Matthew Perry Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Officially Launch Fellowship in Addiction Medicine
The partnership between the Matthew Perry Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital has zeroed in on its first fellow.
The Matthew Perry Foundation Fellowship in Addiction Medicine — the first official program to bear the late actor’s name outside of the nonprofit — has selected Dr. Sarah “SK Kler for its inaugural fellowship. Kler, handpicked from more than 60 applicants, will receive comprehensive training in the delivery of high-quality addiction care to a diverse population of patients for the 2025/26 academic year. She officially begins June 30.
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Kler received medical training at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She currently serves as the chief medical resident in internal medicine at MGH, after worked at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless during her residency and as a case manager in White River Junction, Vt., providing case management to older adults who were homeless, insecurely housed, or living in subsidized housing.
With support from the Matthew Perry Foundation and additional funding from the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), MGH is expecting to select three candidates for program for the upcoming academic year. Fellows will rotate through MGH departments and Mass General Brigham’s regional partnerships.
“The Matthew Perry Foundation is honored to be in partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Addiction Medicine Fellowship program. Matthew believed deeply in eliminating the stigma surrounding the disease of addiction and, with that in mind, we are proud to lend our name to this important work,” per a joint statement from Doug Chapin, the foundation’s chairman of the board, and Lisa Kasteler Calio, its executive director.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last year, Chapin and Kasteler Calio said the foundation found an “extraordinary” partner in Dr. Sarah Wakeman, senior medical director for substance use disorder at Mass General Brigham and program director of the MGH fellowship. Their goal in launching the fellowship was to help populate the field of addiction medicine with trained professionals.
“Continuing to silo addiction care outside the rest of medical care and marginalize addiction as a social problem outside of the domain of physicians will only exacerbate stigma and inequities and increase the deadly impact of this epidemic,” said Wakeman in a statement. “It is vitally important for the medical community to address substance use disorder using effective, holistic, wraparound services across medical settings. The training provided through the MGH fellowship will allow the next generation of physicians to provide and continually improve this care.”
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