Doctor Thyroid

The past year has been fascinating and highly fruitful year for Dartmouth Institute Associate Professor Louise Davies, MD, MS. A 2017-2018 Fulbright Global Scholar, Davis spent several months in Japan at the Kuma Hospital in Kobe, Japan, studying the hospital's pioneering surveillance program for thyroid cancer. Davies, the chief of otolaryngology-head & neck surgery-at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont, has researched U.S. patients' experiences of monitoring thyroid cancers they self-identify as overdiagnosed, and has found that such patients often feel unsupported, even ostracized. Following her stay in Japan, Davies, who also develops and teaches courses in qualitative research methods in Dartmouth Institute's MPH programs, spent several months in the U.K. at the Health Experiences Research Group (HERG) at Oxford University. There, she learned skills that will help her develop web-based materials to raise public awareness about surveillance, surveillance programs, and