Contemporary OB/GYN welcomes new board members

Ilana Cass, MD, is a faculty physician for the Division of Gynecologic Oncology within the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California.

Board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology and in gynecologic oncology, Dr. Cass has been awarded investigative grants from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, the American Cancer Society, the Gynecologic Cancer Foundation and pharmaceutical companies.

Her primary area of research interest involves genetic alterations as prognostic markers in ovarian cancer.

Dr. Cass received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and her medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. She completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Yale/ New Haven Hospital in Connecticut and a fellowship in gynecologic oncology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

She is the first candidate from Cedars-Sinai to be nominated and the first accepted to the year-long Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine fellowship.

Christian Pettker, MD, graduated from Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey) and subsequently gained experience in teaching at Eton College in England under an Annenberg Fellowship. He received his medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his obstetrics/gynecology residency at New York–Presbyterian Hospital (Columbia University).

Following this, he joined Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut) as a fellow in Maternal–Fetal Medicine and is now on the faculty as an Associate Professor.

Dr. Pettker’s special areas of interest are labor and delivery and healthcare quality and safety. His work in these areas was featured in an October 2014 New York Times blog, “When doctors and nurses work together”. It discussed the findings of the study “A comprehensive obstetric patient safety program reduces liability claims and payments,” which was published online by the AmericanJournal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in June 2014 and which was led by Dr. Pettker. His team found that an obstetric safety initiative can improve liability claims exposure and reduce liability payments.