Health Alliance

Fa'iz is a proud graduate of TUFMR and is currently an attending physician at CHA Windsor Street Health Center. He came to CHA because of its dedication to under-served and immigrant populations. He enjoys taking care of a diverse patient population, providing comprehensive care including prenatal, office based dermatology and GYN procedures and teaching medical students. His interests include palliative care, medical group visits, quality improvement and health equity. When not working he enjoys spending time with his partner and friends. Otherwise, you can probably find him playing basketball at the Tufts gymnasium.

Pronouns: He/Him/His

Clinical Faculty
Undergraduate: University of Pennsylvania
Medical School: University of Massachusetts Medical School
Residency: University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Family Medicine
Fellowship: Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson University Fellowship in Women's Health

Cari Benbasset-Miller, MD practices at the Malden Family Medicine Center. Her clinical interests include access and education in reproductive healthcare, obstetrics, and HIV primary care and prevention. She enjoys spending time with friends and family around her hometown of Cambridge.

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Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Assistant Clinical Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine
Undergraduate: Tufts University
Medical School: Medical College of Pennsylvania
Residency: Abington Memorial Hospital, Family Medicine, chief resident

Bari Brodsky, MD is board certified in Family Medicine. She is an Assistant Clinical Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine where she has been teaching medical students and Family Medicine residents since 1995. A former medical director of the CHA Riverside Health Center, she now cares for patients of all ages at various CHA primary care sites. Dr. Brodsky has a strong interest in practicing and teaching Addiction Medicine. She is a medical provider at a Substance Use Disorder treatment program in a Federally Qualified Community Health Center on the North Shore and is a core faculty in the Tufts Addiction Medicine Elective for 4th year medical students. Dr. Brodsky has worked with the CHA Center for Mindfulness and Compassion leading group visits for patients with opiate use disorder. Bari precepts the Family Medicine residents in the Family Medicine Center as well as the gynecology procedure clinic. She is a medical student mentor in the Sam W. Ho Health Justice Scholar Program and she has served as a group leader for the Healer’s Art course at Tufts School of Medicine. Bari has been active with CRUDEM, a healthcare organization in Milot, Haiti, where she worked on site at Hôpital Sacré Coeur supervising Tufts MD/MPH students and residents. She enjoys vegan cooking, hiking, running, board games, and aikido.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Dr. Maxted completed his residency in Family Medicine at Duke University in 1980 and has been an active clinician, teacher, and medical leader ever since. He continues to serve as community preceptor and was the Associate Program Director for TUFMR from 2010 to 2017. Prior to CHA he was medical director at the Family Health Center of Worcester and on faculty at UMass Medical School. He moved to New England from Colorado in 2007, after two decades of family medicine in Durango. In 2001 he retired from the Indian Health Service as a Captain in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, after a 21 year career that included five years on the Hopi Reservation and 16 years at the Southern Colorado Ute Service Unit. He worked with the University of Massachusetts Family Medicine Residency from 2006 to 2010, and as clinician, Assistant Clinical Professor, Education Director and Vice President for Medical Services at the Family Health Center of Worcester.

Dr. Maxted has a Certificate of Added Qualifications in Geriatrics. He also has had a CAQ in Sports Medicine. He has particular interest and skill in the areas of geriatrics, sports medicine, addiction, evidence-based medicine, metacognition (decision-making), office procedures, pain management and the breadth of Family Medicine

Pronouns: He/Him/His

Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine
Undergraduate: Colgate University
Medical School: The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Residency: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center St Margaret

Bonnie Engelbart MD is a community preceptor and Associate Professor at the Tufts Family Medicine Residency program. She has worked in community health for fifteen years and for the past 10 years has been caring for primary care patients at the CHA Everett Health Center. She teaches Tufts third year medical students during their family medicine clerkship, and teaches residents at the Malden Health Center. She runs a weekly dermatology procedure clinic in Somerville and frequently precepts the dermatology clinic at Malden. She also runs a monthly clinic at the Everett High school Teen center providing long acting contraceptive procedures. She is a mentor in the Tufts Student Service Scholars program teaching medical students about the care of underserved patients. Bonnie is married and has three young sons. In her free time she spends times with her family, is a deacon in her church, participates in a book club that has been together for 18 years, and enjoys running for exercise.

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Undergraduate: University of Colorado
Medical School: University of Massachusetts
Residency: University of Massachusetts
Fellowship: Geriatric Medicine, OHSU

Ken Gerweck, MD if a full time physician with CHA. He sees patients of all age groups at the East Cambridge Health Center. He also works at a neighboring nursing home. He also spends time in the hospital setting, functioning as one of the Tufts Family Medicine teaching atttendings. Dr Gerweck enjoys teaching in various capacities, including precepting family medicine residents, providing didactics for the family medicine geriatric curriculum, and teaching in the nursing home setting. Dr Gerweck is the lead person for the geriatrics curriculum and co-leader for the home visit curriculum for the family medicine program. In his free time, Ken enjoys going for runs, listening to music, fishing, and spending time with his family.
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A graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook who completed his residency at St. Francis Hospital. He joined CHA in 2004 and sees patients at Union Square Family Health in Somerville, MA. He provides the full range of family medicine care, including prenatal care and deliveries. Dr. Sabia served as a faculty member at the Lawrence Family Medicine residency for 8 years, where he was a member of the Outpatient Curriculum Committee and supervised residents in both the outpatient and all inpatient settings. He also served as the medical student clerkship coordinator at the Lawrence program for 4 years. He has a special interest in womens health, obstetrical care and pediatrics. He has been a colposcopist for almost 10 years and continues to provide these services at his current practice. He is board certified in Family Medicine and is fluent in Spanish and speaks some Portuguese as well. He is currently on the Perinatal Committee and Pediatric Quality Improvement Committee at the Cambridge Health Alliance. Dr. Sabia is married to a Swiss and has two young boys, Gian and Andrino. He is currently trying to add German and Rumansch to his language skills!

Family Physician, Revere Care Center
Department of Family Medicine, Cambridge Health Alliance
Undergraduate: Boston University College of Arts and Sciences
Medical School: Boston University School of Medicine
Residency: Tufts Family Medicine Residency at Cambridge Health Alliance

Christopher Simons, MD is a community faculty member and proud graduate of the Tufts Family Medicine Residency program and sees his own panel of patients at another CHA clinic in Revere. He is the community liaison for the clinic and is working to expand community connections in the greater Revere area. Current clinical areas of interest include work around health literacy and the social determinants of health, especially food insecurity. He completed extra training during residency in Integrative Medicine and Practice Improvement and continues to incorporate these into practice. In his spare time, you can find him cheering on local professional and college sports teams, singing along at a concert downtown or sampling food at one of the many restaurants north of Boston.

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Pronouns: He/Him/His

Assistant Clinical Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine
Undergraduate: Northwestern University
Medical School: University of Massachusetts
Residency: Boston Medical Center
Fellowship: Maternal Child Health, Brown University

Rachel Vogel MD is a community preceptor, who sees primary care patients at Union Square Family Health in Somerville, MA and comes to the Malden Family Medicine Center weekly to precept our family medicine residents. She also provides prenatal care, practices obstetrics, provides newborn nursery care at the Cambridge Hospital. She teaches residents and medical students in all of these settings. Additionally she is an ALSO instructor (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics), a course designed to train residents to work in teams during emergencies in obstetrics. She speaks Spanish and Portuguese and she conducts group prenatal care for Brazilian patients in Portuguese. In her free time Rachel loves trail running, ultimate frisbee, and chasing her toddlers around the playground.

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Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Academic Rank: Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine
Position at the residency/curricular focus: Clinical faculty, Patient Engagement, Practice Improvement, Health Equity
Undergraduate: University of California, Berkeley
Medical School: Tufts University School of Medicine
Residency: Tufts University Family Medicine Residency at Cambridge Health Alliance

Nicole is a faculty member and Assistant Professor at the Tufts Family Medicine Residency program, where she also completed her residency. She has a strong interest in practice improvement and patient engagement and is the co-founder and lead of the clinic’s Patient Advisory Council. She has also developed a curriculum to develop residents’ clinical leadership skills. As part of her own patient practice, Dr. O’Connor has a strong interest in women’s health, team management of chronic disease and sports medicine, including yearly coverage of the Boston Marathon. In addition to her teaching and clinical activities, she serves on Cambridge Health Alliance’s Provider Engagement committee and has a strong interest in health equity. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her husband and rescue dog, Charlie, traveling and running.

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Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Undergraduate: University of Wisconsin, Madison (BA)
Medical School: University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA (MD)
Residency: Boston Medical Center Family Medicine Residency

Julia grew up and again lives in Cambridge, MA. Majoring in Latin America Studies and International Relations, her original career plan was public health work abroad. During an internship researching the working conditions of flower plantation workers in Ecuador, she befriended and shadowed a medical resident. Those experiences allowed her to realize that it was the direct work with patients that really drove her and she went back to night school then medical school. In medical school, she developed an interest in care of incarcerated and justice involved individuals. She completed a Schweitzer fellowship creating medical and nursing school topic content and teaching health education classes in youth detention centers. Through residency and as an attending she has maintained an interest in marginalized and stigmatized populations and now is working to change our medical system to better care for those in bodies of every size. Her primary care clinic is in Cambridge but she enjoys precepting the residents at Malden High's School Based Health Center.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers