Armenian Medical Education Innovator Is Fulbright Scholar

“She was my anatomy professor at the medical school and knows my career development and achievement very well,” he added.

“In 2007, Dr. Gohar Kyalyan and I were invited by Dr. Aram Chobanian to come here and see new trends in medicine. We were invited to meet the dean of the Boston University School of Medicine,” he said, Dr. Karen Antman,

The collaboration between Antman and Kyalyan proved to be fruitful. “We worked with BU to reform medical education and signed a new cooperation agreement with the BU faculty,” which agreed to come to Armenia to help to in curriculum reform on the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Yaghjyan has the distinction of being picked as a Fulbright Scholar not once, but twice. The first time, he explained, was in 2007, but he was not able to come to the US because he was “in the middle of the reforms.”

“I wrote a letter and said that I could not come,” and asked to be reconsidered if the chance arose. He reapplied in 2011 and was accepted the following year and started at Boston University School of Medicine.

In 2011, Yaghjyan joined the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia (NCFA) medical team, for which he became medical programs director in 2012.

The National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia is a public-private entity established in 2008 through a partnership between the Government of Armenia and a group of global business leaders of Armenian descent. Boston-area Armenian Afeyan and Raffi Festekjian are members of the Board of Trustees. The board functions under the aegis of the office of the prime minister.

Cancer Complex Being Built

During his stay in the US, Yaghjyan is also focusing on the organization of nuclear medicine education and management of cancer hospitals. He visited leading cancer hospitals in the US, including MD Anderson in Texas, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the Yale Cancer Center and the Cleveland Clinic.

The vision of the NCFA is to have a cyclotron bunker, a diagnostic center to run isotopes for imaging cancer, with work complete by 2013.

The project in Armenia is a “cancer city,” in effect, to be run by the NCFA and the government of Armenia. If the center is finished as envisioned, it would not only be a world-class center to provide first-rate care for patients in Armenia, but it would attract patients from far and wide.

Yaghjyan said that there are only three cyclotrons in Moscow and some additional few in all of Russia  and none in the countries neighboring Armenia, including Georgia and Iran.

Yaghjyan said that he has also been involved with the HYEBRIDGE telemedicine project that Armenia Fund USA is leading and hopefully after his new connections with Boston University and Boston Armenian Medical Association, the Boston doctors will be more involved in this initiative

In between his incredibly hectic professional schedule, he finds time to head the Land and Culture branch in Armenia.

Land and Culture

Yaghjyan recalled that his work with the Land and Culture Organization started soon after the group came to Armenia in the wake of the 1988 earthquake that had destroyed much of the north of the country.

“I started while I was in medical school. I was sent to them to be helpful and I started to volunteer with them in 1991. In 1992, he became the organization’s president in Armenia.

The group has worked on the school in the Karabagh town of Karintak, as well as rebuilding the church in Gogaran in Armenia, renovating Tatev and the Shushi Hospital, which is now complete.

Yaghjyan has made lasting friendships through the years, ones that have enriched not only his personal life but also Armenia’s medical future. One such connection was with Dr. Rafi Avitsian, head of the Neurosurgical Anesthesiology Section at the world-famous Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. He got an invitation in 2003 to visit the hospital as part of an observership program. The program had no money and little capability for helping visiting doctors, but through Avitsian, the program has grown. He makes regular trips to Armenia to teach, in addition to being “the ambassador for this program at Cleveland Clinic.” Since 2005, he has hosted students in his house. The program is free for all students from Armenia

During his incredibly rich medical career, Yaghjyan has worked from the bottom to the top. It was what he saw in his duties as an intensive care nurse in post-quake Armenia and wartime Karabagh that he decided to pursue his medical course relentlessly.

“I saw a lot of people during the Karabagh war and the earthquake. I decided it was good for me to do something new and take something very, very new, go on a long and difficult journey. In 2007 the continuing medical education  and graduate medical education was in the process of developing and I was happy to use my knowledge and experience in that area. I am happy to be at the front lines, be they medical, educational, clinical or innovational.”

Yaghjyan will return to Armenia in September.