Leadership Announcement – Divisions of General Medicine, Geriatrics, and Hospital Medicine

It is my distinct pleasure to announce that Margaret L. (Molly) McNairy, MD, MSC will be the Chief of the Divisions of General Medicine, Geriatrics, and Hospital Medicine in the Department of Medicine and Professor of Medicine at WashU Medicine effective October 1, 2025.

Dr. McNairy is currently Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Center of Global Health at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.  She also serves as Chief of the Section of Hospital Medicine at Weill Cornell and New York Presbyterian Hospital and leads the Global Health Research Fellowship within the Cornell-Hunter Health Equity Research Fellowship program in the Division of General Internal Medicine.  Dr. McNairy is an outstanding general internist and internationally recognized global health scholar. She completed her undergraduate training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead Scholar and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and as a Fulbright Scholar earned a Master of Science degree from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  She completed her internship and internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, followed by a Global Health Equity Fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

She began her early faculty career at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital working as an academic hospitalist and as a global health physician with Partners in Health to implement HIV and primary health care programs in sub-Saharan Africa.  She subsequently joined the International Center for AIDS Programs  at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health as a physician scientist. Her work there focused on HIV service scale-up in multiple low-income countries and implementation science studies designed to improve HIV primary health care delivery.   In 2014, she was recruited to Weill Cornell’s Division of General Internal Medicine (GIM) and the Center for Global Health. There, she continued to practice as an academic hospitalist and took on significant leadership roles in GIM, Hospital Medicine, Global Health, and Research Fellowship Programs, with a particular focus on expanding research and training for faculty, fellows, and students in global health. 

Dr. McNairy is an outstanding physician-scientist whose seminal contributions have improved care for people with HIV and cardiovascular disease especially those living in extreme poverty.  She uses a multidisciplinary approach in her extramurally funded research, which includes rigorous observational research as well as clinical and implementation trials focused on testing tailored health interventions to prevent and treat HIV and heart disease in challenging real-world settings. Her HIV work has influenced international government, CDC, USAID, and WHO policies. Her cardiovascular disease research, including the population-based Haiti Cardiovascular Disease Cohort Study, is transforming the global understanding of heart disease in severely impoverished populations and will continue to have critical impact on future clinical practice and policy. Her research is funded by NIAID, NHLBI, NIH Fogarty, and multiple foundations and she has published extensively including in NEJM, AIDS, Lancet, PLoS Medicine, JAMA Cardiology, Hypertension, and Circulation journals.

In addition to leading a large research program, she leads numerous research training and mentorship grants including a NHLBI K24, NIH Fogarty D43, and a NIAID R25 for global women’s health. Dr. McNairy is deeply committed to mentorship and faculty development, with an impressive track record of trainees and leadership of novel training programs. She created the Global Health Fellowship track, now part of the Cornell-Hunter Health Equity Research Fellowship, designed specifically for internists interested in academic global health and health equity as a pathway to independent NIH funding. In addition, she co-founded the Weill Cornell Women’s Global Health Research Initiative to increase mentorship of women scientists globally and address complexities of women scientists who are often simultaneously primary care givers for their families. These programs have resulted in an outstanding track record of junior faculty with NIH K-awards and a network of over 300 research scientists. 

In addition, she has held important administrative and leadership roles at Weill Cornell, most notably Chief of Hospital Medicine, a large section of over 100 faculty in the Division of GIM.  Her team has used skills in implementation science to implement and scale novel programs in addiction medicine, an inpatient bedside procedure service, a clinical operations dashboard to improve patient care and quality, and faculty coaching in partnership with hospital and Department of Medicine leadership.  Other leadership roles include membership on the Department of Medicine’s Research Award Selection Committee and the Grants Administration and Management Committee. She is highly active in education, providing leadership courses for junior faculty in Internal Medicine, directing Global Cardiovascular Disease Grand Rounds, and teaching about health systems in resource limited countries.

Dr. McNairy has received numerous honors and awards, including recognition as a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leader in 2024, the AAMC Women Faculty Leadership Development Program Award in 2023, and the Bibliowicz Award for Excellence in Mentoring Women Faculty, the American Young Investigator Award and the Lilia Wallis Award in Women’s Health Research all at Weill Cornell.

We are very thankful to Dr. Brad Evanoff who has been an outstanding leader of General Medical Sciences and the General Medicine & Geriatrics division. Dr. Evanoff has led the Division of General Medical Sciences since 1998, and in 2024 facilitated the successful integration of the General Medical Sciences, General Medicine, and Geriatrics divisions. Dr. Evanoff is an expert in occupational health and safety, who conducts both epidemiology studies and workplace intervention research to identify and prevent occupational injuries and illnesses. He developed the Master of Science in Clinical Investigation program in 2006 and was actively involved in building the Clinical Research Training Center, which has prepared hundreds of trainees and junior faculty to assume leadership roles in research and clinical care. Dr. Evanoff also provided exceptional leadership as Co-PI and PI during the first 12 years of WashU’s Clinical and Translational Science Award and the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences.

We are also extremely grateful to Dr. Mark V. Williams, Chief of the Hospital Medicine Division who is retiring June 1, 2025, to join his wife Jing Li, MD, DrPH, MS who became the Albert Oberman Professor of Cardiovascular Disease at the University of Alabama in Birmingham on February 1, 2025.  Dr. Williams has made important contributions to the Hospital Medicine Division by expanding faculty, research, and educational programs in the Division.

Under Dr. Williams’ leadership, the division has grown substantially, taking on important new roles in patient experience, oncology, transplant medicine, and the co-management of cardiovascular patients in the new bed tower. Dr. Williams has promoted faculty development within the division, creating important leadership roles for the medicine triage attending service in the emergency department and for hospitalist teams managing complex patients in the emergency department. He has also expanded the division’s focus on patient safety, quality, and clinical operations in partnership with Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Additionally, he has developed vibrant programs for faculty development and education, as well as quality improvement initiatives.

The greater alignment between the General Medicine, Geriatrics, and Hospital Medicine divisions will allow us to further improve care for general medicine patients in both inpatient and outpatient settings. This integration will also enhance our ability to recruit clinicians in general and hospital medicine and expand educational and research opportunities within a newly integrated division.