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First
year (pilot cohort)
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I grew up in the small farming community of Mendota, California. I
attended California State University, Fresno were I double majored
in Health Science and Chemistry. My desire to become a physician stems
from my experience working in the hospital setting. My interest in
the PRIME program comes from growing up in a predominantly Latino
community. I saw the reduced access to medical care due to a lack
of physicians who could communicate with and understand their patients.
With the help of PRIME-US, I plan to return to Central California
to tackle the many health disparities that I saw growing up. I look
forward to meeting everyone up at UCSF in the Fall. |
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I was born and raised in Alkali Flat in downtown Sacramento. In May
2006, I received my undergraduate degree from the University of San
Francisco, graduating with honors. I majored in Biology with a minor
in Chemistry. |
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I grew up primarily in Long Beach, California and received my undergraduate
degree from Harvard College. |
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I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA and graduated from Brown University
in 2002. After graduation I worked at two environmental health organizations,
the National Safety Council and Healthy Homes Resources, Inc., on
childhood lead poisoning and asthma prevention and research in two
low-income urban neighborhoods. I was then granted a Luce fellowship
to develop and conduct two studies on childhood lead poisoning in
the impoverished townships of Johannesburg, South Africa. Afterwards
I worked in Pittsburgh and Boston on public health issues related
to environmental justice and HIV/AIDS, while completing a post bac
program at the Harvard Extension School. After completing this program
I worked in Haiti for Partners In Health. I coordinated the implementation
of an electronic medical record system for HIV-positive patients at
seven rural hospitals. While at UCSF and as a part of PRIME, I have
become very interested in the health concerns of homeless individuals.
I am currently the coordinator for the student run homeless clinic
at Tenderloin Health. And I continue to be involved in environmental
justice. This past summer I returned to Johannesburg to follow up
on the lead poisoning research projects that I completed in 2003.
I helped to draft the legislation that will formally ban lead in paint
in South Africa and worked on environmental health education materials
for the WHO-Africa. I hope to link my experiences in South Africa
to the environmental health concerns that face the residents of Bayview
and Hunter’s Point. I am also actively involved in the Local
Meets Global Initiative at UCSF which is trying to bridge the divide
between the efforts to address local and global health disparities. |
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I grew up in Berkeley, California and graduated from Harvard College
in 2002 with a degree in English and American Literature and Language.
I went back to school at Mills College in the fall of 2003, where
I spent two years completing my pre-med requirements. Between college
and medical school I had many experiences that helped guide me towards
working with urban, underserved communities: serving as an investigator
on legal defense teams representing people facing the death penalty,
interning at an inner-city family practice clinic, doing clinical
research on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, helping to launch
a non-profit providing mental health care services to Rwandese genocide
survivors, and volunteering for various political campaigns. Each
of these experiences taught me about the tremendous impact of community
violence upon health and well-being. Since beginning UCSF and the
PRIME-US curriculum, my commitment to treating people whose lives
have been shaped by violence and cultures of violence has continued
to grow. My PRIME community project involves investigating and working
to address the mental health needs of San Francisco youth in detention,
specifically their exposure to trauma and the range of symptoms such
exposure can cause.
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I grew up in South Sacramento and graduated from UC San Diego. |
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I grew up initially in Minnesota, and then in the suburbs of Washington,
DC. At Reed College in Portland, OR, I completed a double major in
English and Biology. After graduating from Reed in 2002, I began volunteering
at Outside In, a social service agency for homeless youth, including
a medical clinic. In 2003, I started working for the clinic at Outside
In full time, where I wore many hats, including medical assistant,
Medicaid outreach worker, Tattoo Removal Program coordinator and pregnancy
options counselor. I also assisted the syringe exchange and mental
health programs. I had always known that I wanted to work with the
homeless population, especially with those who were mentally ill.
Yet, it was my work at Outside In that allowed me to see practically
how to do this work and meet physicians who were providing health
care to those who are so often marginalized. I am thrilled to be part
of PRIME-US, where my goals are so strongly supported. I am currently
pursuing research on the impact of supportive housing for the chronically
homeless and mentally ill in San Francisco. In addition, I volunteer
with a student-run homeless clinic, and am working on a community
service project to increase access to mental health services for the
uninsured in Berkeley and Oakland. I plan to continue working to provide
more effective and community-based health care for the underserved
in every setting, from the prisons to the streets. |
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I grew up in Piedmont, California. As for formal education: I graduated
from Yale in 2001 with a BA in Anthropology and completed a postbac
program at Mills College in 2004-2005. I have a strong interest in
international and community development and have worked on projects
in several countries in Latin America. As a doctor, I hope to couple
my academic training in cultural anthropology with my work experiences
with diverse communities to provide culturally competent care to underserved
communities. My experiences with the urban underserved include helping
design and implement a social justice curriculum for New Haven middle
schools while in college; three years working for a non-profit in
Portland, Oregon advocating for the public schools - particularly
schools serving low-income and second language learner students; and
two years as a patient advocate and abortion counselor in downtown
Oakland. I am interested in medicine as a means of effecting social
change, and am interested in models of care that empower the patient
and build community. In this vein, my JMP thesis and PRIME project
is focused on Centering Parenting – a group-based model of care
for babies and mothers in the year following birth. In preparation
for working with mothers and babies, I spent last summer in Chiapas,
Mexico shadowing midwives and conducting qualitative research on breastfeeding,
and back at school I am the coordinator of the student-run clinic
at the local women's shelter.
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I grew up in Moraga, California and attended UC Berkeley for college
where I majored in Molecular and Cell Biology and minored in Ethnic
Studies. My interest in health inequities was strongly influenced
by my involvement in public health and community organizing for social
justice. In college, I traveled to South Africa for a health leadership
forum where I studied the South African public health response to
the HIV/AIDS epidemic and volunteered in nursery orphanages for children
affected by the epidemic. I also spent a summer in Guatemala volunteering
as a medical assistant and health educator in a rural community health
clinic. These experiences strongly contributed to my understanding
of the detrimental health effects of social inequality.
I received an MPH from UC Berkeley in Maternal and Child Health in
2006. During grad school, I spent several months in the Dominican
Republic developing a community capacity building teen pregnancy and
HIV prevention program for rural youth. For my MPH thesis, I explored
my interest in health inequities and reproductive justice by conducting
a study on the cultural appropriateness of HIV interventions for young
Asian American women.
Throughout undergrad and grad school, I further pursued my interest
in advocating for the health of the Asian American and Pacific Islander
community and for five years I interned and worked as a health educator
and counselor at Asian Health Services Youth Program in Oakland where
I had an amazing time teaching comprehensive sex education in Oakland
schools and youth probation centers, counseling patients about reproductive
health issues, and facilitating a Peer Leadership program and a youth
Photovoice project focused on health and social justice issues. These
valuable experiences led me to the realization that medicine and public
health can be used as tools for community empowerment. I am very happy
to be continuing my relationship with Asian Health Services currently
as a PRIME participant, and I am excited to be conducting my Schweitzer
Fellowship community service project as well as my JMP Masters thesis
project at the AHS Youth Program.
I am looking forward to continuing to work to improve health access
for underserved communities through PRIME, and to learn and grow
with everyone in PRIME.
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I grew up in Lancaster, California on the periphery of Los Angeles,
amid tumbleweeds and vast parking lots. I traveled north to study
philosophy and neuroscience at UC Berkeley. I was also educated by
my work as a community health worker Berkeley Free Clinic, as a teaching
intern in an Oakland middle school, and by engaging in cooperative
housing organizations. I am now in my second year at the JMP, and
am developing a thesis analyzing the principles of distributive justice
underpinning health as a human right. By studying this intersection
of ethics, policy, economics and health, I hope to better flesh out
our roles as advocates and researchers in addressing disparities and
injustice within such a complicated system. I am also broadly interested
in medical education: its international access, building scientific
capacity and the role of the medical humanities. I currently clinically
precept at the Richmond Health Center. In the future I would like
to continue to work at the intersection of health care and justice,
both globally and domestically. When not fantasizing about policy
revolutions and gaba receptors, I like to play capoeira, write letters
to the editor, and drink obscene amounts of very good coffee. |
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I am a native of Oakland, California. I am biracial: my mother is
black and my father is Puerto Rican. I attended UC Berkeley where
I studied Public Health and Poverty through the Interdisciplinary
Field Studies Department, and later completed a pre-medical post-baccalaureate
program at San Francisco State University. I have some Spanish proficiency
and have visited the Dominican Republic twice where I worked with
orphans and visited the Haitian border. I have worked with homeless
individuals in Oakland and Berkeley, as well as at-risk youth in school
settings and in a locked treatment facility. I’ve taught math
to inner-city youth in Oakland for Girls Incorporated of Alameda County
and as a contractor for the Oakland Unified School District. I am
interested in pediatrics and internal medicine and would like to pursue
my Master's in Public Health in infectious disease or tropical medicine.
I see myself working with children of the State and those who are
undocumented within Oakland, CA. I would like to pursue medical missions
in developing countries, particularly those that have been affected
by the African Diaspora and those where many preventable tropical
diseases are endemic. My long term goals include developing a comprehensive
clinic in an urban area and eventually working at a national level. |
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I was born and raised in San Francisco. After earning a BA in Applied
Mathematics from UC Berkeley, I pursued my passion to become a doctor.
I enrolled in San Francisco State University and completed my post-baccalaureate
studies. In the meantime, I worked at the Women’s Community
Clinic, a free clinic in San Francisco for women without insurance.
In my three years at the clinic, I provided health education, HIV
testing and counselling and street outreach. I also worked as a clinic
manager where I learned about the administrative aspects of running
the clinic. I am excited to be a part of this diverse group of students
united in their desire to help underserved communities. I believe
the PRIME-US program will expand my knowledge of community health
and enhance my ability to discover adequate solutions for problems
that face underserved populations. |
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My family comes from Stockton, California, where I was born and raised.
I graduated from Edison High School and began my post-secondary education
at San Joaquin Delta Community College where I was able to develop
my academic interests in science and medicine. I transferred to Mills
College and completed a degree in biochemistry. After exploring other
fields, I decided to seriously dedicate myself to becoming a doctor.
My preparation for medical school included taking part in the UCSF
post-baccalaureate program. I am motivated to practice medicine in
a medically underserved area because I am a person who experienced
the realities and injustices of living in such communities. My background
and history grounds me in the realities of marginalized populations,
and continually renews my passion for restoring justice and equality
to these communities. Part of my preparation for becoming a physician
included working as an EMT in Oakland for three years. I witnessed
daily the health disparities of the communities of color I served.
The PRIME-US program will help me to achieve my goal of becoming a
physician for the urban underserved by providing me with a deeper
understanding of the complex needs of these communities. |
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I grew up in Syracuse, New York and enjoyed studying writing, theatre,
Spanish and politics. I moved to New York City when he was 18 and
began studies at New York University. I studied abroad in Southern
Mexico for a semester and completed a research project on education
and healthcare in a Zapatista community. I also studied social linguistics
and Latin American literature for a semester in Lima, Peru. During
and after college I worked with a group of artists in New York on
various performances and projects focused on politics, development
and urban expressionism. Many of the works sought to expand social
consciousness and question basic social assumptions, especially regarding
cultural identity. During my time in New York, I volunteered in an
underserved urban elementary school, worked as a Spanish-English interpreter
in an ambulatory clinic, and assisted at a free health clinic. I returned
to school to pursue premedical studies at Bryn Mawr College, PA. For
the last year I have been working with the New York State Department
of Health, AIDS Institute, on improving HIV care for underserved populations
without mainstream health insurance. I’m very interested in
programming and policy for underserved populations, especially undocumented
immigrants, and HIV care. I hope to study policy and foresee through
PRIME-US a multitude of mentorship opportunities, exposure to a variety
of clinical sites, and a well-developed understanding of the government’s
role in providing quality care to the underinsured. I’m fascinated
by infectious diseases, specifically the changing field of HIV care,
and public health care policy. I hope to provide a combination of
clinical care and public health leadership in my future career. I
am excited by the opportunities that the PRIME-US program offers.
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I was born and raised in Sacramento, CA. I attended college at Xavier
University of Louisiana. I also attended one semester at California
State University, Sacramento. |
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I was born in the UK and graduated from Oxford University. I worked
for a couple of years in SE Asia as a management consultant before
getting an MBA at Northwestern University and immigrating to the US.
Subsequently , I worked for nearly a decade on Wall Street as an investment
banker to the Hi Tech and Biotech industries in New York and Palo
Alto. After leaving banking I trained and worked in Emergency Medicine
in the field and volunteered extensively at San Francisco General
Hospital (SFGH). Staff and patients at SFGH were responsible for my
formative experiences and inspiration in working with the urban underserved
and it was physicians at SFGH who encouraged me to go to medical school.
I completed a postbac premed program at Scripps College before returning
to do a year of research at SFGH in the Emergency Department. My research
interests center on decision-making among patients and clinical providers
with a particular focus on the intersecting operations of cultural
and economic capital in medical decision-making. I anticipate pursuing
a career in academic clinical medicine and research. For me, PRIME
represents the opportunity to join a supportive and stimulating intellectual
and activist community. |
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My name is Irving Christhian Salmeron Blanco. I was born in
Acapulco, Mexico but partially raised in the nearby village of Papayo.
My second home has been the rural community of Fallbrook located in
San Diego County. I graduated from UC Berkeley in 2005 with majors
in Molecular & Cell Biology, Integrative Biology, and a minor
in Education. In addition to my breast cancer research and residential
construction work, I am extremely proud of my activities as a mentor,
tutor and teacher at Oakland’s Longfellow Middle School, Digital
Underground Storytelling Youth, FACES for the Future, and Laney College.
At the moment, I am interested in the surgical field because my exposure
to family practice and in vivo studies as well as my personal experience
with Palmar-Plantar Hyperhidrosis inspire me to help those who need
specialty care. I hope to use and share my specialized training in
urban underserved communities because I feel the need is greatest
there and I desire to make the greatest impact. Someday, I would like
to work in a team that develops public policies and methods that will
improve the quality and access to surgical services for the underserved.
I have benefited tremendously all throughout my life from the guidance
of genuine and passionate people. Hence, I strongly believe, based
on my interviews and communication with PRIME-US staff, that my specific
goals in medicine will be fostered in the program. Furthermore, the
fit between the goals of PRIME-US, student colleagues, and those of
my own, will allow us to work together, along with allies, to ultimately
accomplish them. |
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I was born and raised here in the Bay Area, in Oakland, California.
I went to college at UC Davis and received a degree in Biological
Systems Engineering. Throughout my life, I have spent a great deal
of time doing outreach in urban underserved communities. While at
UCD, I brought groups of underrepresented students to tour the university
and tutored others in math and science. I volunteered as an interpreter
at a free clinic geared to serve the uninsured Spanish-speaking population
in Sacramento, as well as at an adult day center in Oakland. After
college, I spent a year volunteering full-time with Americorps*VISTA
at the American Lung Association (ALA) educating asthmatic middle
school students from predominantly low-income communities in Oakland.
When my term of service was over, the ALA hired me as a bilingual
(Spanish/English) Asthma Case Manager to provide asthma education
and home remediation to Oakland children and their families. Both
in my personal life and in my work I have observed the need for specially
trained physicians to adequately serve the health care needs of the
low-income urban population in California. PRIME-US will train me
to effectively address these needs as a physician. With the training
I receive from PRIME-US I plan to contribute directly to the betterment
of health care services by providing high quality, culturally sensitive
medical care to low-income patients in an urban area. In addition
to addressing health disparities by seeing patients one-on-one, I
will use my training to participate on a larger scale, by collaborating
with community organizations on public interventions that include
health education and disease prevention. As far as my future specialty,
I love working with children and am interested in pediatrics. |
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Born and raised in Berkeley/Oakland, I graduated from UC Berkeley
in 2005 with a B.A. in Psychology. During college I spent a semester
studying in Havana, Cuba. I studied and subsequently taught at the
Young Musicians Program, an organization that provides music training
to low-income youth from the Bay Area. I’ve researched links
between psychological stress and aging at UCSF and have worked at
the school-based health clinic at McClymonds High School in West Oakland.
During the past year, I taught art and science in an after school
program at Oxford Elementary in Berkeley, where I also served as an
assistant coach of the football team. I am a certified E.M.T. and
currently volunteer with Kerry’s Kids, a mobile medical clinic
serving homeless children of the East Bay. I anticipate that my experience
in PRIME will help me better understand the issues that marginalized
communities face, and expose me to work being done to address health
disparities within these communities. I hope that my work as a PRIME
student will help me narrow my focus and discover particular areas
where I might be able to impact the medically underserved. In terms
of specialization within the medical field, I’m keeping my options
open, but I have a particular interest in school-based healthcare.
I conducted research on stress and aging was with the Epel lab in
the dept. of psychiatry at UCSF. |
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Hi, my name is Camha Le, but most people call me Cami. I was born
and raised in San Francisco, CA, and did my undergraduate at UC Berkeley.
I later moved to Pittsburgh, PA to pursue a Masters in Health Policy
& Management from Carnegie Mellon University. During this time,
I was also volunteering at a free clinic providing healthcare services
to homeless men. After graduate school, I was accepted as a public
health intern into the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Emerging Leaders Program. The majority of my time at HHS was spent
at the Health Resources and Services Agency, where much of my work
focused on health literacy, telehealth, and health information technology
as means to increase access and quality of healthcare for underserved
populations. During this time, I was also volunteering at a community
health center serving a predominantly low-income African American
population in Washington, DC. My career goal is to become a community-
and physician-leader who provides quality care to underserved populations,
conducts community health research to improve health outcomes for
these populations, and informs and influences health policy on the
issues facing the underserved. I feel that my future goals as a physician
fully align with the goals of PRIME, and that the program would provide
me with the structure, network, and support to achieve my goals. |
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Since leaving Arcata, the small Northern California town of her youth,
Rebecca has lived, worked, and studied in Chile, the Bay Area, New
York, Vietnam, Cuba, India, South Africa, Brazil and Philadelphia.
Rebecca graduated with a B.A. in Urban Health from the University
of California, Berkeley, and later studied in the Postbac Premed program
at Bryn Mawr College. She has been a teacher, sushi roller, ethnographer,
researcher in Social Medicine, clinical Spanish interpreter, HIVAIDS
outreach worker and perinatal health educator. Rebecca looks to the
PRIME-US community for support and inspiration in her path to become
a family physician. She hopes that the PRIME-US program will help
her develop the tools to become a more effective physician advocate.
Her interests include primary care, public health, policy and social
justice. |
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I grew up in Oakland, California. I have a BA in Psychology from Berkeley
and a BS in Molecular and Cell Biology from SF State. At Berkeley
as an
African American Theme Program Mentor, I taught a class for black
students
on establishing careers after college and was a TA for an interdepartmental
Medical Ethics course. Additionally I performed in plays written to
teach safe sex practices to high school and college students in
the Multicultural AIDS Peer Prevention program. I love playing Basket
Ball, swimming, and playing Capoeira. By working in Molecular Biology
labs
at SF State and UCSF for the past three years I've had my education
funded
by the NIH's Minority Access to Research Careers program. My most
substantial research internship was in a molecular genetics lab that
studies spermatogenesis in c. elegans. I've had a number of different
jobs
but my most rewarding position was as a science teacher and mentor
for
four years at a program in Oakland and SF for inner-city kids called
Aim
High. |
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