Whether it’s the candid experiences shared by a survivor of sarcoidosis, the insights of a Nobel Prize winner in medicine, or the ethical framework that guides a Johns Hopkins transplant oncologist, one key theme has come through in all of this fall’s CIM Seminars: the importance of medicine as a public trust.
“At CIM and across the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins, this concept must be a north star for all of us,” says pulmonologist Michelle Sharp, a Mary and David Gallo CIM Scholar and Elena and Everardo Goyanes CIM Scholar, who is the organizer of the 2025–2026 CIM Seminars. “My goal in the speakers we’ve selected is to explore how we can learn from medicine’s history and really look to the change that’s coming in health care to ensure that medicine remains a public trust.”
This principle, as articulated by public health expert Steven Schroeder in his seminal 1989 paper, is both timeless and incredibly timely, given the current landscape in medicine. Crucially, it calls for shared responsibility: “Medicine is entrusted by society to improve the health of the public through education, patient care and research. In return, medicine receives significant public funding, respect and autonomy.”
Toward that end, Sharp has been intentional in bringing a wide variety of voices and perspectives to this year’s CIM Seminars, which unfold about twice a month over Zoom for an avid audience of patients, CIM donors, and current and former Johns Hopkins faculty members, sometimes totaling as many as 100 or 200 people.
While a number of speakers are esteemed leaders in medicine (such as the 2019 Medicine Nobel Prize-winner and former Johns Hopkins Osler Medical resident William G. Kaelin Jr., who spoke about the power of curiosity-driven research, or Hopkins’ William B. Greenough, who pioneered oral rehydration therapy to treat cholera) other speakers this fall are public figures who have made a name in TV, the movies, and music.
For example, Ted Koppel, renowned TV anchor and winner of 52 Emmys, discussed what we can learn from broadcast journalists about building public trust in accurate communication, and celebrated actor Alan Alda, now 89, will talk about the importance of empathy in fostering human connection. For that seminar in January, Sharp will travel to Manhattan with physician Karl VanDevender to conduct a live interview with Alda, who hosted PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers documentary TV series for 12 years. Alda continues to host the popular podcast Clear + Vivid, which focuses on the art of connecting and communicating.
Sharp notes that skills such as empathy and strong communication are absolutely critical to providing humanistic health care, “which is central to the mission of why so many of us went into medicine in the first place.” She underscored the importance of the patient experience herself with the very first seminar of the year, on September 16. In that presentation, Sharp hosted Tishia Humes, a patient in the sarcoidosis clinic at Johns Hopkins, which Sharp leads. “Our patients need to be at the center of everything we do, so it was very important to me that we start off with a patient’s perspective,” she says.
Because sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that can affect almost any organ, and there is currently no known cure, living with the devastating condition is particularly challenging, as Humes shared for the CIM audience.
Given the value such insights hold for those working in the medical community, Sharp is looking to grow the audience for the CIM Seminars, to include medical students and trainees, in the months ahead.
“Right now, many would agree that our medical system is facing many significant challenges,” she says. “As a generation of clinicians and scientists, we need to be thinking innovatively about how everyone can have access to the public trust that medicine should be. I am hoping the CIM Seminars can be a catalyst for the field.”
