Residents

I grew up in the Bay Area. While I was a student organizer making trouble at UC Berkeley, I started working at the Berkeley Free Clinic and eventually decided to go to med school. I went to the UC Berkeley - UCSF Joint Medical Program where I did my Public Health work with middle school students in Richmond. I'm interested in harm reduction, popular education, working with the urban underserved, and social justice. After staying at a large academic medical center, I knew I wanted to be at a community based program where family medicine gets the respect it deserves. I also knew I wanted to work at a county hospital and stay close to my family and friends in the Bay Area. I live with my partner and our chubby dog in Oakland.

Before going to medical school, I did some graduate work in cell biology until I realized that I really liked working with people. So I taught high school for a while until I realized that I really liked figuring stuff out. So I ended up in med school at UCSF where I had the opportunity to explore my interests in caring for the underserved, medical education, and health disparities. I also figured out that I need real diversity in my everyday work and that family medicine is a great fit for my interests and values. There are many fabulous family medicine programs out there but CCRMC combined some of the best of all of them. I know that I will receive excellent clinical training here and that when I leave, I will be a solid clinician. I know that I will see a wide diversity of patients here and that the people who choose to work at CCRMC are committed to working with the underserved. And finally, I know that I will receive training that will allow me to do just about anything I want to do in family medicine; which is fabulous for indecisive folks like me!

I love to travel wherever I can (ideally somewhere I can scuba dive), read current affairs (which usually gets me mad and motivates me to do things), and spend lots of lazy time with my 2 dogs (who keep me sane).

Former teacher & environmental scientist turned doctor, interested in health care advocacy and reform in increasing the responsibility that we - as citizens, businesses, and governments - take in making ourselves and our world healthy. Why I came to CCRMC: Strong community program that provides an excellent model of successful and sustainable medical care for low income population. Staff and residents who are wonderfully positive and happy about where they work. Location in Bay Area near friends and family. I love cooking, gardening, hiking, biking, arts & crafts, and games.

I could call medicine a second career since I didn't even begin taking pre-med classes until I was 30, but that would imply that I had a first career. After spending 3 years at the Air Force Academy, I graduated from Loyola Marymount and then spent 7 great years in the Jesuits which included teaching middle school for 4 years in East Los Angeles. I finally figured out that being a family doctor was what I wanted to do with my life and the rest is history. I came to CCRMC because it is such a unique place with fantastic training. The one-on-one teaching, the opportunity to be part of a program committed to caring for the underserved, and the international opportunities were a huge draw. Also, I loved the residents and faculty when I came to interview. I am the last of 7 kids, thrilled to be back in beautiful California, and hope to work with the underserved during and after residency.

I grew up in Eugene, Oregon with my parents Nancy and Walter and three older sisters and one younger brother. After graduating from high school, I attended the University of Oregon where I received a Bachelors of Science in Biology with a minor in Chemistry and Political Science. Following graduation, I spent 8 months volunteering in Huancayo, Peru. In 2003, I began studying medicine at Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland, Oregon. I came to CCRMC because of the focus of this residency program on serving those populations with the least access to care, as well as, for the high quality of teaching and clinical faculty that I found while I was here on an away-rotation. I look forward to working in a community hospital with a diverse patient population. When I am not studying or working, I enjoy hiking, biking, running, cooking with my wife, dancing salsa, listening to music, and playing soccer. My wife and I have been married for 1 ½ years.

I grew up in southeastern Virginia and went to the University of Virginia for college. But after landing a summer job in Santa Cruz, exploring Big Sur, and wandering through redwood groves, I decided that I could get used to living in California. After college I came to Berkeley as an AmeriCorps volunteer at a non-profit geriatric health center. Then I moved across the Bay for medical school at UCSF. Oddly enough, it was during medical school, the time that I expected to have my nose buried in books, when I first traveled and worked in the developing world and became interested in the public health and social issues of developing countries, I spent a year in western Kenya working on HIV prevention research and hope to go back during my elective time. I'm excited that so many others at CCRMC have similar interests in international health and underserved medicine. With all there is to learn in family medicine, I really wanted a program that would maximize opportunities for learning and fit my learning style. I look[ed] forward to the registrar system as a way to learn from experienced physicians and gain confidence in my clinical decision-making skills. I'm interested in underserved and international medicine, and I'm hoping to come out of residency with the clinical and procedural foundation I need to work in any practice setting. As for fun, I'm taking up yoga, attempting to cook, painting my new apartment in Oakland, and hunting for a road bike so I can explore Oakland and Berkeley hills.

I was born in Southern California and lived there until my parents rudely took me to Vermont. We later moved to Hawaii and ended up in Tennessee. All this moving made me love traveling and the unknown and to date I've been to 26 countries. I plan to do medical missionary work later on with my husband (PGY-1 at Travis AFB) and see the rest of the world. I love cooking and adore eating. I've recently started painting, however, have little talent in the arts. I also enjoy the opera, anything musical, and the great outdoors. Why I came to CCRMC: I wanted a program that trained residents in the full scope of family medicine. I want to feel comfortable with treating any patient that walks in the door and Contra Costa's training guarantees that. The registrar system makes the process of learning and caring for patients much more efficient. Also, the location is ideal to get a varied mix of patients.

I graduated from UCSF in 2006 and was in the Joint Medical Program (three years at UC Berkeley doing pre-clinical study and getting a Master's Degree in Health Sciences before the clinical years at UCSF). I am interested in international health, human rights and refugee health. I have done research in Pakistan on village women's health; in India on the health effects of the 1984 Union Carbide Gas Disaster in Bhopal; and in Thailand, where I designed a training program for Traditional Birth Attendants in the jungles of Burma. I am very happy to be in this residency program; I'm confident I'll leave with the training I need to be efficacious overseas, especially in obstetrics. I have an incredibly spectacular son (who was 14 months old when I entered residency) and an equally wonderful husband. I like taking long walks, eating elaborate meals and playing rowdy games.

I grew up in Sebastopol, California when there were still many apple orchards and not all grape vines. I was the first person in my family and my small liberal high-school to become an MD. I studied Biology (and other things) at UC Santa Cruz, traveled/studied/volunteered in Central and South America. I taught and tutored in Seattle for a year then moved to New York for my medical education. I thought living in NY City would be pretty stressful coming from a small California town, but I actually found it to be a great place with diverse and interesting people. Needless to say, I love Northern California and am glad to be back (and I love the SF Giants and Bay Area sports in general). Why I came to CCRMC: I wanted to have a good idea of at least where to start with just about any medical scenario I might encounter. I realized that for this goal to be met in 3 years of residency training I needed to find a hospital and residency where I would work hard, be exposed to a lot, and have a lot of independence; but also with good teaching. It also needed to be in an atmosphere that was supportive and fun or I would lose my mind. CCRMC seemed to fit the bill and the East Bay is a great place to live.

I grew up in Lake Tahoe, NV, snowboarding, hiking, and trying to stay outdoors as much as possible. For college, I headed down to Cal Berkeley where I met my wife during our senior year. I worked for about a year at a free medical clinic in San Francisco and then switched coasts, spending the next four years in Philly. Why I came to CCRMC: In the depths of a step 1 session, I took a few minutes to procrastinate, and looking around at some family med programs, happened on Martinez. It had all the things I was looking for in a program: strong procedure training for international work, a dedicated, friendly, and cooperative group of residents and faculty, and an underserved population. And all of this in the Bay Area, where I'm close to family and right near the water and the woods.

Second-Year

I am originally from a small town, Pinetop-Lakeside, in Northern Arizona where I was raised with 5 brothers and sisters. I grew up with the love of reading, snow skiing and spending lots of time at the creek by our home! I love travelling and lived in London, England, during undergrad and in South Carolina serving in Americorp. I now have a beautiful family--husband, Joe, a 4-year old, Connor, and a baby girl named Hadley. Why I came to CCRMC? I had a strong desire for a community-based residency with excellent procedural training and serving an underserved population--this program had all of that! Additionally, it was an ideal location for my husband as his company is based in Benicia!

I never had any intention of being a doctor growing up. After high school, I spent a couple years working as a ski-bum up in Winter Park, Colorado. One big header into a boulder and I decided it was off to med school I should go. While there, I worked extensively with the Denver homeless community, created courses on palliative care and teaching teaching skills to future residents, and set up two rotations in Papua New Guinea that both fell apart.

My second call night started by leading an impromptu meeting with the family of one of my seriously ill patients--there were 14 of them in the room, and I had walked by it--went to a neonatal resuscitation in a C-section, paged to OR for a guy with multiple stab wounds to the abdomen, intubating a lady in the ED with a suspected overdose and admitting her to the ICU, and getting called to one of my classmate's patients to pronounce death and call the family - all by the time that one night was done. It was the perfect framing for my ideal of family medicine.

I came to CCRMC because I wanted a place with a focus that would prepare me for leadership roles working with the underserved in resource poor areas of the world. The inpatient curriculum is rock solid. I find the registrar system of rounding a much more effective learning model than standing around hallways waiting your turn to present a patient. Having that kind of dedicated one-on-one time with the attending to discuss patients definitely accelerates the learning curve. The Family Medicine focus is visible from the director of the Contra Costa Health Services (a graduate of this program), the FM docs who do a lot of the HIV care for the county, to the amazing talent of community medicine preceptors. My outpatient clinic is in Richmond which has a large poly-ethnic immigrant population, a lot of HIV, a lot of pollution, and a lot of violence, and a lot of really dedicated faculty--making it a terrific place for those interested in working with the underserved and global health.

Oh, and did I mention the location? Contra Costa is about a half hour from the Bay Bridge, but we get sunshine and easy parking all year round.

I was born in Mexico and raised in the Bay Area. Since the age of 2, I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. My family and I received our care from Contra Costa health Services. I consider Bay Point my home town, but I have lived in many parts of Contra Costa County. I am a graduate of University of California Davis where I received a B.S. in Biological Science. In a previous life, I worked for Contra Costa Public Health Department as an Outreach Coordinator. I received my M.D. from Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine. I came to CCRMC because of the population it serves and the great training. I wanted to learn full spectrum Family Medicine--the biopsychosocial model, procedures, c-sections, preventive care, chronic disease management, and most of all, care for the underserved.

Originally from Pennsylvania, I worked in a wide variety of positions during and after college that included night manager of a homeless shelter, builder of straw-bale homes, and botanical researcher in Missouri and Hawaii. Eventually, I made my way out to Northern California where I served as a full-time volunteer and resident at a meditation center for nearly two years before starting medical school at the University of California, Davis. I chose CCRMC because I felt it was the best residency program to prepare me to work in rural and international medicine. I was very impressed by the strong emphasis on inpatient medicine and procedural training, and appreciated the one-on-one teaching style of the registrar system. During my clerkship, I was glad to meet many residents and faculty who shared my interests in underserved and international medicine, and I am happy that I will have the opportunity to train with such a spirited group of people.

I was born in Portland, Oregon, and watched as my town, once full of wild grass, pheasant, deer, raccoon, and wild places became overrun with sprawl. I spent my childhood exploring Tryon Creek State Park and playing baseball. My undergraduate days were spent at Cornell and Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, nestled at the base of the Siskiyou Mountains and home to some of the best mountain bike trails around. I held positions in engineering, research, and computer software testing while learning basic outdoor survival skills. I went to Georgetown University in Washington, DC. I decided on family medicine because it is one of the few specialties that truly base its training within the context of community need. I have a wife, Ana, and newborn son, Joaquin. I continue to have interests in outdoor survival, bicycle maintenance, and premaculture. After training, I will practice in a rural setting in Northern California or Southern Oregon replete with aging farmers, prisoners, Native American reservations, poor passersby, as well as migrant and undocumented workers.

Why I came to CCRMC? CCRMC was my first choice because of its emphasis on full-spectrum medicine and my desire to practice in rural and underserved areas. In addition, I enjoyed the attending physicians I came across who have as many life stories as patients.

Growing up in the East Bay, I knew early on that I wanted to pursue a career in Medicine. For undergraduate, I attended the University of California, San Diego, before heading off to the University of Washington, Seattle, for medical school. It was at the Univ. of Washington where I realized that I wanted to work with underserved communities. I came to CCRMC because of its broad spectrum training and commitment to the underserved. Being a first-generation Mexican American, I enjoy having the opportunity to work in the Bay Area because of its large Latino community.

I grew up in New Jersey where life was a mix of watching deer mosey through the backyard, picking fruit at the nearby farm, visiting family in Chinatown (NYC), watching Broadway shows, and reading as many books as possible. Eventually, I ventured to New England for college where I dabbled further into music, arts, and outdoor exploration. After graduation, I worked as a researcher and teacher in Boston, and then moved to Washington, DC where I attended medical school. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to study Mind-Body Medicine and explore medical practices in New York's Chinatown, the greater DC area, rural Tennessee and Panama, small town California, and bustling Shanghai. These experiences led me to choose Family Medicine because I saw a great need for doctors with a variety of skills who can work effectively in any of these settings to treat people of all ages and healthcare needs. I chose to be here because of the patients of varied ethnicity and backgrounds, residents and staff who practice medicine the way I had envisioned, and strong OB and procedural training opportunities. In the meantime, I am excited to explore the Bay Area's restaurants, museums, and national parks, expand my recipe repertoire, and continue to learn and try new and different things.

I grew up a New England girl in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and first broadened my horizons by spending a year in Ecuador as an AFS high school exchange student. Since then, I have continued to follow my wanderlust and have spent extended periods of time in Latin America, Japan, and India. I have a strong interest in International Healthcare, particularly with regards to community health in the rural underserved setting. I plan to return to India and South America for long-term healthcare involvement. I am confident that Contra Costa will provide me with the broad level of training I desire to be an effective, well-rounded practitioner at home and abroad. Since deciding to become a physician, I have been interested in providing healthcare to underserved populations in the U.S. and abroad. Family medicine quickly proved to be the best avenue for me to provide rural international healthcare. Of all the residencies where I interviewed, Contra Costa clearly provided the best spectrum of training to prepare me for such a broad scope of practice. I have no doubt in my mind that I will leave the program well prepared to embark on a future in Rural/International Medicine.

I was born in Washington State and spent probably 75% of my childhood in Washington and 25% overseas. I love the Northwest and will always consider myself a Northwesterner at heart. Hobbies-wise, I enjoy anything outdoors, be it hiking, biking, climbing, etc. I also love Salsa dancing and travelling! I am a DO and yes, I actually do practice manipulation because it works! I came to CCRMC because I wanted a broad-spectrum program that would prepare me to work anywhere in the US/World. I also wanted good OB training and knew that I could get that here. One of my other main reasons was Spanish. I love speaking Spanish and I wanted a patient population where I could continue to practice speaking.

My parents escaped the Cambodian genocide and went to France where I was born and raised, and later I made my way to the USA. Because of my family history and experiences throughout my life, I am strongly dedicated to working with the underserved. Before going back to med school, I designed and manufactured prosthetic feet for landmine survivors in low-income countries. My career goals are to work in international health, with refugees/displaced persons due to armed conflict/genocide, and domestically with urban underserved populations. In my free time, I like to surf, windsurf, snowboard, cook, eat, and hang out with family and friends. I came to CCRMC because the program emphasized independence and empowerment of the resident from day one. I felt that I would learn the skills necessary to practice medicine in any situation, which was important to me in selecting residency programs. I also admire the way Contra Costa County has decided to provide healthcare to its underserved population: the clear dedication to primary care has resulted in high quality and efficient healthcare for all, something I wanted to be a part of.

I completed an internship in Emergency medicine in New York City before deciding it really wasn't for me. Then I spent a year working with Nyaya Health in a remote, post-conflict district in western Nepal, where I ran a primary care center, developed community health programs, and helped start a hospital. While there I realized that the most valuable doctor in a resource-poor setting is a true generalist, and clinicians engaged in broader issues of development and public health can have a transformative impact in the communities they serve. Family medicine, with its broad scope of clinical training and its unique perspectives of how disease affects communities, became the best choice for my interests.

I chose CCRMC because the program's registrar system and full-spectrum clinical experience trains family physicians to be comfortable doing anything, anywhere.

Blair Thedinger, MD
Kansas University
bthedinger@ccfamilymed.com

I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, and my mother is a nurse, and my father is a doctor. Medicine was strongly encouraged in my family, and I have been hoping to be a doctor since high school. I had a fairly typical suburban upbringing and attended Catholic school. After a series of life changing events and influences during my final year of high school, I became active in community service and movements for social justice. I have tried, with perhaps mixed success, to work toward progressive social change and to challenge the inequalities bred by our current political and economic system. I have always felt that being a doctor would be a great way to help others and to be a community leader. I want to work in an urban free clinic setting here in the US. I also have an interest in the movement for global health, and I would like to be involved somehow in health services in Latin America. I am hoping that I could be involved in a sister clinic set-up and spend part of my time practicing in multiple environments. I am interested in the full spectrum of primary care, and I hope to offer a broad range of services to patients. My non-medical interests include organic vegetable gardening, entomology, distance running, speaking Spanish, cooking, science fiction, and political activism. I chose to come to Contra Costa because it was unique among residency program where I interviewed. It is an unopposed program at a community hospital in a county where most people are actually able to obtain health insurance. The patient population is diverse, and the range of illnesses that I encountered when rotating at the facility during my 4th year was impressive. The attitude of the people who manage the program was the key to my decision. They believe in the importance of primary care, and they understand that family practice doctors should practice "full spectrum" general medicine. There is also an emphasis on serving medically underserved populations and changing health policy so that all patients will be better served by the system regardless of their social status.

Michelle Wong, MD
Tufts University
mwong@ccfamilymed.com

I spent my childhood in Southeastern Virginia, where my great-grandfather had first immigrated from China. I then moved to Rhode Island for college, where I enjoyed the independent curriculum by studying the effects of music on the brain and healing, and developed a strong interest in integrative medicine. I moved to Hawaii, where I developed a surfing addiction, worked for a non-profit advocating integrative medicine, and after taking medical anthropology classes there discovered I really needed direct patient interaction so applied to medical school. During med school, I took another interim to work at the China CDC on a HIV/STI public health project with sex workers and migrant workers in Yunnan, which reinforced my interest with working with marginalized and underserved populations abroad and in the US. When not working, I can be found in the water or exploring the greens of my new East Bay location, learning photography, or practicing yoga. Why I came to CCRMC? Several reasons, but one was the interview day. Dr. Fish started the day by not just discussing the program, but discussing the importance of primary care in driving US healthcare reform. Residents and faculty were truly dedicated to practicing family medicine to increase healthcare access to the underserved. I had also met a recent graduate of the program in China, and was impressed with his wide-range and confidence in his training. This residency had all I wanted--dedicated residents and faculty to underserved communities, amazing broad-spectrum training that would allow me to feel comfortable in resource limited areas, and location (Bay Area!).

First-Year

Robin Baltrushes, MD
Boston University School of Medicine
rbaltrushes@ccfamilymed.com

I was raised in the coastal mountains of Southern California. My parents built our sun-powered home together, adding on rooms and hunting for rocks that formed our garden paths as my siblings and I grew. My father is a Physician's Assistant and would tell us stories of his more notable patients in Los Angeles County's Emergency Department while teaching us how to tie sutures in wounds placed in pigs' feet. Exposure to the passion of health practitioners began at home around my kitchen table, eventually edging out my childhood dream of becoming a marine biologist, and I eagerly set my sights on medicine. During my undergraduate years I served as a teacher's assistant in a female physiology course and was empowered by my ability to help educate students about their bodies and engage them in a holistic understanding of health and wellness. As I've crafted a career as a physician, my educational and professional experiences have taken me to a South African TB clinic, where I caught babies of mothers living with HIV and began to grasp the intense reality of health care settings in dire need of supplies beyond bottles of Panadol, and to Chile where I worked in a busy Santiago ER surrounded by extreme disparity of wealth. I am continually inspired by my patients and colleagues, and by my father, whose dedication to medicine continues to fuel my own.

Jose Barrios, MD
Howard University College of Medicine
jbarrios@ccfamilymed.com

I am the oldest of four children. I am the first graduate from medical school in my entire family. I strive to excel in all that I do. The challenges and family influences that I have had in my life have shaped my character. One of my many hopes in life is to become a resourceful teacher to my future patients and fellow residents/colleagues. I came to CCRMC because it is one of the few family medicine programs that allow its residents to serve a wide underserved population. Being a native of California, it offered a nice familiarity. As it is the only residency program in the hospital, we have the opportunity to enjoy and take advantage of all its available resources.

Harry McIlroy, MD
University of Arizona College of Medicine
hmcilroy@ccfamilymed.com

Sarah McNeil, MD
Dartmouth Medical School
smcneil@ccfamilymed.com

My parents came from Australia in 1979, "accidentally" had American kids, and have been here ever since. My sister and I grew up in Pittsburgh, but since I have lived all over the northeast, she is getting a PhD in Australia, and my parents now live in Delaware, Martinez is my new home. At Hamilton College in upstate New York, I majored in Biology with a focus in Environmental Science; a semester of ecology research in Brazil taught me how much science is indirectly influenced by politics, and I decided to pursue a career in medicine with a focus on women's health.

I am particularly drawn to the intersection of science, politics, religion, public health, history, and people that providers encounter in women's health. Throughout medical school, I put a lot of time and heart into running the Dartmouth chapter of Medical Students for Choice. With this background, and after awesome experiences on both my family and on/gyn rotations, I decided to apply to both of those specialties. In one particular moment of this "personal crisis", as I called it, I emailed Jeremy Fish (our awesome program director, who was a complete stranger to me at that point) to ask for career advice. He kindly and enthusiastically helped me arrange an OB sub-I at Contra Costa...and I wish I could say the rest is history. Unfortunately, I still struggled, because my month here confirmed what a unique program CCRMC is—so many residents stick around after training because we are able to pursue such broad and deep scopes of practice. I was scared that after training here, I would never be able to find an equivalent place. And certainly that fear still stands...but after a few interviews, it was clear that primary care and public health were most important to me, that family docs really are "my people", and that Martinez will give me the best c-section and family planning training in the country. Not to mention the free food in the cafeteria, the amazing weather (ultimate Frisbee, road biking, and the farmer's market are some of my favorites), and proximity to the Bay Area! So...the rest of getting here now really is history.

Kaaren Nelson-Munson, MD
Oregon Health Science University School of Medicine
knelson@ccfamilymed.com

I grew up in rural Oregon where people raised their own bacon, cider, and greenery and where going to the doctor was a rare indulgence. After a year spent in Norway, I fixated on public health and health care—a fascination that led me to clinics in Guatemala, Honduras, and Ecuador. College somehow found me studying global religions outside Austin, Texas, from whence I traveled to Ghana, Mexico, Israel, and Europe. Such different experiences left me with crazy cooking tendencies and a fierce respect for small communities. I enjoy a variety of half-baked hobbies, including jewelry smithing, woodwork, cycling, gardening, and beer and cheese making. While I miss Portland and rain dearly, my partner and I have a veritable farmhouse in Oakland and plan to populate it with small creatures.

In 2007, I called up my boyfriend in The Hague and said, "I think I want to go to this program in the Bay Area; you should find a job there." Luckily he did and I did because I never found a better program for challenging residents with autonomy and scope of practice, while collegially supporting them. I came here because I wanted to work hard, not be worked! Eventually, I would like to practice in Palau, have a 1-person Bay Area medical office, work for the Stockholm ECDC, teach in Ghana, and design U.S. health policy.

Julie Pham, DO
College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific
jpham@ccfamilymed.com

Growing up in the Stockton/Lodi area and attending UCD, I had a strong interest in medicine, volunteering at the UCDMC with the intention of pursuing emergency medicine. However, I became very interested in public health, working with the Vietnamese community in Sacramento, promoting breast and cervical cancer awareness. This experience turned my interest to preventive medicine and primary care, which lead me to Loma Linda School of Public Health and the Western University of Health Sciences—COMP. I'm happy to be back in Nor Cal. I love to travel, eat (trying new cuisines and finding hole-in-the-wall restaurants), snowboarding, go camping, spend time with family/friends, watch cooking shows, scrapbook, and play softball/volleyball.

There are several reasons why I came to the CCRMC Family Medicine Residency. This program works with a diverse underserved community, offering full spectrum training in family medicine from OB to surgery; strong inpatient and outpatient curriculum; and ample opportunities for hands on learning. While doing a rotation here, I also noticed the friendly working environment—everybody working together as a team. Besides the education, location was another key factor. Situated in Martinez, I was close to my family and friends and only a short drive to San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, etc.

Bradley Randles, MD
University of Iowa College of Medicine
brandles@ccfamilymed.com

I was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, as the oldest of four children and one of the first to attend college in my family. I am endlessly curious about everything and everyone around me; from the occupations, personalities and hobbies of those I meet, to the natural sciences. I can always find something to pique my interest. I love going to new places and meeting new people and have greatly enjoyed medical and non-medical experiences in Romania, The Gambia, Guatemala and Thailand. After finishing residency, I hope to continue pursuing my passions of public health and global health, as well as leading a reasonably balanced and enjoyable life.

The scope of Family Medicine and the opportunity to meet the community and patients brought me to family medicine. When I came to interview at CCRMC, I quickly sensed that the people here cared about engaging their community while practicing the full spectrum of Family Medicine. Public Health and Global Health are two of my passions and I found a place to nurture these passions among like-minded people at CCRMC. I found the residents and faculty to be both friendly and excited about their role in meeting the community's health needs; I was drawn by that energy and openness.

Shelle Schwamberger, MD
Medical College of Georgia
sschwamberger@ccfamilymed.com

I'm basically a Georgia girl who developed a love for Africa after four months of teaching in Ghana and later a year of HIV research in Zambia. I tinkered with other career options before medical school, including research, teaching, and Public Health, but eventually discovered that medical school and subsequently Family Medicine were a perfect fit for me! I still have a strong interest in the prevention and treatment of HIV and Tropical Medicine and hope to return to Africa to practice broad-spectrum clinical medicine after residency.

My initial search for residency programs began by heavily scrutinizing residents' bios from many different programs across the country. At CCRMC, I found a refreshing tradition of non-traditional residents who shared both my interest in International Health and my desire for full-spectrum training, including OB, procedures, and surgery. During my fourth-year medical school rotation, I also discovered a friendly, fun working environment with excellent faculty teaching. I learned more about the hospital's diverse patient population and variety of procedural experiences available to the residents. My interview day included a discovery of the Hansen's disease clinic—how cool is that?! The Bay Area location and weather pretty much sealed the deal. I have a wonderful family in the southeast (who better come visit California a LOT) as well as a large extended family in the Bay Area. I enjoy dogs, running, being outdoors, and most of all spending time with my new husband.

Daniel Sobel, MD
University of California, Davis School of Medicine
dsobel@ccfamilymed.com

I grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado, spending my formative years hiking, fishing, and mountain biking in the surrounding foothills of the Rockies. An appreciation for the outdoors was instilled in me early, and played a significant role in choosing CCRMC for residency. Following college in the Midwest, I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching secondary school science in the Solomon Islands. Returning to the States, I moved to the East Bay to work with AmeriCorps, developing service-learning curriculum in Oakland middle schools. The next several years, I spent teaching high school science in both the East bay and Thailand. However, I was never able to shake the urge to get involved in global medicine, and then made the career change to medicine.

I chose CCRMC because more than any other program it prepares doctors for medical work in any situation, anywhere in the world. On visiting, I was immediately struck by the collegial atmosphere and the high level of responsibility residents enjoy. On top of all that, the East Bay provides ample opportunity for my extra-medical pursuits of hiking, road cycling, and trail running.

Kali Stanger, MD
University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine
kstanger@ccfamilymed.com

For me, residency is about clinical training. Period. Given my strong long-standing interest in increasing access for the underserved, I know that I will end up wearing a lot of public health hats in my career, which may increasingly pull me away from my clinical practice. But no matter where my career takes me, I will always consider myself a physician first and foremost. I chose CCRMC because I knew it would provide me with an unparalleled clinical training that I will rely upon throughout the rest of my career. I wanted no compromises in my clinical skills—in three years, I can walk out of this program and straight into an MSF stint, an underserved urban clinic in San Francisco, a state public health position, or a nationally recognized health policy fellowship. There is such a uniting sense of shared vision amongst the residents and faculty here—yes, we're cowboys, but we're cowboys with the common view of what our patients need, and the shared drive to fight for it. Now a few months into my internship, I could not be happier with the choice I made—my co-interns are some of the most inspiring, competent, down-to-earth, and just downright fun people that I've ever met. I can already picture our lives in 10 years, working all over the world, calling each other for tough cases, supporting each other and reminding ourselves of what matters most at the end of the day: caring for the vulnerable. We're doing it together here, every day. It is fulfilling, inspiring, immensely rewarding, endlessly demanding, and truly important work. Come join us.

As the child of two docs, I tried my hardest to find something else to do with my life. I fell in love with public health as a teenager, when I spent a summer volunteering in rural Ecuador on a community sanitation project. I continued those interests as an undergraduate at Stanford University, majoring in Human Biology, focusing my studies and activities around HIV/AIDS and health policy, all while continuing to pursue my interests in global health. After graduating from Stanford, I landed my dream public health job with the American Hospital Association in Chicago, where I worked to establish use of the rapid HIV test in US hospitals. However, my heart ached for more human contact and scientific dorkitude, so after two years I bit the bullet and applied to medical school. Turns out I made the right decision—I loved everything about my 3rd year of medical school, everything from late night ex-laps while on trauma surgery call at Highland Hospital, to 90 minute clinic visits with PTSD patients on my psych rotation; from catching countless babies down at Natividad in Salinas, to managing hypertension in my continuity clinic. This all coalesced into a clear path to family medicine when I started international rotations as a 4th year (in Uganda and Oaxaca), and realized that family medicine is clearly the best-suited specialty for anyone interested in working abroad. Not only that, but I took great stock and interest in the suggestion that family doctors will play critical roles in developing plans for a primary-care-based model of US national health care. When it came time to choose a residency, CCRMC clearly stood out as the ideal choice for me—truly unparalleled clinical training in an extremely well-regarded, well-established program built upon family medicine, all located in the spectacular Bay Area... which gives me the perfect playground for the other joys in my life, including hiking, running, spending time w/ my friends/family, heading up to the mountains whenever I need some air, swinging over to San Francisco for burritos on just 30 minutes' notice. I'm a happy camper.

Jenny Tsang, MD
University of Illinois College of Medicine
jtsang@ccfamilymed.com

Hi! I'm Jenny. I'm coming from Chicago and certainly miss the City of Big Shoulders, Ferris Bueller and the Blues Brothers, but I love it here! First of all, my co-interns rock. Seriously. Second, I learn by doing and at this place, I get to do a lot. And I've got so many good teachers around that I'm picking up new skills all the time. I've caught quite a few babies and had the pleasure of getting gloves and shoes dirty in the OR as well! The attending, the nurses, and my co-residents are all amazing people! We've got people here that have, and continue to, traveled the world (I'll be headed back to Uganda next year!), started clinics abroad, had other lives as teachers, scientists and various other do-gooder type things (CCRMC has some sort of magnet for AmeriCorps and Peace Corps members) so this place has a diversity of experience that is pretty much unparalled. And somehow, everyone is laid back too.

To go on a bit more, It's the Bay Area. Mountains, ocean, good food, amazing wine and more opportunities for a bit of adventure, fun and relaxation than you can shake a stick at. So if you want to learn a ton, make great friends, and have a good time at work and outside of work, you should come by here.

Sergio Urcuyo, MD
Keck School of Medicine
surcuyo@ccfamilymed.com

I was raised in Los Angeles, CA, and studied Business Economics and Accounting at UC Santa Barbara. I worked in business consulting for a few years, before an appendectomy and some serious thinking convinced me to pursue a career in medicine. I spent the next 3 years doing my post-bachelor and working as a scrub tech for an ENT in Los Angeles.

At USC's Keck School of Medicine I realized that I loved most aspects of medicine. Being at LA County Hospital for most of my time there, I saw the true face of health care disparities and realized that I wanted to train in a county hospital. I also saw an overly-specialized health care system that delivered adequate patient care, but seemed to focus on individual problems and rarely the whole patient. Given my tendency towards procedures, I knew that Family Medicine was where I belonged. Once I decided to go into Family Medicine, I never looked back. I feel that a generalist-based system is the only way this country can deliver the quality of healthcare that it deserves.

Contra Costa Regional Medical Center was a no-brainer for me—I found no other system like it. The registrar system (based on the British model) means we don't work on teams that force us to listen to presentations on patients that aren't ours. We work one-on-one with attending physicians on every rotation, which makes this feel like a true apprenticeship. We not only provide compassionate medicine to under-served patients, but we also learn strong procedural skills that translate into practice in a big urban center, or in a small rural town where you are the only physician for miles.

Christopher Zamani, MD
Meharry Medical College
czamani@ccfamilymed.com

I am passionate about social justice, individual and community empowerment, and collective responsibility. I believe that every person has a right to determine their own destiny and to receive support from the larger society in order to accomplish that potential. I am inspired by those who have the courage to work for justice and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves, regardless of considerations for personal gain and in spite of seemingly all-powerful enemies. I am interested in providing primary medical care to disempowered people as part of a larger strategy of enabling the people to seize control of their lives and to strategically undermine and remove obstacles in their path to self-determination by any means necessary. After my training, I plan to settle in rural Africa where I can focus on primary and preventive care for my patients as well as grow some crops and raise a goat or two. I was born in Los Angeles and have lived in Fresno and the Bay Area before moving to Tennessee for medical school. Now I am back in Northern California enjoying being around my family.

At CCRMC the focus is on training full-spectrum doctors to provide expert primary medical care to adults, children, the elderly, pregnant women, and the terminally ill. CCRMC does not follow the specialist bandwagon that has made healthcare in the U.S. astronomically expensive, impersonal and disjointed. I wanted to train at a program that rejects the logic of treating disease and embraces the ethic of treating the whole person in consideration of their families and communities in a culturally appropriate way. I was impressed by the horizontal relationships that everyone enjoys with one another here; the lack of rigid hierarchy between residents and attending doctors appeals to my egalitarian ideals and prevents my anti-authority personality type from being provoked.

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