DIRECTORS’ BIOS

Helen M. Fernandez, MD, MPH

Professor
Vice Chair of Education
Director, Geriatrics Fellowship Program
Co-Director, Geriatrics-Palliative Care Fellowship Program
Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine

Dr. Fernandez completed her residency in Internal Medicine/Pediatrics at Saint Vincent’s Medical Center in New York. She then completed her fellowship in Geriatrics, where she also served as a Chief Fellow, and a Masters of Public Health degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Fernandez is a palliative care physician and geriatrician.

Dr. Fernandez leads the largest geriatrics fellowship in the country which trains 20% of the workforce and has served as a mentor to many students, residents, fellows and faculty. She has presented on many national and international meetings including the World Gerontology Conference, the ACP International Meeting and the International Association for Medical Education Annual Conference. She is a creator and senior Course Director for the 20th Annual “Intensive Update with Board Review in Geriatric and Palliative Medicine”, in addition to the “Master Clinician-Educator Program in Geriatrics” and “Physician Mini-Fellowships: Geriatrics for Non-Geriatricians” programs. In 2010, she was named a National Hispanic Medical Association Fellow. In 2010, she received the Leo Tow Gold Humanism Award and appointed as a HRSA Advisory Committee member by the Secretary of Health. In 2010, she was named a Master Educator in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Institute of Medical Education. In 2011, she co-created the first integrated geriatrics and palliative care fellowship which has now been disseminated to 10 other institutions. In addition, in 2011, she served as chair of the IME Faculty Development and Primary Care Track Working Groups. In 2013, she was awarded the first American Geriatrics Society Mid-Career Clinician Educator Award. She has published several articles in competencies and entrustable professional activities for geriatric fellows and leads the development of a geriatric fellowship assessment toolbox. Dr. Fernandez has appeared in several media outlets including CNN, CCTV, CNN en Espanol, Univision and NY I discussing issues of aging. Since 2011, she has been a master educator for rural interdisciplinary training which has been disseminated to Indian Health Services in Washington State, New Mexico and Anchorage, Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. In 2020, Dr. Fernandez was awarded Mount Sinai Alumni Achievement in Medical Education. In 2021, Dr. Fernandez was awarded the Dennis W. Jahnigen Memorial Award).

Mollie Biewald, MD

Assistant Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Mollie Biewald is the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Director. Dr. Biewald graduated from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2012, and completed her internal medicine residency training at Mount Sinai. After completing the one-year fellowship in palliative medicine in 2016, she joined the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine faculty. Dr. Biewald is a dedicated and talented teacher of palliative care skills at the bedside to learners from all specialties. In 2016, she was the recipient of the departmental award for Medical Student Teaching in Palliative Medicine (awarded to one graduating fellow in the department each year). In 2018, she was honored as Palliative Care Educator of the Year (awarded to one attending physician in the department each year by the fellowship class). She consistently receives stellar learner evaluations, and is often acknowledged as an exceptional role model by medical students and house staff. In July of 2017, Dr. Biewald became the Associate Program Director of the HPM Fellowship. In the last 5 years, she has made several improvements to our core curriculum, with a special focus teaching complex pain management skills. Dr. Biewald also has a passionate interest in teaching serious illness communication skills to geriatric and palliative medicine fellows and serves as a faculty member for the VitalTalk communication skills training. She teaches multiple related communication courses for clinicians (GeriTalk, EMTalk, OncoTalk).

Lauren Wagner, MD

Assistant Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Lauren Wagner graduated from the Long School of Medicine at UT Health Science Center at San Antonio in Texas in 2019. She completed her Internal Medicine Residency at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx in 2022 and then completed Cornell and Columbia’s Bicampus Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship in 2023. She is now a Palliative Care physician at Mount Sinai Hospital. She is interested in medical education in palliative care and is involved in bedside teaching with different levels of learners as well as didactic learning across fields. She is a faculty member for the VitalTalk communication skills training as well as related courses, including GeriTalk, IMTalk, and OncoTalk.

Sonica Bhatia

Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors
Assistant Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Sonica Bhatia is a graduate of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where she was selected to both Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Geriatric Medicine at New York Presbyterian – Weill Cornell Medical Center before joining the faculty at the Icahn School of Medicine in 2013. For nearly 10 years, she was the primary care doctor for homebound patients through the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors program. In the summer of 2023, she transitioned from home-based primary care to office-based primary care and geriatric consultations for older adults at Mount Sinai Morningside. Dr. Bhatia has extensive experience in medical education, particularly at the student and resident level. She was previously the Director of Education at Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors and Co-Director of a mini-communication skills course for internal medicine residents at the Mount Sinai Hospital. She co-developed and directed an innovative advance care planning clinic for internal medicine residents and currently is the Director of Curriculum at the embedded geriatrics clinic in Internal Medicine Associates, which all 3rd year Internal Medicine residents at the Mount Sinai Hospital rotate through. Since 2018, she has served as a preceptor for the doctoring course at the Icahn School of Medicine for pre-clinical medical students. From 2018-2020, she helped develop a successful proposal for an innovative pathway to encourage and sustain early interest in geriatrics through the Combined Medicine and Geriatrics Residency/Fellowship program, which now exists at multiple sites nationally, including at the Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Morningside. Through her efforts, she hopes to help meet the needs of older adults and get trainees excited about caring for older adults.