Most recently in L.A., he had served as Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Digestive Healthcare Quality and Outcomes, and Associate Director of the UCLA/VA Center for Neurovisceral Sciences & Women's Health.

The family arrived in Israel on a Nefesh B'Nefesh flight. "I was interviewed by KFWB [radio station] back home," he recalls, imitating the reporter's ponderous baritone: "Dr. Gralnek is leaving the good life in Southern California to move to Israel."

If you detect a midwestern twang, that is because Prof. Gralnek was born and bred in St. Paul, Minnesota. In his office at Rambam, he displays two framed red-and-white homer hankies -- home-run handkerchiefs waved in the stands by Minnesota Twins' fans at the Twins' winning World Series of 1987 and 1991.

Recalling his medical studies at the University of Minnesota, he says, "I interned right at the advent of video endoscopy in '89. In the old days of fiber-optic endoscopy, the gastroenterologist would have his scope [jumps up to mime the pose of a red-bearded buccaneer peering through a pirate scope]. Today, instead, we use video endoscopes to image the GI tract, with those images displayed on a flat screen TV monitor that everyone can watch – but when I was interning in the ICU, the GI guys came to the bedside to scope a very sick patient due to peptic-ulcer bleeding, and I thought, 'Not only do they get to do neat diseases, but they see the results of the procedures immediately.'"

On fellowship at UCLA, Prof. Gralnek became interested in GI outcomes research.  "Seventy percent of what [physicians] do is not truly evidence-based but taught -- [i.e.,] dogma-based -- but evidence based medicine is founded on well conceived, hypothesis driven studies that yield valid and generalizable clinical data and enable us to make better informed decisions in patient care. UCLA and the medical arm of the Rand Corporation have been a hotbed for [outcomes research], which became a new area of clinical investigation within medical subspecialties, such as gastroenterology, within only the past ten years or so."

"It sounds sort of corny," he concludes, "but I think that in my roles as a medical practitioner, researcher, teacher, and public health administrator, I can effect change in patient care."