Sigall K. Bell, MD
Rabkin Fellow in Medical Education
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Fellowship Project:
The medical writing initiative: An introduction to academic and reflective writing for 3rd year medical students during a longitudinal clerkship
Dr. Sigall Bell completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, graduating summa cum laude in Molecular and Cell Biology. While at UC Berkeley, she was the recipient of several scholar-athlete awards, a four time Academic All-American, an NCAA National Championships gymnast, and a member of the US gymnastics team at the World Maccabiah Games. She earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1997, and completed her residency training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA in 2000. After serving as Chief Medical Resident, she studied at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and contributed to public health and clinical efforts in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Brazil, Israel, and South Africa. She completed her fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2005, conducting clinical research in acute HIV infection under the mentorship of Dr. Eric Rosenberg at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Dr. Bell’s research interests stem from fascination with the dynamic interface of the body’s first encounter with HIV. Together with her collaborators, she is investigating the role of early therapy in acute HIV infection to preserve the immune system and improve clinical outcomes, through a study based at the Partners AIDS Research Center and its regional referral centers. Other HIV-related roles include an active out-patient practice, and leading quality assessment and improvement efforts in the Division of Infectious Diseases to optimize HIV care for patients and practice systems.
Dr. Bell is active in medical education, with particular interests in the cross-cultural experience of illness and its expression in art and literature, the role of the patient’s voice in medical care, and promoting humanism in the training of physicians. She teaches medical students and residents as a general medicine ward attending, as a lecturer in the residency program ambulatory curriculum, and as a participating instructor in the Immunology, Microbiology and Infectious Diseases course at Harvard Medical School. She serves as core faculty for the Principal Clinical Experience longitudinal clerkship for 3rd year Harvard Medical students at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. As a Rabkin Fellow in Medical Education, she developed and implemented a curriculum in writing, narrative, and reflection for 3rd year medical students to provide an early introduction to academic writing, and to explore the relationship between reflective writing and student perceptions of humanism in patient care. The Kenneth B. Schwartz Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening the relationship between patients and caregivers, recently awarded Dr. Bell a grant to continue her work in developing medical students' writing skills.
