About the Alanna Stone Memorial Endowment
The Emory University School of Medicine community honors the life and memory of alumna and faculty member Alanna Carolyn McKelvey Stone 07PH 11M, who passed away on July 10th, 2017, after a yearlong battle with breast cancer followed by a brief stint with leukemia. Dr. Stone was a rising star in the Emory Division of General Medicine and Geriatrics and a renowned global health scholar.
To continue her legacy, Dr. Stone’s family has partnered with Emory University to establish the Alanna McKelvey Stone, MD, MPH Memorial Endowment for Medical Education. The goals of the endowment are to continue the work Dr. Stone had started, including support for research opportunities for residents in global health and development opportunities in medical education for residents and promising young faculty. In honor of Alanna’s commitment to medical education and her desire to leave a lasting legacy as a clinician educator, current and former internal medicine residents are coming together to increase funding for the endowed program established in her memory.
Why your support matters
Funds from the Alanna McKelvey Stone, MD, MPH Memorial Endowment for Medical Education will be immediately available to grow resident scholarship and research in global health, provide life-changing experiences for new residents, and provide another opportunity to share Alanna’s story. Additionally, funds will support resident and faculty development in teaching and medical education. We hope to raise enough funds over the next three years to establish Emory’s first-ever Clinician-Educator Fellowship in General Internal Medicine, named for Alanna. The fellowship will prepare fellows for faculty careers in academic general medicine. This endowment will not only benefit future residents at Emory and the School of Medicine faculty in perpetuity, but it will also help to cement Alanna’s legacy as a physician, educator, and friend.
The Alanna Stone Memorial Endowment Fund is also excited to support a new initiative entitled "E4" (Emory Ethiopia Equity Exchange) to support a bilateral exchange program with Addis Ababa University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Emory has had a long-standing partnership with AAU and has sent Internal Medicine Residents to Black Lion Hospital for a one-month rotation for over ten years. A critical component that has been missing from this partnership is reciprocity, and now for the first time, with the support of the Alanna Stone Memorial Endowment, we will support AAU Internal Medicine Residents to have the opportunity to visit Atlanta and spend one month rotating at an Emory affiliated hospital. We know Alanna would have supported this endeavor wholeheartedly, and we hope you do as well.
Past Firestarter Award Recipients
2018- The first Firestarter Award Recipient
Dr. Chelsea Modlin, recipient of the first Firestarter Award in 2018, developed and carried out a project to evaluate authorship equity in infectious diseases research conducted in low-income countries. She found that authors from low-income countries were included in the primary or senior authorship positions only about half of the time. Dr. Modlin’s work was published in the journal PLos Global Health and is having an impact on creating equity in international research partnerships.
As well she conducted a study on medical ethics conflicts that arise when USA-based resident physicians travel abroad to low-income countries to participate in short-term global health experiences. Her insights from this work were published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Dr. Modlin is now a third-year Infectious Disease Fellow at John Hopkins University and the Oxford-Hopkins Global Infectious Disease Ethics (GLIDE) Collaborative program.
A further note: Dr. Modlin has recently applied for an NIH Fogarty International Center career developmental award focused on infectious disease research ethics in Uganda. Dr. Modlin acknowledges that her Firestarter Award was instrumental in fueling her passion for Infectious Disease ethics research. Specifically, her Firestarter Award provided support for the following project (Equity in International Partnerships), which provided a critical pilot date for her career development award.
2019- Firestarter Award Recipient
Dr. Vanessa Kung was the 2019 Firestarter awardee. She developed a unique project on Compassion in Medicine, which took on new relevance against the backdrop of the Covid19 epidemic. Dr. Kung began her work with the Navajo Nation in Tuba City, Arizona, as part of the Global Health Distinctions Program (GHDP, She then received an infectious disease fellowship, which she spent in Colorado, again working with a Native American population. In 2021 Dr. Kung gave a presentation to the Internal Medicine residency program about Strategies to Promote Compassion in Medicine, underscored by her experience with the Western tribes. Dr. Kung is now an attending physician in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is committed to a career improving healthcare quality and equity for all people regardless of background or country of residence.
Because our Emory physicians were so caught up in dealing with the Covid epidemic in 2020, the third Firestarter Award was held back until 2021.
2021- Firestarter Award Recipient
We were excited to restart the program and very happy to support our third Firestarter recipient, Dr. Chloe Lalonde. She was selected for her interest and work in Hematology/Oncology and, within the global health space, on how to improve access to cervical screening and treatment for women in low/ middle-income countries such as Ethiopia. Cervical cancer is currently second in both incidence and mortality among cancers affecting women in Ethiopia. Dr. Lalonde worked with a global health leader at Emory in the human papillomavirus arena, Dr. Jennifer Goedken, to evaluate a project in Ethiopia assessing the needs and knowledge of healthcare workers on treatment strategies to combat cervical cancer. Dr. Lalonde is next focusing on long-term outcomes there for training in cervical cancer treatment using HPV/DNA diagnostic tools followed by acetic acid technique (VIA) treatment.
Dr. Lalonde states that she is very passionate about this area of work and committed to working with vulnerable populations both in the US as well as abroad. She was recently accepted into a Hematology/Oncology fellowship program at UC Davis Medical Center.
Steering Committee
Ms. Jeanne Fitzgerald Dolak, Alanna Stone’s mother, acknowledges this committee as follows:
"Last but not least, our outstanding Steering Committee has worked hard and remained committed to the goals of the Alanna Stone Fund. I want to personally thank them for partnering with me through thick and thin, literally. As we all know, the last three years have been difficult for everybody, but particularly for doctors and other health care providers. I am not only thankful but very proud and lucky to have worked with these fine people."
- Carlos del Rio, Distinguished Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine; Executive Associate Dean, Emory School of Medicine & Grady Health System; Professor, Hubert Department of Global Health-Rollins School of Public Health;
- Russell Kempker, Associate Professor of Medicine Emory University’s Infectious Disease Division, Co-director, Global Health Distinctions Program, J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency Program
- Paulina Rebolledo, Co-director, Global Health Distinctions Program, J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency Program, Emory University, and Associate Professor of Medicine, Emory SOM and Global Health, Hubert Department of Global Health Emory University.
- Reena Hemrajani, Director, J Willis Hurst, Internal Medicine Residence Program, Emory University
- Karen Law, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Emory University, Member Emeritus, Alanna Stone Memorial Fund Steering Committee
- Rounding out the team are Tom Lawley, Senior Director of Development at Emory University School of Medicine; Georgia DeFreitas, Assistant Director of Advancement and Alumni Services Emory University School of Medicine Woodruff Health Sciences Center; and Ms. Dolak.