2023-24 Linde Fellows
Meet Our 2023-24 Fellows
Samantha Baras, MD
Co-Medical Director of Health Services and Clinical Director of Pediatrics, The Dimock Center, Roxbury
Dr. Baras is Co-Medical Director of Health Services and Clinical Director of Pediatrics at The Dimock Center in Roxbury, and has been a pediatrician there since 2016. She graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed her pediatrics residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Post-pandemic, her primary managerial focus has been on staff retention, promoting individual professional development, and optimizing the workplace environment, given how crucial a healthy workforce is to providing respectful, high quality and collaborative primary care. Her project will involve an intentional and organized effort to identify the elements that keep medical assistants happy and dedicated to their roles, as well as the elements that do the opposite, and create interventions as a team to enhance the work experience.
Jonathan Li, MD
Medical Director of Population Health and Medical Director of Innovations Practice, Healthcare Associates
Dr. Li is a primary care physician at Healthcare Associates (HCA), the primary care practice at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). He received his MD from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science; he completed his internal medicine residency and chief residency at BIDMC. He currently serves as Medical Director of Population Health for Healthcare Associates, and is active in residency education and quality improvement initiatives in the practice. Prior to medical school, he worked for several years as a management consultant.
As a lead member of Healthcare Associates' Diabetes Working Group quality improvement team, Dr. Li is passionate about ensuring that advances in diabetes treatments and technologies benefits all our patients who live with diabetes. His Linde Fellowship project focuses on expanding the use of continuous glucose monitoring in primary care for patients with Type 2 diabetes, and leveraging the skillsets of the broad primary care team including nurses, clinical pharmacists, and others, to help patients gain the maximal benefit from this evidence-based advancement in diabetes care.
Dr. Li has been named Medical Director of HCA's new Innovations Practice, which will be moving to the Lowry Building in 2025.
Ritika Parris, MD
Director of Wellness for Graduate Medical Education, BIDMC; Faculty Wellness Advocate, Healthcare Associates
Dr. Parris is a primary care physician at Healthcare Associates (HCA), the primary care practice at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. After completing medical school at University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Parris completed her residency at BIDMC where she also served as Chief Resident in Internal Medicine. In addition to her clinical practice in primary care, Dr. Parris is the Director of Wellness for Graduate Medical Education at BIDMC and the HCA Faculty Wellness Advocate. She also serves on the Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians Board of Directors.
Dr. Parris's passion in physician wellness lies at the intersection of well-being and professional development. Through her work as a Linde Fellow, she worked to strengthen faculty mentorship at HCA through a formal program aimed at supporting both faculty mentors and mentees. The program equips mentors with helpful skills and support engagement in a mentorship community. It aims to contribute to faculty satisfaction, skill development, and career advancement to foster a thriving and engaged primary care work force.
Suzanne Saindon, DO
Practice Physician Lead, Beth Israel Lahey Health–Andover Primary Care
Dr. Saindon is a board-certified internal medicine primary care physician. She practices at Beth Israel Lahey Health- Andover Primary Care, where she is the practice physician lead.
Dr. Saindon earned her BS in Biology from Holy Cross and used this degree to work at Massachusetts General Hospital in AIDS research, supporting multiple publications. She went on to graduate from Midwestern College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2011. She completed her residency training at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center and subsequently served as the primary care physician member of the Medical Executive Committee. She also obtained subspecialty training and certification in Obesity Medicine and served as medical director of obesity medicine at the Center for Weight Control. She currently enjoys using this additional training to enhance her care as a PCP.
Through her work as a Linde Fellow, Dr. Saindon strives to improve the support provided during the vulnerable time between patient discharge and outpatient PCP follow up. She plans to implement a program — “The Next 7 days” — to bridge the gap through proactive outreach and intervention to prevent readmission, decrease medication errors, and improve patient satisfaction. Her intervention included education of staff regarding common pitfalls and gaps in care, personalized practice-level phone and telehealth scheduled touch-points with medical assistant and nurse; involving PCP at the first sign of clinical deterioration.