NEOMED trustees choose chairman, vice chair

Staff report

Rootstown

Northeast Ohio Medical University announced that Dr. Chander M. Kohli of Canfield, has been elected vice chairman of the board of trustees and Dr. Eric Kodish was elected chairman.

Dr. Kohli has operated a private neurosurgical practice in Youngstown since 1972 and has been a long-tenured member of the NEOMED Board of Trustees.

He first served from September 2000 to June 2005, where he spent one year as chairman. He was reappointed to the Board in January 2009 by former Gov. Ted Strickland and most recently has served on the Finance, Fiscal Policy and Investment Committee.

He has been a generous supporter of the university, most recently establishing the Aneal Mohan Kohli Academic Technology Endowment in honor of his son’s passion for videography and the visual arts.

A native of India, Dr. Kohli received pre-medical education from Hindu College, New Delhi, India, and graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

After serving in the armed forces of India as a general- duty medical officer for more than three years, he came to the United States in 1966 and began an internship and surgical residency at Elyria Memorial Hospital in Elyria. He performed neurosurgical residencies at the University Hospital, Edmonton Alberta Canada, and at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Dr. Kodish serves as the director of the Center for Ethics, Humanities and Spiritual Care and the F. J. O’Neill professor and chairman of the department of bioethics at Cleveland Clinic.

He is also a professor of pediatrics at the Lerner College of Medicine. He was appointed as a member of the NEOMED Board of Trustees in January 2009 by former Governor Ted Strickland, and has served as chair of the Academic and Scientific Affairs Committee and a member of the Executive Committee.

A 1986 graduate of NEOMED, Dr. Kodish completed his residency in pediatrics at Northwestern’s Children’s Memorial Hospital and fellowships at the University of Chicago in both pediatric hematology oncology and medical ethics.

He later joined the staff at University Hospital’s Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, where he was the founding director of the Rainbow Center for Pediatric Ethics. Dr. Kodish currently serves on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Pediatric Studies.

He is the author of more than one hundred publications in journals including JAMA, the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.