Laura Whitman, an assistant professor of general internal medicine at Yale Medical School, died on January 13 after a long illness. She was 59 years old.
A native of Pittsburgh, Dr. Whitman attended Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts and then graduated summa cum laude from Duke University, where she majored in psychology. She received her medical degree, with highest honors, from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Dr. Whitman joined the faculty at Yale Medical School in 1997. She served as the associate program director for ambulatory education for the Traditional Internal Medicine Residency from 2004–2013. Later, Dr. Whitman was medical director of the Primary Care Center at Yale New Haven Hospital and then as a medical director of the New Haven Primary Care Consortium.
Dr. Whitman also was instrumental in the development and dissemination of the Yale Office-Based Medicine Curriculum, where she served as senior editor from 2000–2019 and as co-editor-in-chief from 2019–2022. YOBM grew under her leadership and that of her co-editors from a local curriculum to one of the premier ambulatory education curricula for internal medicine residents in the United States and internationally. It is used by more than 300 residency programs worldwide.