Dr. DeCamp is a pediatrician who completed her residency at the University of North Carolina. She attended medical school at Duke, and during this time also received an MSPH from the University of North Carolina in the Department of Maternal and Child Health. Her research interest lies in reducing health disparities among Latino children. She plans to study how family and community level factors influence health care access and use as well as the impact of policy initiatives, such as dissemination of the medical home concept, on health disparities.
J. Jane Shin Jue, MD,(VA Scholar)(Internal Medicine) received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her medical degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. During her time in medical school she founded a free health clinic which continues to serve the homeless and marginalized community of Manhattan's lower East side. Completing her residency in Internal Medicine at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, she also received special training in global health medicine. Uganda, India, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Brazil are some of the places where she has done medical work. She was a 2007 recipient of the AMA Leadership Award. Areas of prior research for Dr. Jue include barriers to HIV testing, diabetes disparities, and also professionalism in medical education. She is currently working on research in adolescent obesity. Other areas of interest include the impact of media in health promotion, ethics in health care management and heath care financing, and ethics in medical training.
Sonali Kulkarni, M.D., M.P.H., University of California, Los Angeles
Sonali Kulkarni, M.D., M.P.H., (VA Scholar) was a Magna Cum Laude graduate from Duke University with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Policy with a focus on Environmental Health. She completed her medical degree at Duke University’s School of Medicine and a master’s degree in Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her residency in internal medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. Her research interests focus around improving access to care for underserved populations such as patients with limited English proficiency and patients who have been in the correctional system. She is also interested in studying ways that the physical environment and public policy affect population health and activity.
Rhonda Mattox, M.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Rhonda Mattox, M.D., (VA Scholar) was a Biology major and Religion and Philosophy minor at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. She completed her medical degree from University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine. As a Clinical Scholar, Dr. Mattox will focus her research towards developing interventions aimed at reducing the stigma of mental illness among the African-American community. Specifically, she would like to work with faith-based programs to improve African-Americans’ access to treatment and outcomes in mental health.
Sierra Matula, M.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Sierra Matula, M.D., (VA Scholar) is a general surgery resident at the University of California, San Francisco. She graduated cum laude from Brandeis University where she studied health care law, policy and medical sociology as part of an independent concentration. During her undergraduate years, she spent a semester studying public health in Santiago, Dominican Republic. Dr. Matula completed her medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. She also spent a year during medical school as a Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellow studying chemprevention and the relationship of inflammation and carcinoma in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Dr. Matula's current research interests focus on quality of surgical care and access to specialty care.
Zachary Meisel MD, MPH,(Emergency Medicine) received his undergraduate degree in History at Columbia. He received his medical and public health degrees at Johns Hopkins and completed his residency as chief resident at the University of Pennsylvania. He is interested in how health care workers communicate with each other during emergencies and is particularly interested in patient safety during transitions in care from EMS to hospital settings. He is a contributing columnist for the online journal Slate, and is interested in evaluating methods to improve the dissemination of health services concepts to influential, non-medical decision makers.
Bergen Nelson, M.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Bergen Nelson, M.D., graduated Magna Cum Laude from Wellesley College in Massachusetts with a bachelor's degree in Psychobiology. She then spent two years teaching bilingual students in a public elementary school in Manhattan, through the Teach for America program, before attending Harvard Medical School, where she received her medical degree in 2004. She completed residency in Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, in the Pediatric Leadership for the Underserved (PLUS) program. As a Clinical Scholar, Dr. Nelson would like to develop partnerships between pediatric health services and education systems, evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to improve developmental and educational outcomes for at-risk children and youth.
Dr. Padela is an emergency medicine physician who holds bachelor degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Classical Arabic & Literature, attended medical school at Weill Cornell Medical College, and completed his residency at the University of Rochester. His current research focus on cultural accommodations for, healthcare disparities of, and ethical challenges for Muslim and Arab American populations. He is a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy & Understanding, an American Muslim think-tank, working on a project relating to cultural barriers to clinical care for Muslim Americans, collaborating with Dar-ul-Qasim, an Islamic educational institution to probe the frontiers of Islamic bioethics, and conducting CBPR work in Greater Detroit on Arab and Muslim health. His other work focuses on the "culture" of clinical accommodation of patient values in the ED. Of note, he has spent time professionally in Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt.
Michael Phipps, MD(VA Scholar) is a neurologist who earned his undergraduate degree in molecular and cell biology and psychology at the University of California-Berkeley and his medical degree from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. Dr. Phipps completed his neurology residency at Yale Medical School. His research interests focus on quality of care and outcomes in cerebrovascular disease, including the systems and cost-effectiveness of stroke care.
Erica Spatz, MD is a cardiology fellow who received her undergraduate degree in human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University and her medical degree from Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel. She completed her internal medicine residency and chief residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine-Montefiore Medical Center, after which she continued on as faculty in the Department of Medicine. Her research interests include quality and outcomes of cardiovascular disease prevention and access to care.
Dr. Sussman(VA Scholar) is an internist who received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College. He received his medical degree from UCSF and MS from UC Berkeley as part of the UCB/UCSF Joint Medical Program. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He is interested in how evidence-based medicine can be more practically applied in medicine and health care.
Anje Van Berckelaer, MD University of Pennsylvania
Anje Van Berckelaer, MD (Family Medicine) is a family physician who trained at Harvard Medical School and the family medicine residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. She has recently worked in pediatric malnutrition and TB/HIV programs in sub-Saharan Africa with Médecins Sans Frontières. Her current research and advocacy interests are centered on access to health care and enrollment in public health insurance programs.
Glenda Wrenn, MD (Psychiatry) received her undergraduate degree in Chemistry and Nuclear Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College. She completed her residency training in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania where she participated in the Clinical Research Scholars Program in Psychiatry. Her clinical and research interests include enhancing resiliency of communities, integrating systems of mental health care, developing effective systems to respond to mass trauma, and addressing health disparities in mental health access.
Dr. Zulman (VA Scholar) is an internist who obtained her undergraduate degree in Human Biology at Stanford University, and prior to medical school she worked at the Institute for Health and Aging at UCSF, where her research focused on strategies to address the health needs of an aging population, including the effectiveness of long term care ombudsman programs. She received her MD from UCLA and completed her residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include chronic disease management, health and health care disparities, and approaches to improving care for older adults in the primary care setting.
