At the Fifth Annual Areas of Concentration (AoC) Symposium held May 7 in the Millberry Union Conference Center, 57 graduating students presented their projects. Seven students, one from each AoC theme, had been selected to give oral presentations.

Attendees had the opportunity to vote on poster awards in three categories. The winners were announced during the awards ceremony at the end of the symposium and are as follows:

Best Overall Project

Zoel Quiñónez: Clínica Martín-Baró: a public benefit corporation for education and social justice

Most Significant Impact at UCSF

Kristie White: Restructuring pathology laboratories in the Essential Core curriculum

Most Significant Impact Outside of UCSF

Hemal Kanzaria: Recovering medical equipment for the developing world (REMEDY)


Hemal Kanzaria



Oral Presentations

Medical Humanities

Aaron Bunnell: Patient and physician narratives: Sing songs of the General Hospital

Global Health

Raymund Dantes: Modeling costs and outcomes of current and potential vasectomy use among PhilHealth beneficiaries in the Philippines

Community Health and Social Advocacy

Amber Lerma: At-risk youth and juvenile incarceration elective and documentary "Hard Times"

Medical Education

Puja Kohli: The impact of continuity within a longitudinal ambulatory rotation for third-year medical students

Health Care Systems and the Physician-Leader

Sanjiv Singh: Policy perspectives on medical outsourcing and telemedicine

Science of Medicine and the Physician-Investigator

Robert Wong: Multi-ethnic variations in hepatocellular incidence and survival within the United States

Social Sciences in Medicine

Shirley Wu: Hot tea and juk: The institutional meaning of food for Chinese elders in an American nursing home (abstract only)

Mentor Award

Karen Hauer, MD, received the 2008 Areas of Concentration Mentor Award. This student-nominated award recognizes the generous contributions of a faculty or community AoC project mentor in guiding and supporting an AoC project.


Karen Hauer, MD, and mentoree Pradeep Natarajan

Nominees for the Areas of Concentration Mentor Award were:

• Thomas S. Bodenheimer, MD, MPH (AoC in Health Care Systems)
• Douglas A. Corley, MD, MPH, PhD (AoC in Science of Medicine)
• Karen Hauer, MD (AoC in Medical Education)
• Philip C. Hopewell, MD (AoC in Global Health)
• Thomas Lietman, MD (AoC in Global Health)
• Alma Martinez, MD (AoC in Global Health)
• Judith Moskowitz, PhD, MPH (AoC in Global Health)
• Patricia O'Sullivan, EdD (AoC in Medical Education)
• Colin Partridge, MD, MPH (AoC in Global Health)
• Philip Rosenthal, MD (AoC in Global Health)