Pinnacle Lecture Series

Each semester, the Connell School brings to Boston College an inspiring leader who speaks on an issue at the forefront of health care. Pinnacle lectures are open to all Boston College students, staff, faculty, alumni, and preceptors as well as practitioners and scholars unaffiliated with Boston College. View archived videos of past Pinnacle lectures.

SPRING 2026

How Are GLP-1 Therapies Reshaping Health Care and Beyond?

Monday, March 23, 2026, 5 p.m.

Yawkey Center, Murray Room

In this interdisciplinary panel discussion on nutrition, diabetes, obesity, and medication management, experts from Boston College, Johns Hopkins, Mass General Brigham, and Boston Medical Center will explore the risks, benefits, and rapidly shifting health care landscape surrounding GLP-1 therapies.

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Panelists

Ariana Chao

Ariana Chao ’10, M.S. ’11
Ph.D., CRNP, FNP-BC, RN

Associate Professor
Johns Hopkins School of Nursing with Joint Appointment in Medicine

Director of Research
Healthful Eating, Activity & Weight Program

Katelyn O'Brien

Katelyn O’Brien
Pharm.D., BCPS, CDCES, BC-ADM

Clinical Pharmacy Specialist
Boston Medical Center

Alexander Turchin

Alexander Turchin
M.D., M.S., FACMI

Director of Quality in Diabetes
Mass General Brigham

Associate Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School

Patricia Underwood

MODERATOR

Patricia Underwood
Ph.D., FNP-BC, RN, CDCES

Assistant Professor
Connell School of Nursing

Endocrine Nurse Practitioner
VA Boston Healthcare System

About the Speakers

Ariana M. Chao, Ph.D., CRNP, FNP-BC, RN

Ariana M. Chao is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing with a joint appointment in the School of Medicine. She serves as director of research at the Healthful Eating, Activity and Weight Program at Johns Hopkins where she is an obesity medicine nurse practitioner. Her research develops and tests innovative behavioral and pharmacological treatments for obesity and related eating behaviors that improve physical and mental health. With more than 100 articles, Chao’s work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and foundation and industry sponsors. She earned a B.S. and M.S. in nursing from Boston College, a Ph.D. in nursing science at Yale University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

Katelyn O’Brien, Pharm.D., BCPS, CDCES, BC-ADM

Katelyn O’Brien is a clinical pharmacy specialist and certified diabetes care and education specialist at Boston Medical Center in the adult Endocrinology Department. She graduated with her Pharm.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy and completed her post-graduate residency training at VA Boston Healthcare System. In 2025 she was named the Boston University Outstanding Champion in Continuing Education. She is the 2026 Diabetes Care and Education Specialist of the Year. She has presented extensively regionally and nationally around diabetes technologies and cardiorenal metabolic management of type 2 diabetes.

Alexander Turchin, M.D., MS, FACMI

Alexander Turchin is director of quality in diabetes at the Division of Endocrinology at Mass General Brigham and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research focus is on studying advanced methods of real-world evidence data analytics—including natural language processing, causal inference, and predictive modeling—and applying these methods to investigations of treatment and outcomes of patients with diabetes and other chronic cardiometabolic conditions. Turchin is an associate editor at the Diabetes, Obesity and CardioMetabolic CARE journal of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), founding chair of the ADA’s Health Care Delivery & Quality Improvement Interest Group, and a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. His research has been funded by PCORI, AHRQ, NIH and private foundations and has led to more than 130 papers and book chapters.

Patricia Underwood, Ph.D., FNP-BC, RN, CDCES

The panel’s moderator, Patricia Crowley Underwood, is an assistant professor at the Connell School of Nursing and an endocrine nurse practitioner at the VA Boston Healthcare System. Her pre- and post-doctoral work focused on identifying biomedical and genetic markers associated with hypertension and diabetes mellitus (DM). Subsequent work focused on developing and evaluating nurse-led interventions to improve health outcomes for surgical patients with poorly controlled DM. Her clinical practice focuses on veterans with diabetes and the delivery of DM self-management technology (insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors). She has received many awards including the Young Investigator Award from NINR/NIH and a statistics fellowship at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She earned a B.S. in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Boston College. 

Chao, O’Brien, and Turchin are the Dr. Maureen P. McCausland Pinnacle Keynote Speakers for spring 2026.

Continuing Education Contact Hours

This nursing continuing professional development activity is designated for one (1) contact hour provided by Boston College Connell School of Nursing Professional Development and Continuing Education. 

Boston Connell School of Nursing Professional Development and Continuing Education is approved as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by The American Nurses Association Massachusetts, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. 

Past Pinnacle Lecture Speakers

Click on the links below to view past lectures

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