Wellbeing Fellows Program
Wellbeing Fellows Program
The Office of Wellbeing welcomed its second class of Wellbeing Fellows in January 2026. The fellows will create and execute innovative projects over the next year. Along with working to improve wellbeing, they’ll have the opportunity to hear from expert speakers and will meet regularly for coaching and education sessions.
Melissa Allen, MS
VC Administration
Sr. Director, Laboratory Services
Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Kimberly Gergelis, MD
Radiation Oncology
Megan Lyons, MD
Professor of Clinical Medicine, Clinton Crossings Internal Medicine
Medical Director for Clinical Operations,
URMC Primary Care Network
Mallory Manning, PA-C
Lead APP
Hospital Medicine Division, Strong Memorial Hospital
Itza Morales
Senior Director of Operations
Strong Recovery/Addiction Psychiatry
Staff Wellness Officer, Psychiatry
Emily Salib, MD
Assistant Professor, Medicine & Pediatrics
Department of Medicine, Highland Hospital
Christina R. San Filipo, MS, RN, RNC-NIC
Nursing Professional Development Practitioner
Golisano Children's Hospital NICU
Brenda Tesini, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and the Center for Community Health and Prevention Medicine (primary),
Infectious Diseases
Fellow Q&A
Click on a fellow below to learn more.
For Megan Lyons, MD, professor of Clinical Medicine, the Wellbeing Fellowship offered a chance to learn more about the science behind physician burnout and how to address it. And better yet—the fellowship gives her the chance to turn her curiosity into action.
You entered the fellowship with a project in mind. What do you hope to do?
I’m planning to address the issue of InBasket management for primary care physicians to attempt to reduce its contribution to burnout. Interestingly, research demonstrates some associations between high volumes of MyChart messages and higher risks of burnout.
Do you have any solutions in mind?
I believe there are a number of things to explore, including training for staff. We’ll look for ways to help them address the messages that fall within their scope of work or practice instead of automatically forwarding them to a physician. Coaching clinicians and educating patients around expectations, boundaries for appropriate use of MyChart messaging may also be part of the solution.
How did you become interested in the topic of Wellbeing?
It started out on a personal level—I’ve experienced burnout myself. I started reading about it and talking to my departmental leadership about it. That led to my role as associate medical director for my department, with a focus on clinician wellbeing, and to becoming the departmental representative to the Wellness Workgroup in 2020.
Aside from the opportunity to learn more about the science, what drew you to the fellowship?
It’s a great opportunity to work with experts in the field and to have time set aside to work on a topic that I’ve very passionate about.
When a program works, word spreads fast. Mallory Manning, PAC, heard about the wellbeing fellowship from one of last year’s participants, and, with a longstanding interest in the topic, she was eager to sign on as one of this year’s fellows.
What’s your background in Wellbeing work?
I’ve been involved in the APP Wellness Committee through the Sovie Center at Strong for several years. I work in Hospital Medicine, which can be fast-paced and a high pressure environment at times. Over the years, I've noted that the nature of inpatient medicine paired with off-shift and weekend work are all contributors to burnout, which increases job turn-over as well. I love what I do and the type of medicine that I practice, so I naturally became interested in ways to make it sustainable. When I heard about the opportunity to become a wellbeing fellow, it seemed like the perfect chance to learn more about wellbeing science and hopefully develop a project that could benefit the wellbeing of my colleagues.
The fellowship has just gotten underway, but do you have an idea for your project yet?
I’m still working on the details, but I want to base it around optimizing the Secure Chat experience for APPs. We constantly use it to communicate with nursing staff, attendings and other healthcare professionals. It is a great tool, but the volume of chats can become overwhelming at times. The Unified Clinical Communications team is doing a lot of work right now to optimize Secure Chat across the organization, and I would love to contribute to that effort while advocating for APP wellbeing.
What has your experience with the fellowship been so far?
A. We’ve had a few sessions so far, which has provided a great opportunity to meet the other fellows as well as Dr. Rooney and the Office of Wellbeing team. We’ve also received some expert and very welcomed advice on how to structure our projects. I’ve been a clinician for about 10 years, and I’ve been removed from the research arena for quite some time. The fellowship has been a good reintroduction to that world, and everyone involved has been super warm, encouraging and supportive.