Desiree Carmen (2022-2023)
Desi is a 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.
Jason Chen (2024-2025)
Dr. Chen grew up in Buffalo, NY, and Salt Lake City, UT to Taiwanese parents. He holds an MD/MPH from the University of Utah School of Medicine. After studying Spanish, Biology, and International Relations at the University of Utah, he was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Oxolotán, Tabasco, México. His experiences in rural México motivated him to serve the largely migrant farmworker community of Salinas, CA during his Family Medicine Residency at Natividad, where he was awarded the Hannon-Lauderdale-Rumbel-Santell Memorial Award for outstanding performance in 2024.
As a 2024-2025 UCSF-Contra Costa Global Health Fellow, he taught POCUS courses in the Bay Area, as well as in Peru and Malawi. He used his Advanced Spanish and Mandarin skills to help his patients and to gain a deeper appreciation of different immigrant experiences, reconnect with family in Oakland, and learn more about his Asian-American heritage. In his free time, he enjoys playing ukulele, board games, and improving his language skills.
Nina Clark (2023-2025)
Nina is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois Chicago Family Medicine program. A lifelong Chicagoan, she grew up with a commitment to social justice and a desire to work in underserved areas. Her interest in medicine started after seeing an exhibit by Doctors Without Borders, and it was then that she committed to global health. Her fluency in Spanish led her to study Latin American studies and travel extensively. She then attended Midwestern University for medical school. Her first global health experiences were with Medical Brigades in Honduras. During residency, she developed an interest in reproductive health, hospital medicine and ultrasound. She continued to develop these skills, especially ultrasound knowledge, through global health experiences in the Contra Costa fellowship. In her free time, she can usually be found exploring new restaurants, reading or traveling.
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.
Noha Eshera, MD (2023-2024)
Noha Eshera is a graduate of the Tacoma Rural FM-OB fellowship, where she trained in surgical and high-risk OB. Before that, she was a graduate of the Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency Program, training in full-spectrum family medicine. She grew up in Maryland and went to medical school at Temple University in north Philly. Her interests lie in improving health equity and access in under-resourced communities abroad in low- and middle-income countries and locally in urban and rural areas. Specifically, she would like to use her full-spectrum family medicine and OB/women's health skills to participate in both clinical work and capacity-building efforts within such communities. She has spent time in Cairo, Egypt, providing clinical care in a public hospital emergency department and in Nairobi, Kenya, teaching basic OB ultrasound skills to midwives serving in rural areas. The fellowship allowed her the opportunity to continue building experience in global health education and point-of-care ultrasound as well as participating in scholarship and movement around health justice and equity. Outside of medicine, her interests include national and international politics, listening to history and politics podcasts, reading novels, and exploring the beautiful and varied terrain of northern California.
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 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.
Rebecca Fujimura, MD (2022-2024)
Rebecca Fujimura attended The Ohio State University and went on to medical school at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine, where she earned her MD and completed the international health program. During this time she did medical missions to Eswatini and Moria Refugee Camp. She completed family medicine residency at MedStar/ Georgetown- Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. During this time she participated in the Georgetown global health track, where she was the chief resident and participated in work with Child Family Health International, University of Namibia medical school and Mann Deshi Foundation. She holds positions on the Global Operations Committee for the Consortium of Universities for Global Health and the Board of Bridging Medical Gaps Collaboration. She has worked with the AAFP Robert Graham Center as a policy scholar and contributes to the medical unit of ABC news. She has a strong passion for health equity, medical and education access, health media, and policy. She hopes to gain more experience in international health education, point of care ultrasound, and grow as a more well-rounded physician and advocate for her future communities. In her free time she enjoys hiking, spinning and theater.
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.
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.
Yvonne Kamua (2023-2025)
Yvonne holds a joint MD/MBA degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine and is a graduate from Ascension St. Vincent's Family Medicine Residency with specialized focus on Obstetrics/Gynecology with an emphasis on global maternal and child health. Prior to starting residency, she spent a year as a global health research assistant as part of a joint collaboration between Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), the University of Kansas School of Medicine, and Global Health Innovations (GHI). In this role, she worked with HIV-positive pregnant women and their sera-exposed infants, alongside their healthcare providers, on various mobile technology projects surrounding Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT), with the goal of further expediting diagnosis and initiation of treatment. As a resident physician, she remained committed to global health work and spent part of her time working at Gynocare Women's and Fistula Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. While there, she identified a gap and potential opportunity for cross-continental collaboration between her residency program and the Fistula Hospital and pioneered a leadership project centered about creating an equitable, reciprocal, North-South, twinning partnership based on the World Health Organization's Twinning Partnerships Framework for Improvement. Her project has garnered attention at the national level and recently received a best leadership project award from the AAFP Foundation's Emerging Leader Institute.
While a Global Health Fellowship, she worked on mastering core ultrasound skills, achieving board certification in tropical medicine and continuing her global health growth journey. She continued building the global health partnership she started while in residency while also working at Gynocare in Eldoret, Kenya. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, having deep conversations with practically anyone, listening to audio books, attending concerts and playing guitar.
Ryann Milne-Price (2021-2022)
I am a 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.
Goutami Sanyal, MD (2022-2024)
Goutami Sanyal is a 2022 graduate from the family medicine residency program at University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center in Jackson, TN. She was born in Calcutta, India, and grew up between the American south, and Westchester, NY. She has been interested in marginalized communities since her volunteer street clinic experiences in India, during her undergraduate degree at Columbia College. She completed her Masters in Reproductive and Sexual Health Research from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in which she focused on maternal mortality in the global South. Her other global health experiences include volunteering in free clinics in Dominica, where she went to medical school at Ross University, as well as working at a clinic for migrants and refugees in Mexico, at the southern border during residency. Goutami's interests include full spectrum women's health including obstetrics, immigrant and refugee healthcare/advocacy, and social justice in medicine. After completing her global health fellowship, she is remaining as a core faculty member with the Contra Costa Family Medicine Residency Program. In her spare time, she enjoys reading fiction, taking care of her too many houseplants, writing, and cooking; she also looks forward to hiking in California's many beautiful parks.
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.
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.
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.