Naushad Amin (2016-2017)
Naushad's exposure to international medicine goes back to his medical school training at Dow medical college in Karachi, Pakistan. It was here, he was exposed to the challenges of communicable and non-communicable disease management in the underdeveloped part of the country. He actively took part in Polio eradication campaigns organized by WHO. He did his Family Medicine Residency at Florida Hospital in Orlando and did a tropical medicine rotation in Guam in his senior year. He became the first family medicine trained hospitalist in one of the bigger tertiary care center in central Florida, and there by paved the path for many more to come. Here he was nominated vice-chairman of the department of family medicine in 2013, a post he held until the start of his fellowship in Global Health at CCRMC. In his "spare" time, he provides medical services to the villages along the tributaries of the Amazon River in Peru. Naushad will be presenting at the AAFP Global Health conference this year as well. Beside work, Naushad is an avid kiteboarder who loves to show-off a trick or two on the water. He also enjoys gardening and portrait sketching.
Kaya Belknap (2017-2018)
Kaya Belknap is a recent CCRMC grad from 2017. She grew up in Kenya and South Sudan and then moved to Arizona to attend both college and medical school at the University of Arizona. She has a passion for primary care integrated with public health and working with the underserved. She plans to return to South Sudan to serve as a full spectrum family doc. CCRMC's global health fellowship and the skills she will gain from this will bring her closer to her goal of returning home.
Elizabeth (Liz) Berryman (2016-2017)
Liz is a 2016 graduate from Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency. She originally hails from Ripon, CA (one hour east of Martinez), and studied Biology/Chemistry at Point Loma Nazarene University, in San Diego, CA. Her interest in global health and health equities started there, where she became a member of the City Heights community (a large beautiful and diverse refugee resettlement area). She remained in San Diego for medical school at UCSD, was involved in the PRIME Health Equities Program, and learned to love Border Health working with the UCSD Student Run Free Clinic. Her global health work began with an NGO in rural Guatemala (Voces y Manos por el Derecho a la Salud). During medical school, Liz received her MPH, and though specifically concentrating on health and social behavior, she took many global health classes and was inspired by leaders in global health and politics. Outside of medicine, Liz loves surfing and skateboarding, reading novels, and sipping good coffee in the sun.
Thomas Betjeman (2017-2018)
Thomas Betjeman graduated from the University of New Mexico Rural Family Medicine Residency in Santa Fe in 2017. He first became interested in global health after serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the agriculture sector in Mali 2003-2005. Since then he returned to Africa as a consultant to the Guinea Worm eradication program with the Carter Center as well as leading a public health expedition for Putney student travel. He studied medicine at the Medical School for International Health in Beer Sheva, Israel and took a year between third and fourth years to work on implementing the UN Millennium Development goals in Central Java, Indonesia. More recently he has been working in Iquitos, Peru on the development of rural family medicine focusing on the provision of services to the many indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon. He has a special interest in ethnobotany/ethnomedicine and plans to return to Peru as a CCRMC Global Health fellow this year.
Brea Bondi-Boyd (2013-2014)
Brea hails from the Sacramento area. She pursued her medical studies at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Cuba. Following graduation, she continued to serve as a mentor for medical students in Cuba, leading several workshops on women's health issues for medical students. As a family medicine resident, her interests led her to clinical work with indigenous Mapuche in Chile, Los Medicos Voladores in rural Mexico, and Partners in Health in Chiapas. Her global health fellowship year was spent working in Chiapas and attending on the medical/surgical service at Contra Costa. She continues to facilitate resident educational opportunities in Chiapas. Outside of medicine, she enjoys swimming, visual art, antiques and literature.
Desiree Carmen (2022-2023)
Desi is a recent graduate of Sutter Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency. Her early memories of the healthcare system were binational, traveling across the Port of Entry to Ciudad Juarez with her family for routine healthcare. She saw medicine as a means for social change in undergrad while attending American University in Washington DC, where she studied Health and Environmental Journalism. She returned home to attend medical school at Texas Tech during the height of the border refugee crisis, working with asylum seekers. During residency, she continued to care for the underserved as a full-spectrum family medicine provider and joined the Physicians for Human Rights Network. She is eager to join the Contra Costa Fellowship and hopes to expand her knowledge in POCUS, gender affirming care, and global health advocacy. During her external fellowship, she will be working at La Clinica de La Raza as a prenatal care provider and hospitalist. Her international work will include time in Malawi and Mexico. In her free time, Desi can be found exploring new hiking trails, listening to podcasts, and enjoying old comedy films with her partner and golden retriever named Champagne.
Androuw Carrasco (2017-2018)
Androuw is a 2017 graduate of the University of Arizona Family Medicine Residency. He spent his most telling years growing up in Tucson, Arizona. He studied physiology at the University of Arizona, medicine at Michigan State University, and everything else at YouTube.com. His passion in global health started in border health and health literacy issues as a Rotary Club Scholar in undergrad. Through the Leadership in Medicine for the Underserved (LMU) program at his medical school, he did his clinical years in Flint, Michigan, several clinical training in Uganda, Africa and Papua New Guinea, and several core clinical rotations in rural Michigan. In residency, he worked in Indian Health Service sites and developed his residencies first formal Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) for Family Medicine curriculum. He enjoys cycling (road/tour/mountain), acoustic guitar, food of any kind and at any time. He is interested in promoting family medicine and teaching POCUS for primary care providers.
Emily Cotter (2015-2016)
Emily is a recent graduate of the Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency program and currently a Contra Costa/UCSF Global Health Fellow. Her interest in addressing health inequities began while working with communities on Native American reservations during high school. After completing her undergraduate degree at Tulane University in New Orleans, she completed her MPH at U.C. Berkeley studying infectious diseases. She developed a strong sympathy for and commitment to health and human rights after witnessing human rights abuses during an MPH project in Zimbabwe. Her passion for working with populations experiencing and recovering from conflict led to her participation in a neglected tropical-disease project in Sierra Leone during medical school and various projects with Village Health Works in Burundi during residency. As a Global Health Fellow, she plans to work in Malawi supporting family medicine education and capacity building, with hopes of also returning to Burundi. She remains passionate about health and human rights and health inequities, as well as family-medicine education and volunteering with asylum seekers. Outside of medicine, she enjoys urban homesteading, cooking, running and wood working.
Kevin Critchlow (2020-2021)
Kevin spent grew up on the west coast in the suburbs of Seattle before moving to Los Angeles. He returned to Washington State for medical school at UW, where he participated in both the Targeted Rural and Underserved Track and the Global Health Track. He took a course in Nicaragua, studying the national health system and NGO partnerships to extend care from urban to remote populations. His interest in full-spectrum training, limited resources and caring for an underserved population led him here to Contra Costa for his family medicine training. The Global Health Fellowship will allow him to further his passion for point-of-care ultrasound, HIV medicine, and teaching--at the residencies both here in Contra Costa and (COVID19 pandemic permitting) in Malawi. Locally, he will take on a chief resident role, which in addition to clinical and ultrasound teaching, will allow him to continue working in the ambulatory and hospitalist groups as an attending. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, jogging in the surrounding hills, and going surfing.
Matthew Fentress (2011-2013)
Dr. Fentress attended medical school at the University of California Davis, subsequently joining CCRMC for residency. As a resident, Dr. Fentress co-founded the global health track at CCRMC, which enabled him to participate in clinical rotations in Malawi, Tanzania, and Haiti. Upon graduation, he served as a global health fellow, working with the MGH/CCRMC partnership in South Sudan where he trained South Sudanese medical students and junior physicians in the Juba Teaching Hospital. During his second year of fellowship, he focused on ultrasound skill development and teaching, spending his time abroad volunteering in a hospital in northern India serving the Tibetan refugee community in exile. After fellowship, Dr. Fentress joined Medecins Sans Frontieres, serving in missions in Myanmar and South Sudan, and subsequently worked in Liberia during the Ebola epidemic with Last Mile Health, an affiliate of Partners in Health. Dr. Fentress is currently the medical director of a homeless clinic in downtown Oakland and continues to work in the emergency department at CCRMC.
Laravic Flores (2018-2019)
Laravic is originally from the Philippines and grew up in the Bay Area. Raised in a family of activists who survived martial law, values of social justice were deeply engrained throughout her upbringing, and working with underserved marginalized communities has been essential in guiding her work. She completed her undergraduate studies at Brown University in Rhode Island, completing a degree in Community Health with a focus on International Health. During undergrad and medical school, Laravic worked with the NGO Council for Health and Development (CHD) in the Philippines, participating in the work of community-based health programs, implementing a community empowerment model utilizing health as a tool for community organizing and capacity building. She completed medical school in Cuba at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM / Latin American School of Medicine), which reinforced her passion for Family Medicine and the belief that health is a social justice issue. After spending many years away, she returned to California and recently completed her training at Valley Family Medicine Residency Program in Modesto. Laravic looks forward to being part of the Contra Costa-UCSF Global Health Fellowship Program, allowing her to pursue her passion to continue to work with the underserved both locally in Contra Costa County and internationally abroad.
Helena Frischtak (2021-2023)
Helena L Frischtak, M.D. is a 2021 graduate of the Family Medicine residency at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center. She grew up in Rio de Janeiro until age 18, when she moved to the U.S. for college, eventually staying for medical school at the University of Virginia. She has always enjoyed tropical and low-resource medicine, and has worked in clinics and hospitals in Brazil, New Zealand, and Mozambique. She also spent a year doing fieldwork research in the Peruvian Amazon. She was recently accepted to work with Doctors with Borders (MSF), and hopes to be sent on her first assignment soon. Helena is thrilled to be pursuing the UCSF-Contra Costa Global Health Fellowship, which will give her the tools to be a competent provider abroad and provide a unique global health community for years to come. In her free time, she is usually riding her yellow bike around San Francisco or in close-by state and national parks.
Evelyn Gandara (2019-2020)
Evelyn Gandara is from South Central LA, an area notorious for its high crime rate and deplorable health measures. Her early exposure to inequalities, ignited a passion to absolve social injustices, a feat that she quickly realized would be difficult to achieve. She focused on tackling various women's health issues and later decided to attend medical school in Cuba. She returned to East LA to complete her residency at the White Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program. During residency she volunteered/rotated with various organizations providing care to vulnerable populations including refugees, undocumented individuals, indigenous peoples domestically and in Mexico. Her unique experiences confirmed her interest to do a Global Health Fellowship. She is passionate about women's health, health disparities, social injustices and universal healthcare. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her family and exploring nature. She looks forward to work with the LA county jail system and with the Malawian people.
Dana Gersten (2020-2021)
Dana Gersten attended medical school at La Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, a Mexico-based university affiliated with New York Medical College. She finished her Family Medicine Residency in Hood River, Oregon, at a program geared towards full-spectrum family care and migrant worker health. Currently she provides broad spectrum primary care at a Federally Qualified Health Center in Berkeley and works as an attending at Highland Hospital. She teaches nurse practitioners, medical students, and residents, runs a procedure clinic, and leads pregnancy centering groups. In addition to training in Mexico, her global health experiences include teaching workshops to indiginous midwives in Guatemala, developing a W.H.O. perinatal mortality curriculum in Guatemala, and training experiences in India and Nicaragua. Through the Contra Costa/UCSF Global Health Fellowship, she hopes to master POCUS, grow as an educator, and foster relationships for a lifelong career in international health and global health education. Dana's personal interests include long distance running, dancing, drinking lots of coffee, and cultivating the "beginner mind". She plays a mean game of scrabble.
Nora Gibbons (2019-2020)
Nora Gibbons is a recent graduate from the Northern New Mexico Family Medicine Residency Program in Santa Fe, NM. She is originally from Arkansas where she went to medical school at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She lived in Cali, Colombia from ages 7-10, which gave her her first international experience. During medical school, she had the opportunity to travel to Dhaka, Bangladesh and work at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease and Research for a month. Additionally, during her second year of residency, she went to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala for a medical Spanish immersion course while working in clinics both in the city and in rural areas. These experiences and more have contributed to Nora's passion for social justice, women's health, and caring for the underserved. She is excited to have the opportunity as a global health fellow to further her skills as a family medicine practitioner in underserved areas as well as act as an advocate for primary care abroad.
Claire Hartung (2020-2021)
Although a native of the Philadelphia suburbs, I've ventured across the country for my education, landing at University of Rochester in upstate New York for medical school and then at Contra Costa for residency. As a French speaker, my previous global health experience has been primarily located in Mali and Haiti. I am excited to be starting the global health fellowship and will be combining the fellowship with a new 4th year chief resident position here at CCRMC. My desire to provide full-spectrum family medicine to underserved communities, my interest in POCUS, and my passion for clinical teaching are what attracted me to this position. I feel privileged to be able to deepen those skills at an institution that has a long-standing commitment to excellence in all these areas and has been my home for the last 3 years. While COVID has left us with much uncertainty, I am hopeful to be able to further the CCRMC global health connection and commitment to residency education in Malawi later this year. Outside of clinical work you can find me exploring the streets and hills of Martinez, seeking out new music, and spending (now mostly virtual) time with friends and family.
Ben Huntley (2015-2016)
Ben Huntley completed his family medicine residency and obstetrics fellowship training at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. He is joining us for a PGY-5 year as a Global Health Fellow. His primary interest abroad is in the teaching and provision of direct maternity care, including prenatal care, ultrasound (dating, anatomy and growth scans), labor management, and delivery (spontaneous vaginal, operative and surgical). Other related interests include family planning and cervical cancer screening. The brunt of his surgical training included mandatory operative fellowship months at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, which is among the busiest labor and delivery wards in the world. He is an ALSO Instructor and enjoys teaching in domestic and international settings. When not in maternity, he enjoys general adult inpatient medicine. Dr. Huntley holds a Certificate of Knowledge in Trop Med from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. In addition to the three months he recently spent representing Contra Costa at the Partners In Health site in Malawi, his clinical travels have previously taken him to Ecuador, Ghana, and Palestine. A native of Iowa City, Ben's interests outside medicine include running, mountain biking, cooking, baking, checking scores on ESPN and checking headlines in the New York Times.
Neil Jackson (2017-2019)
Neil Jackson is originally from the Steel Town - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended the Penn State Honors College, studied history, philosophy, saxophone, and pre-medicine, and developed a long-lasting passion for nature and artistic expression. He spent the next two years working as a stone-mason in Colorado, teaching English at a Muslim boarding school in norther Malaysia on a Fulbright teaching assistantship, and living on a permaculture commune in central Nicaragua prior to starting medical school at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. During medical school he concentrated in community and global health, performed and recorded in an avant-garde saxophone-cello duo, and apprenticed in bonsai. He recently completed a challenging residency in full-spectrum family medicine at CCRMC where he was fortunate to spend a month in both Malawi and the Peruvian Amazon as a part of the Global Health track. He is grateful for this fellowship year during which he will concentrate in obstetrics and gynecology, return to Malawi, build new connections in India and cultivate his beautiful garden.
Dana Kuhn (2018-2019)
Dana Kuhn studied anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, where she became passionate about other cultures. After getting her Masters in Public Health, Dana served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic and helped open a community clinic. She then worked at the New York Department of Health AIDS Institute and received her medical degree at George Washington University. As part of the global health track in residency, Dana rotated at Baylor International AIDS Initiative in Botswana and worked on a child nutrition program at Soft Power Clinic in Uganda. In 2017 Dana graduated from Mount Sinai Downtown Residency in Urban Family Medicine and has been working in Portland, Oregon at Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center. She is excited to gain more POCUS training during the fellowship and further develop her teaching skills in Malawi and Mexico.
Mariel Lougee (2018-2019)
Mariel Lougee is the first CCRMC Homeless Healthcare GH Fellow. She is a recent graduate of Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency Program. Before starting a career in medicine she worked at a homeless shelter in Los Angeles as a case manager at a women's drop-in shelter. This is where her dedication for the homeless began and where she first experienced outreach or "street medicine". She graduated from University of Minnesota Medical school where she continued this work at student run outreach and student run free clinics for the unsheltered. While in residency she continued to work on projects related to both homeless healthcare and full spectrum family medicine. Her goal of this year's new fellowship is to enhance her understanding of street medicine and the homeless community of contra costa county, the role of POCUS on the street, and to pilot new strategies of targeted outreach and hospital discharge follow-up to decrease re-admissions and ED visits. When not working she enjoys cooking and spending time outside.
Jessica Lucey (2019-2020)
Jessie went to the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Cuba, and was looking for a residency program that was as dedicated to primary care for the underserved, and found CCRMC! There she completed a global health track, which included one-month internships in Peru and Malawi. She plans to use the skills she acquired at CCRMC to work in global health, specifically in Malawi this year, and will probably only come back to the United States to visit her parents. In her spare moments, she bikes to cool places.
Ryann Milne-Price (2021-2022)
I am a recent grad of the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho in Boise. I grew up in Montana and enjoy exploring the outdoors, making art and hanging with eclectic collections of farm animals. My global health experience includes reproductive health research as a medical student. I was attracted to this fellowship as a way to strengthen my ultrasound and emergency medicine skills (I will be working in the ER) and to connect with people who think about global public health. In the future I hope to connect clinical work in the rural West with community health on a broader scale. I am excited and grateful to be a part of this program!
Leticia Moedano (2021-2022)
Leticia Moedano grew up in Yuma, Arizona. She completed her undergraduate studies at Yale University before returning to Arizona for medical school. She graduated from the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson Campus with Distinctions in both Global Health and Commitment to Underserved Populations. Her interest in providing care to underserved and diverse patient populations led her to the University of Arizona Alvernon Family Residency Program for her family medicine training where she served a large refugee population in her continuity clinic, community hospital, and on the maternal-child health service. Over the next year as an external fellow, she will be working at a Federally Qualified Health Center in Phoenix, Arizona. She aims through the Global Health Fellowship to develop her point-of-care ultrasound skills, grow as a clinical educator, and continue to provide full-spectrum family medicine, while building relationships for a lifelong career in global health. During her international work, she will be working and teaching in Malawi and Mexico. In her free time, she enjoys spending as much time outdoors, running, hiking, rock climbing, and adventuring with her family, friends, and her dog Teddy. She also enjoys writing and reading, and visiting used bookstores looking for hidden gems.
Michele Montandon (2011-2013)
Dr. Montandon received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, with an area of concentration in global health. She completed residency training in family medicine at the Contra Costa Regional Medical Center. During her training, she volunteered clinically and conducted HIV research in Kenya and Uganda. After residency, she worked with Doctors Without Borders in Lagos, Nigeria. Her international health interests include improvement of primary health care systems and medical education, particularly the training of highly skilled general practitioners and physician leaders for work in rural, physician-poor areas. Through this fellowship, she has worked on medical education programs in Juba, South Sudan and Sagam, Kenya.
Jonathan Patberg (2019-2020)
Prior to entering the medical field, Jon Patberg was focused on international politics, working as a human rights accompanier in rural and urban Colombia, South America. He went to medical school at the University of Washington where he participated in the Targeted Rural and Underserved Track, jump starting his career in rural and remote medicine. He chose the Contra Costa Regional Medical Center Family Medicine Residency because of the full spectrum training, particularly in acute/emergency medicine and obstetrics. He has joined the Global Health Fellowship in order to deepen this training in emergency medicine, obstetrics and teaching. He will split his fellowship year between the emergency department at Contra Costa and rural, UCSF-Fresno affiliated, Adventist Hospital in Reedley, CA, where he will be an attending physician, supervising residents on Labor and Delivery. He will tie this training together during 6 weeks in Malawi teaching medical students on their Family Medicine rotation at a very remote hospital in the town of Neno. Jon currently lives with his boyfriend, Andrew, in Berkeley, CA and is working on recouping his interest in playing the violin, after putting it aside the last decade while pursuing his medical training.
Jeff Pierce (2012-2014)
A native of South Texas, Dr. Pierce completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Texas-Pan American and his medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine. After completing his training at the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency in 2007, he worked in Lesotho for a year as part of the Baylor College of Medicine Pediatric AIDS Corps. Since then, he has divided his time between working in Northern California and working as the director of education for World Altering Medicine, an NGO mainly focused on helping a community in central Malawi. In addition to his experience in southern Africa, Pierce has worked in Kenya, South Sudan, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peruand the Philippines. His medical interests include high-risk obstetrics, HIV and tropical medicine. He is dedicated to addressing health care needs in the developing world primarily through the teaching of medical practitioners.
Mena Ramos (2015-2016)
The seed for global health was first planted as a child growing up in the rural Philippines bearing witness to the stories of relatives whose lives were lost as a direct result of poverty. As an undergraduate at Brown, Mena worked with community health organizations in the Philippines and in Ghana, exploring social determinants of health in a community with Hansen's disease in Manila and in a fishing community in the Volta Region of Ghana. Her path led her to study medicine at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Cuba, where she was inspired and humbled by the commitment of a government to provide basic healthcare for all despite political and economic constraints. She was privileged to study alongside thousands of students from South America, Central America and Africa, becoming part of the much needed global health workforce. She completed her family medicine training at Contra Costa where she nurtured her interest for teaching by facilitating workshops in women's health for community health workers in India and ultrasound training for family medicine residents. As a global health fellow, Mena will be working with PIH to strengthen family medicine and ultrasound training for medical students in Malawi. Outside of medicine, Mena loves playing Afro-Cuban percussion, congas, batá, salsa dancing, doing triathlons and learning new languages.
Bradley Randles (2016-2017)
Bradley Randles is a 2012 graduate of the Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency. His primary interests are in teaching clinic skills in resource poor settings, teaching principles of public health, and continuing to learn about the wide field of global medicine. Bradley's clinical experiences began in the West African country of The Gambia as a public health intern during his undergraduate years. In the Guatemalan highlands, he learned about the basics of primary care with a nurse practitioner. He finished his MPH and MD at the University of Iowa and learned principles of epidemiology while studying H5N1 in Thailand for a semester. Last year, he worked in Mexico with Partners in Health. He states, "I continue to draw inspiration and joy from my experiences in Global Health and with my colleagues at CCRMC."
Jason Reinking (2014-2015)
A graduate of Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency Program, Jay has spent 18 months in Malawi doing pediatric malnutrition research for the World Health Organization, as well clinical medicine with Partners in Health. Has also spent time in Sagam, Kenya (clinical medicine), Haiti (TB project), as well as a year in Egypt as a clinic volunteer before medical school. He is interested in comprehensive primary care and longitudinal institutional project presence at global health sites.
Sara Scott (2021-2022)
I attended medical school at University of Michigan and completed residency at The Ohio State University's department of Family and Community Medicine. During residency, I began volunteering weekly at a student-run free clinic, Clínica Latina, which provides care for uninsured, Spanish-speaking patients from a variety of backgrounds. The experience was gratifying yet frustrating, and highlighted the challenges of providing quality care in under-resourced settings, which is one of my goals as a physician. I've also spent time in Latin America, first as a research assistant studying dengue in Colombia and then later developing culturally relevant Women's Health curricula in Guatemala. I am excited to complete a global health fellowship so I can better advocate for sustainable global and immigrant health programs and inspire and teach others to serve immigrant communities. Outside of medicine, I love playing ultimate frisbee, casual vegetable gardening, and backpacking.
Jennifer Seymour (2020-2021)
I'm a graduate of Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton, FL, not far from my hometown of Tampa. I completed a combined Family Medicine/Emergency Medicine residency program in Philadelphia, PA with Jefferson Health Northeast. My global health experience really started with a 9-month student missionary placement in rural Nicaragua during undergraduate school. Afterwards, when time would allow throughout medical school and residency, I've participated in shorter term trips in other locations in Central America. Over the last several years, I've been working with the organization Nuestra Family to help establish better access to health care for those in more remote areas of El Salvador. My decision to complete a global health fellowship was to have the opportunity to further my personal knowledge and experience in assessing and correcting health inequities in communities both locally and abroad. In my spare time I love to listen to and play music, eating good food and spending time out in the sun, especially with those that I love.
Madhvi Shah (2019-2020)
Madhvi Shah grew up in the sunshine state of Florida and ventured mid-west to Washington University in St. Louis, where she pursued anthropology, biology and Spanish. She studied medicine at Marshall University, learning community health amid the beautiful Appalachian mountains, before training at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Throughout her education and training, Madhvi has worked with underserved communities both locally and globally, whether volunteering at a rural hospital in Gujarat, India, surveying patients in the Peruvian Amazon or understanding the precarious family dynamics of a household in Chicago. With a passion for women's health, and serving the most disenfranchised communities across the world, she sees her role as a fierce patient's advocate, and voice for people often sidelined by our healthcare system. When Madhvi is not working and learning, she can be found dancing, discovering new music, hiking or playing rock band.
Naman Shah (2019-2020)
I was raised all over and came to Contra Costa to become a do anything, anywhere doctor that can take on whatever needs their community requires. I am grateful for that training. Importantly, this included wonderful role models who work with the most marginalized populations at home and abroad. I found my interests in every area of family medicine, but especially in acute care and primary surgery. After graduating I joined the staff of our ER and OB departments. Now as a global health fellow I will be full-time at the wonderful Jan Swasthya Sahyog in rural, central India, helping grow a nascent family physician training program that is similar to our own.
Jessica Standish (2017-2019)
Jessie Standish is originally from the Bay Area. She received her undergraduate degree at U.C. Berkeley. She then studied medicine in Cuba through the Latin American School of Medicine. Jessie did a year of surgical training at New York Presbyterian before returning to California for Family Medicine Residency training at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. During hertime at GAMC she founded the Underserved Track to create a setting for further training and empowerment in health issues affecting underservedpopulations. She also worked briefly in Malawi and Angola and started a free-book distribution program for well-child visits during her residency. Jessie ispassionate about women's rights, care for patients with HIV, health-literacy, and helping patients with cultural and language barriers access health care. In her free time she enjoys hiking, martial arts and going on adventures with her family.
Kali Stanger (2012-2013)
Dr. Stanger graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco before joining CCRMC for residency. As a resident, Dr. Stanger's work abroad included relief work in post-earthquake Haiti, inpatient adult medicine for a district hospital in Malawi, and volunteer work in South Sudan, Uganda and Kenya that included teaching ultrasound. During her year as a global health fellow, she volunteered abroad in a hospital with the Tibetan refugee population in northwestern India. Her work as a resident and fellow focused upon developing the global health program curriculum at CCRMC. Subsequent to fellowship, Dr. Stanger brought her training in underserved medicine closer to home, where she now serves as medical director of La Clinica de la Raza, a safety-net FQHC in Vallejo, CA.
Erin Stratta (2016-2017)
Erin became inspired to pursue a career in medicine and global health after several formative immersion experiences in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico while in college. After graduation, she took a position as a Community Health Peace Corps volunteer in Peru where she spent 27 of the best months of her life. Upon return, she trudged through medical school at Loyola University Chicago, focusing on forming a longitudinal medical Spanish program and supporting their fledgling global health program. She found time to pursue medical projects in Cuba, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, India and Peru. She returns to Peru every two years, spending time both in the Andes at her Peace Corps site, and in the Amazon, supporting a long term clinic in the region. Residency at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center (CCRMC) gave her the opportunity to return to Peru, as well as spend six weeks at Kijabe Hospital in Kenya. Erin became a Global Health Fellow at CCRMC because she can't imagine a career in medicine not linked to global health. Her specific passions within global health include supporting sustainable projects developed by locals, providing technical training for providers in low-resource settings and promoting family-medicine training worldwide.
Matthew Swartz (2022-2023)
I'm a little older than your typical Global Health Fellow, but this Bay Area native is excited to return home after nearly 25 years on the East Coast. After completing my undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia, I briefly taught kindergarten in Virginia before graduating medical school at Nova Southeastern University. My Family Medicine residency was completed at the Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune in North Carolina where my service in the Navy allowed for a variety of broad and unique experiences. For the past 10+ years I've worked as a Hospitalist specializing in rural, resource limited facilities, and presently also manage a full spectrum family medicine practice. Combining my background in austere medicine with my interest in community health, I hope to spend the second half of my career supporting the development of family medicine and the delivery of primary care in under-resourced areas both domestically and internationally. The Global Health Fellowship will allow me to develop my POCUS skills and broaden my exposure to public and community health. In my free-time I enjoy exploring with my dog Zippy, watching my nieces grow into capable young ladies, reading philosophy and mountaineering anywhere I can get to.
Priyanka Tulshian (2014-2016)
Priyanka's interest in global health started in college where she majored in Public Health. Her college experiences with the underserved communities of Philadelphia pushed her to think beyond country borders and find a way to mix her interests in public health with medicine. In medical school, she spent a summer in a small mountain village in South Africa working with other clinicians to develop a better tuberculosis treatment monitoring program at a local hospital. She spent a few months working in India at a government hospital as well; again working with marginalized patients in the worst of situations. She was able to spend a month in Xela, Guatemala, working on her Spanish and working at a local clinic. During her residency in Boston, she was able to continue working in the global health field through the Refugee Center at Boston Medical Center. Here, she worked with FGM patients and assisted in creating affidavits for those refugees seeking asylum. She worked with family medicine physicians who focused on refugee health as well. As a global health fellow, she has dedicated her time to the program development of the first Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine Residency Program in Africa, which is located at a rural hospital in Sagam, Kenya. There, she works as an attending physician for the residents in the program and continues to work on system issues at the hospital; along with continuing to improve the nuts and bolts of the residency program. She particularly interested in chronic care management in developing countries as chronic diseases begin to place a significant burden on healthcare systems in the region. While at CCRMC, she works as a hospitalist on the teaching services. Priyanka is an avid football fan and cannot leave the house without ketchup.
Karen Weinbaum (2019-2020)
Global perspectives and travel have been a part of who I am from my earliest childhood, and have morphed professionally into my interest in global health. I am a child of an immigrant, and spent several formative years growing up in Israel. Later in life I also spent several years living and working in Cameroon (Central Africa), first as a Peace Corps volunteer and then later returning to conduct research for my doctoral dissertation on the crucial role that wildlife ("bushmeat") plays in rural people's food security. Since that time have done several medical missions to Cameroon, working with esteemed Dr. Bwelle to provide free medical care and surgeries to rural Cameroonians in need. I am interested in the Global Health Fellowship to maximize my ability to provide excellent medical care in situations that range from disaster relief, to obstetrics, to primary care in rural and remote settings.
Sara Woolf (2020-2021)
I attended medical school at UCSF and residency at UCSF's Department of Family and Community Medicine. As a resident, I worked at San Francisco General Hospital's Refugee Clinic and that experience has stayed with me and informed my practice. Since then, I have been working in community medicine in the Bay Area and have taught medical students throughout my time as a physician. Increasingly, I have been drawn to the issues that face our urban patients, particularly the effects of gentrification, health disparities and the health issues specific to immigrant and refugee populations. My previous global health experience includes medical student and residency rotations in Havana, Cuba, as well as Kotzebue, Alaska at the Maniilaq Health Center. I plan to continue my work as a physician with a broader skill set that is more attuned to the amazing diversity of patients I am privileged to care for in the Bay Area and beyond. I also hope to become proficient enough in point of care ultrasound to use it in my practice and also to foster its use in under-resourced settings. I love teaching and am excited to teach newly minted doctors in Chiapas, Mexico and elsewhere. Outside of medicine, I love to swim in lakes whenever possible and to be with my family in wild places.