Our Consultants

The director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Constantine (Kostas) Lyketsos, M.D., developed one of the largest and most successful academic neuropsychiatry programs in the United States. His primary research and clinical focus is on dementia, adult and geriatric psychiatry, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and memory and mood disorders. His work on traumatic brain injury led him to leadership roles in military and veteran’s health as well as collaborations with the NFL Players Association. Dr. Lyketsos is the recipient of the 2016 Jack Weinberg Award in Geriatric Psychiatry, from the American Psychiatric Association.

Contact Dr. Constantine Lyketsos today.

Contact Ms. Noelle Flaherty today.

Sanjay Desai, M.D., is the director of their Osler Medical Training Program and a specialist in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. He is an active clinician and investigator, serving as attending physician in the hospital’s medical intensive care unit, and as an associate professor of Medicine and Business. His research focuses on graduate medical education and on clinical outcomes in survivors of critical illness. He currently chairs the Executive Committee of a large, multi-center, randomized study of duty hour regulations in graduate medical education.

Sanjay is also the vice chair for Education, in which he oversees all educational programs in the Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine. He has appointments in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, General Internal Medicine and the Carey School of Business.

Sanjay serves on multiple national committees including in the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, American College of Physicians and the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine. He is also a Director of the Osler Leadership Academy which performs professional development for leaders in a variety of non-healthcare industries throughout North America, Europe and Africa.

Sanjay has been recognized for his skills as an educator with numerous teaching and leadership awards, has published widely on medical education and critical care, and has been elected as a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Contact Dr. Sanjay Desai today.

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Dr. Sapna Kudchadkar is an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her areas of interest include sleep disturbances in critically ill children, pediatric delirium prevention and management, sedation of mechanically ventilated children, pediatric ICU rehabilitation and mobility, pediatric difficult airway management, and clinical epidemiology and biostatistics.

Dr. Kudchadkar received her undergraduate degree in both biochemistry and French at Washington University in St. Louis, where she graduated magna cum laude. She went on to attend University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, where she earned her M.D. and completed an internship with the Open Society Institute Soros Community Health Program. She completed residencies in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and in anesthesiology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, followed by clinical fellowships in pediatric critical care and pediatric anesthesiology. Dr. Kudchadkar is working on a Ph.D. in clinical investigation at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Her primary research focus is the role of sleep disturbances as modulator of outcomes in critically ill children, and the effects of sleep promotion, sedation optimization and delirium prevention in the management of children admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

In April 2013, Dr. Kudchadkar was awarded the Alfred Sommer Scholar award at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, given to Ph.D. candidates “who exemplify scientific excellence, energy, ambition, political acumen and a determination to change the world” through public health research.

Dr. Kudchadkar is a Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics and American Board of Anesthesiology, and is also subspecialty board certified in pediatric critical care medicine and pediatric anesthesiology.

Contact Dr. Sapna Kudchadkar today.

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Dr. Dale Needham is a professor of Medicine and of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His areas of expertise include designing and implementing rehabilitation programs for critically ill patients; and designing, conducting and evaluating in-patient quality improvement programs.

Dr. Needham serves as the medical director of the Critical Care Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Program, and the director of the Outcomes After Critical Illness and Surgery (OACIS) research group, both at Johns Hopkins.

He earned his M.D. from the McMaster University School of Medicine. He completed his residency in internal medicine and his fellowship in critical care medicine at the University of Toronto. He then completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Investigation at Johns Hopkins University.

Contact Dr. Dale Needham today.

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Michael Friedman is the director of Rehabilitation Therapy Services at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. At Johns Hopkins Hospital he is responsible for the delivery and integration of high quality Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Language Pathology inclusive of inpatient and outpatient services.

Prior to working at Johns Hopkins, Mr. Friedman worked for a provider of senior living communities responsible for regional operations and financial oversight of rehabilitation and wellness services in including assisted living, independent living and skilled nursing facilities. Clinical experiences span across the continuum and amongst varied populations from acute trauma to geriatrics to sports medicine. Mr. Friedman also has professional experience in web-site design and e-learning development.

Mr. Friedman has co-authored publications in the areas of critical care rehabilitation financial modeling, the correlation between function and readmission and cancer rehabilitation awareness. He has presented at academic and professional venues on the topics of Business Management and Finance, Business Planning and Innovation, Critical Care Rehabilitation Program Finance and Operations, Cancer Rehabilitation Integration within Survivorship, Workforce Recruitment and Retention, and Value-Based Culture of Mobility Initiatives. Mr. Friedman is a member of the Health System Rehabilitation Community steering committee and is a member of the Acute Care and Health Policy and Administrations sections of the APTA.

Contact Michael Friedman today.

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Dr. Erik Hoyer is an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His clinical interests include musculoskeletal and neurological rehabilitation, injection procedures to manage abnormal muscle tone (spasticity) and electrodiagnostic medicine (EMG).

As deputy director for patient safety he leads efforts to improve patient safety and care at Johns Hopkins, including an initiative called activity and mobility promotion (AMP) to get patients up and moving following surgery.

Dr. Erik Hoyer graduated summa cum laude and received his master’s degree in computer science from Brandeis University prior to graduating from the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv, Israel. He completed his internship in internal medicine at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, and subsequently finished his residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation from Johns Hopkins University. He excelled during his residency, receiving the Hopkins Healer award twice, and was selected as a trainee to the Rehabilitation Medicine Scientist Training Program.

Dr. Hoyer’s research interests include quality improvement, brain plasticity, and motor recovery after stroke from both behavioral and neurophysiologic perspectives.

Contact Dr. Erik Hoyer today.

Dr. Zenilman is known internationally for his work in infectious disease epidemiology. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins in 1989, he was a medical epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) where he conceived, developed, and implemented the National Gonococcal Isolate Surveillance Program (GISP). GISP operated continuously since 1987, and has been responsible for identifying multiple types of resistant strains before they became large clinical problems.

In Baltimore, his activities have included directing the Baltimore City Health Department Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) program and developing the multi School Johns Hopkins Center for STI Prevention and Training.  He was one of the first to apply GIS technology to public health, and his syphilis mapping project was highlighted in Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point”. In addition to being a productive researcher and clinician, he has been active in health policy, has served as a Senior Medical Advisor for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (DHHS) 1995-1997, and has testified before Congress and the Maryland legislature on infectious diseases related issues.

He became chief of the Infectious Diseases Division at Johns Hopkins Bayview, in 2003. Under his leadership, the Bayview Division has increased from 1.5 to 9 faculty members, and developed major clinical and research programs in STIs, hospital epidemiology, antibiotic stewardship and skin and soft tissue infections. Bayview has also become a center for Phase1 through Phase 3 clinical trials for new antimicrobials and wound care products.

Dr. Zenilman has 290+ publications and is an active teacher, and has mentored 40+ fellows and residents during his career. He received his BA from Cornell University in chemistry his MD from SUNY-Downstate in Brooklyn NY, and trained at SUNY-Kings County Hospital in Internal Medicine and did his infectious diseases fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta. He is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Contact Dr. Jonathan M. Zenilman today.

Dr. Bernacki holds several titles within Johns Hopkins, specifically, professor of Medicine, Director of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and executive director of Health, Safety and Environment. He is also chairman of the Johns Hopkins Institutions Joint Committee for Health, Safety and Environment.

Dr. Bernacki is responsible for the development and implementation of health, safety and environmental policies for Johns Hopkins University and Hospital as well as ensuring compliance with applicable health, safety and environmental laws. He is the administrator of the Johns Hopkins Self-Insured Worker’s Compensation Insurance Plan and directs the provision of occupational and employee health services by Johns Hopkins University to employers throughout the country.

Dr. Bernacki is a graduate of Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, earned his medical degree from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and completed a residency in Preventive Medicine, simultaneously receiving his masters degree in Public Health from the Yale University School of Medicine, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Dr. Bernacki is certified by the American Board of Preventive Medicine in both Occupational Medicine and General Preventive Medicine.

Before coming to Hopkins, Dr. Bernacki held a variety of positions in industry including corporate medical director of United Technologies Corporation in Hartford, Connecticut and vice president of Health, Safety and Environment for Tenneco, Inc., in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Bernacki is a past president of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) and has published numerous peer reviewed articles in the field of occupational medicine, toxicology and worker’s compensation related issues.

Contact Dr. Edward J. Bernacki today.

Albert W. Wu is professor of Health Policy and Management and Medicine, with joint appointments in Epidemiology, International Health, Medicine and Surgery. He received bachelor’s and medical degrees from Cornell University, and completed an Internal Medicine residency at the Mount Sinai Hospital and UC San Diego. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UCSF and received an MPH from UC Berkeley.  His research and teaching focus on patient outcomes and quality of care. He was the first to measure the quality of life impact of antiretroviral therapy in HIV clinical trials. He developed the MOS-HIV health survey, and other questionnaires to measure quality of life, adherence, satisfaction, attitudes and behaviors for people with chronic disease.

He was co-founder and director of the outcomes research committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group of the NIH, and president of the International Society for Quality of Life. He advises many U.S. and international organizations on PRO methods. He is director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research, director of the AHRQ-funded DEcIDE center for patient centered outcomes research. He is a PROMIS investigator, and co-developer of PatientViewpoint, a patient portal to link patient reported outcomes to electronic health records.

Dr. Wu has studied the handling of medical errors since 1988, and he has published influential papers including “Do house officers learn from their mistakes,” in JAMA, in 1991, and “Medical error: the second victim,” in the BMJ. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine committee on identifying and preventing medication errors and was senior adviser for Patient Safety to WHO, in Geneva. He has authored more than 350 peer review articles, and was editor of the Joint Commission book “The Value of Close Calls in Improving Patient Safety.” Dr. Wu leads the Ph.D. program in Health Services Research and the Certificate program in Quality, Patient Safety and Outcomes Research, in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He also maintains a clinical practice in general internal medicine.

Contact Dr. Albert Wu today.

Jeanne Clark, M.D., M.P.H., is the ‘Frederick L. Brancati, MD’ Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Director of the Johns Hopkins Division of General Internal Medicine. She is a practicing general internist and is actively involved in medical education. Her research focuses on the epidemiology and treatment of obesity and its consequences, especially type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Dr. Clark was a key investigator in several multi-center, landmark clinical trials including the National Diabetes Prevention Program trial (NDPP), the Practice-based Opportunities for Weight Reduction trial (POWER), and the Action for Health in Diabetes trial (Look AHEAD). She also has conducted epidemiological and translational studies, qualitative studies, systematic reviews, and health services research all of which aimed at improving our understanding of obesity and its consequences in order to better prevent, diagnose and treat these conditions and improve the health of both individual patients as well as the public.

Contact Dr. Jeanne Clark today.

Felicia Hill-Briggs is professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on diabetes self-management, behavioral intervention, health disparities, neuropsychology, and functional impairment and disability. Dr. Hill-Briggs is an expert and national leader in diabetes and patient self-management. Her research, has won scientific awards, and has received Telly Awards for patient education and wellness. She also is president-elect, Health Care & Education, of the American Diabetes Association.

Contact Dr. Felicia Hill-Briggs today.

Eric Howell, M.D., joined CIMS in 2000 and, just after that, became chief of the Zieve Medical Units at Johns Hopkins Bayview. Since then, while maintaining his role as chief of the Zieve Medical Units, he has led CIMS to grow exponentially in staff and in academic caliber.

Through his service on numerous committees at Johns Hopkins Bayview, as well as other Johns Hopkins institutions, and his dedication to teaching bi-weekly lectures to medical students and the Professorship in the Colleges Advisory Program, Dr. Howell continues to demonstrate his commitment to excellence. In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Professors Award for Teaching Excellence for his many contributions to education at Hopkins.

Contact Dr. Eric Howell today.

Larry Appel is recognized nationally for his truly illustrious and pioneering work designing and implementing clinical trials whose outcomes have moved the needle on health care issues like hypertension, diabetes, and nutritional supplements. In 2011, Dr. Appel and his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University schools of medicine and public health completed a clinical trial that demonstrated that telephone coaching and online resources worked as well as in-person counseling to reduce participants’ body weight by at least 5 percent—weight that they were able to keep off for at least two years. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were considered a breakthrough in the effort to make an impact on the national epidemic of obesity.

Their Solution: After the trial, Dr. Appel and the Johns Hopkins HealthCare Solutions team worked with industry partner Healthways to commercialize the clinical trial’s protocol, so as to create an international weight-management program called Innergy®. Not only is this academic/industry collaboration bringing an innovative program to the employer marketplace—including Johns Hopkins—it is also advancing the perennial Hopkins’s goal of translating research into lifesaving advances.

Contact Dr. Lawrence Appel today.

Martha Sylvia, Ph.D., M.B.A, R.N. has for more than 14 years worked in various capacities within the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins HealthCare. Her focus has been on the design, development, and implementation of analytic solutions to support the population health management process including IT systems design for data collection and management; data modeling; development of predictive models and algorithms for patient selection and targeting; patient registry design and development; evidence-based intervention development and implementation; outcomes measurement development; and program evaluation. Her contributions include the development of a population health curriculum and course work for the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing master’s and the Leading Transformation for Value Based Healthcare programs. Previously, Dr. Sylvia was the director of the Population Health Analytics Core, Director of Care Management, and the Director of Analytics for the Johns Hopkins Community Health Partnership and the Johns Hopkins Medicine Alliance for Patients (ACO).

She also wrote the first clinical data management textbook for students in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program. She has more than 15 years of clinical experience in various staff nurse and leadership roles. Recently, Dr. Sylvia led the development of a population health analytic and clinical infrastructure at the Medical University of South Carolina, and she currently consults nationally for organizations working to develop and enhance systems-level clinical and analytic solutions for improving population health and to develop population health strategy and educational content. Dr. Sylvia earned a doctoral degree in Nursing, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and a combined Master of Science in Nursing and M.B.A degree, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Carey School of Business. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in Nursing, at the University of Vermont.

Contact Martha Sylvia today.

A two-time breast cancer survivor, Lillie  has worked tirelessly to improve the care of breast cancer patients around the world. She is a certified breast cancer patient navigator. and director of the Johns Hopkins cancer survivorship programs for the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. Lillie is a nationally recognized public speaker on the subject of breast cancer and breast cancer survivorship, having written 14 books and more than 250 articles on this subject.

She is the co-founder and vice president of a national non-profit organization called Mothers Supporting Daughters with Breast Cancer. She is the consultant for breast cancer for national ABC News and Good Morning America, and is also consulted regularly by the Today Show and CNN. She is an active lecturer, serves as “Ask an Expert” for several breast cancer websites, and is the co-developer of “Managing Cancer at Work,” a low-cost, high-impact employee benefit program that enables organizations to help their employees prevent cancer, recognize the early warning signs of the disease, and understand and manage cancer treatment.

Contact Ms. Lillie Shockney today.

Developed the Hospital at Home model, which is a model that many insurers and health systems are adopting which sends doctors, nurses, physicians assistants, and pharmacists into homes to provide hospital-level care, including portable lab tests, ultrasounds, X-rays and electrocardiograms.

Dr. Leff is an internationally recognized leader and researcher in the development, evaluation, and dissemination of novel models of care for older adults, including the Hospital at Home, Guided Care, geriatric service line models, and medical house call practices. Dr. Leff is president of the American Academy of Home Care Physicians.

Contact Dr. Bruce Leff today.

Nicholas Dalesio, M.D., is an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine and otolaryngology/head & neck surgery at the Johns University School of Medicine.  His areas of interest include pathophysiologic diseases of the pediatric airway, including peri-operative management of obstructive sleep apnea, difficult airway management, and hyper-reactive airway disease in patients with cystic fibrosis.

Dr. Dalesio’s primary research focus is on changes to upper and lower airway function caused by diseases including sleep apnea and cystic fibrosis.  Currently, he is evaluating unique therapeutic targets to treat hyper-reactive airway disease

Dr. Dalesio received his undergraduate degree in cellular biology/molecular genetics from the University of Maryland and  earned his medical degree at Virginia Commonwealth University/Medical College of Virginia campus. He completed his internship in internal medicine at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, his residency in anesthesiology at Yale-New Haven Hospital, which was followed by a fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.  Dr. Dalesio is completing his master’s degree in public health (MPH) in biostatistics and epidemiology, focusing on a certificate in clinical investigation at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dr. Dalesio is a Diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology and is subspecialty board certified in pediatric anesthesiology.

Contact Dr. Nicholas Dalesio today.