Professional Interests

Dr. Elizabeth Kitsis is Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs in the Department of Medicine. In this role, she oversees credentialing, and faculty appointments and promotions, and co-directs the Department of Medicine Mentoring Program with Dr. Marla Keller. Dr. Kitsis also leads the Department of Medicine Physician Awards Program, Faculty Scholars Program, Well-Being Team, and GRAND-Med speakers’ program.

In addition to her administrative role in the Department of Medicine, Dr. Kitsis is a rheumatologist and bioethicist. After earning an MD from Cornell University Medical College, she completed her internal medicine residency at Boston City Hospital and rheumatology fellowship at New York University Medical Center, where she was also chief fellow. While on the faculty at NYU, Dr. Kitsis was Director of Clinical Research in Rheumatology.

Dr. Kitsis worked in the pharmaceutical industry for a decade, holding several roles at Pfizer Inc., including Vice President, Medical Affairs for Pain & Neurology, and Vice President, Worldwide Development for Pain & Inflammation, Oncology, and Diversified Products. During this period, she developed an interest in the ethics of drug development, and subsequently earned a Master of Bioethics degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

After joining Montefiore Einstein in 2008 as Director of Bioethics Education and attending rheumatologist, Dr. Kitsis assumed an administrative role in the Department of Medicine in 2014. Her scholarly interests include pharmaceutical ethics, social media and medical professionalism, and the ethics of physician shadowing. She is a fellow of the American College of Rheumatology.

Selected Publications

Kitsis EA. Rx for the pharmaceutical industry: call your doctors. Hastings Ctr Rep, 2009. 39: 18-21.

Kitsis EA. Physicians and the pharmaceutical industry: working together on conflict of interest. Am J Bioeth, 2011, 11: 51-52.

Kitsis EA. Shining a light on shadowing. JAMA, 2011. 305: 1029-1030.

Kitsis EA. Goldsammler M. Physician Shadowing: A review of the literature and proposal for guidelines. Acad Med, 2013, 88:102-10.

MacKenzie CR, Melzer M, Kitsis EA, CA Mancuso. Ethical challenges in rheumatology. Arthritis Rheum, 2013, July (Epub ahead of print).15.

Kitsis EA, Napier F, Juthani,V, Geyer, HL. Association of Sjögren’s syndrome with myotonic dystrophy type 1. BMJ Case Rep, 2019 Aug 28;12(8).

Wang J, Kitsis EA. Tangling the web: deception in online research. Am J Bioeth, 2013. 13:59-61.

Kitsis EA, Milan FB, Cohen HW. Who’s misbehaving? Perceptions of unprofessional social media use by medical students and faculty. BMC Med Educ, 2016. 16:67.

Kitsis EA, Fleischman AR. If you see something, say something. JAMA Neurol, 2019.  76(5):519-520.

Kitsis EA. Role synergy versus role conflict in dual-role consent in usual care trials. Am J Bioeth, 2019, 19: 42-43.Kitsis EA, Napier F, Juthani,V, Geyer, HL. Association of Sjögren’s syndrome with myotonic dystrophy type 1. BMJ Case Rep, 2019 Aug 28;12(8).

Keller MJ, Kitsis EA, Arora S, Chen J-T, Agarwal S, Ross MJ, Tomer Y, Southern W. Effect of systemic glucocorticoids on mortality or mechanical ventilation in patients with COVID-19. J Hosp Med, 2020. 15(8):489-493.

Ayesha B, Kumthekar A, Jain R, Patel S, Ramesh M, Ferastraoaru DE, Hudes G, Karagic M, Zafar S, Bartash R, Vasquez-Canizares N, Kitsis E, Tagoe C, Wahezi DM, Rubinstein T, Broder A. Rapid Implementation of a Multidisciplinary COVID-19 Cytokine Storm Syndrome Task Force. ACR Open Rheumatol. 2021 Mar;3(3):133-137.

Tomer Y, Gong M, Keller M, Southern W, Kitsis E, Kajita G, Shapiro L, Jariwala SP, Epstein E. Teamwork and leadership under fire at the epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic in the Bronx. Frontiers in Medicine Frontiers in Medicine, 2021.