Dartmouth Health’s Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) has named Serena H. Chao, MD, MSc, as the inaugural chief of the newly-created section of geriatric medicine. Chao will assume her new role on June 23.
Chao comes to DHMC from Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, where she has been on faculty since 2016. She currently serves as chief of the division of geriatrics, where she oversees the Program of All-Inclusive Care of the Elderly (CHA PACE), house calls program, nursing home program, and was instrumental in expanding clinical services for the growing 65+ patient population.
From 2004 to 2016, Chao held a number of key leadership roles in support of medical education in geriatrics at Boston Medical Center (BMC), including serving as core faculty in the Chief Resident Immersion Training in geriatrics program and the director of the geriatric ambulatory rotation in the internal medicine residency program. From 2009 to 2015, she was director of the BMC/Boston University School of Medicine Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program.
Chao attended medical school at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and earned a master’s of science in epidemiology from the Boston University School of Public Health. She completed a residency in internal medicine at UMass-Chan Medical School Baystate, where she also served as chief resident, followed by a fellowship in geriatric medicine at BMC. She is a fellow of the American Geriatrics Society.
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and the state’s largest private employer, serves patients across northern New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,000 providers in almost every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH, as well as across its wide network of hospitals, clinics and care facilities. DHMC is consistently named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, one of only 57 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the nation, and the only such center in northern New England; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital and multiple locations around the region; member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire; and more than 24 clinics that provide ambulatory and specialty services across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its historical partnership with Dartmouth and the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually, and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials recognized across the globe with Geisel and the White River Junction VA Medical Center in White River Junction, VT. Dartmouth Health and its more than 13,000 employees are deeply committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in our communities, and to providing each of our patients with exceptional, personal care.