University of Pennsylvania Scholars

Evan S. Fieldston, MD, MBA
University of Pennsylvania

Evan S. Fieldston, MD, MBA is a pediatrician, who received his MD and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a resident and chief resident at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. During college and medical school, he was engaged in research and legislative advocacy related to public health issues and children with special needs. As a resident, Dr. Fieldston continued his involvement in these areas and participated in advocacy and legislative activities at the hospital, city, state, and federal levels. Outside of legislative advocacy, he started a program to teach Philadelphia school students ballroom dance and health lessons as a means to address a need and combat the obesity problem. The program is now entering its third year and is expanding to more schools in Philadelphia with new partners. Dr. Fieldston's current research interests include access to care for children, economic and non-economic incentives around patient and provider behavior, insurance, and safety net coverage.

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Robert D. Karch, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP (Pediatrics)
University of Pennsylvania

Robert D. Karch, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP (Pediatrics) is originally from Kutztown, Pennsylvania. He earned his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in Biology from the University of Delaware and his Masters of Public Health (M.P.H.) degree from the Columbia University School of Public Health. He received his medical degree from the Georgetown University School of Medicine in 2000.  He completed his Pediatric internship and residency training at the Miami Children’s Hospital, where he also served as Chief Pediatric Resident.  Dr. Karch practiced General Pediatrics for two years in rural Northern Arizona as a National Health Service Corp (NHSC) scholar.  The NHSC is a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with a mission to eliminate physician shortage areas by placing primary care providers in medically-underserved communities within the United States and its territories.  Dr. Karch practiced at the Canyonlands Community Health Care center, which is based in Page, Arizona. His interest in Nutrition and the medical morbidities associated with childhood obesity grew from his clinical interactions with pediatric patients and their families in Arizona.  After completing his NHSC service in 2006, Dr. Karch began his Pediatric Clinical Nutrition fellowship at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.  He hopes to concentrate his efforts within the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program in pediatric weight management and nutritional health policy.

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Sean C. Lucan, MD, MPH (Family Medicine)
University of Pennsylvania

Sean C. Lucan, MD, MPH (Family Medicine) completed an MD/MPH dual-degree program at Yale University before entering his Family Medicine residency at the University of Pennsylvania.  Sean was one of only 3 students to become a Pisacano Scholar in 2003, and one of only 20 residents to receive the AAFP/BMS Award for Excellence in 2006 - both prestigious national honors recognizing leaders in Family Medicine.  Although he has published papers on smoking cessation, he is more broadly interested in environmental influences on lifestyle decisions and how they contribute to chronic disease.  Sean serves as a reviewer for the American Journal of Health Promotion, and is working with the D.C.-based Robert Graham Center on a project to evaluate the position of Family Medcine at the NIH.

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Raina Merchant, MD, (Emergency Medicine)
University of Pennsylvania

Raina Merchant, MD, (Emergency Medicine) received her MD from the University of Chicago where she also completed her emergency medicine residency, and a resuscitation research fellowship.  Her research is focused on preventing potentially avoidable deaths from cardiac arrest. Using geographic information software, she would like to identify communities at risk for cardiac arrest and determine unique strategies for improving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training and automated external defibrillator AED availability.  In the in-patient setting, she is interested in using large administrative data sets to identify disparities in post-resuscitation care.

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Matthew O’Brien, MD, (Internal Medicine)
University of Pennsylvania

Matthew O’Brien, MD, (Internal Medicine) received both his BS and MD degrees from Brown University’s Program in Liberal Medical Education. During medical school, he was co-director of a free clinic that provided primary care services to undocumented Latino immigrants. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, which supported his regular work at Project Salud, a clinic in rural southeastern PA serving Mexican migrant farmworkers. He has also worked with his faculty mentor and a dedicated group of students to start a clinic for Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia, called Puentes de Salud, which recently opened. His research interests include alternative models of primary care delivery to address disparities in access and outcomes among underserved populations.

[ Veteran Affairs Fellow ]

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Joanne N. Wood, M.D. (Pediatrics)
University of Pennsylvania

Joanne N. Wood, M.D. (Pediatrics) received her M.D. from University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed her residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).  She spent a year as Chief Resident and completed a one year fellowship in Child Abuse and Neglect at CHOP.  During medical school and residency she completed and published a research study comparing the presentation of young children with inflicted and accidental abdominal trauma.  Dr. Wood’s research is currently focused on the evaluation of physical injuries in victims of child abuse.

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Pierre Yong, MD, MPH
University of Pennsylvania

Pierre Yong, MD, MPH earned his MD from Brown University's Program in Liberal Medical Education and his MPH from Columbia University. Pierre completed his residency in Internal Medicine at New York Hospital/Weill-Cornell Medical College, where he was awarded the Weiner Award for Compassionate Care. While completing his residency at New York Hospital, Pierre put his public health background to work, by designing curricula for patient and provider audiences and providing targeted training on the changes and transition to Medicare Part D. Prior to entering his residency program, Pierre worked at the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control's Education and Training Unit at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. His projects there included designing public education materials regarding identifying and controlling TB in the community, as well as conducting practitioner trainings throughout the city. Currently, Pierre is applying his public health and clinical backgrounds to his research interests of asthma and the impact of quality-of-care measures on health outcomes and racial disparities

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Rebekah Gee, M.D., M.P.H.
University of Pennsylvania

Rebekah Gee, MD, MPH is an Obstetrician/Gynecologist. She studied history and obtained an M.P.H. at Columbia, studied medicine at Cornell, and trained in Obstetrics and Gynecology at The Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospitals. During her training, she worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s office on women’s health, traveled to Cuba studying maternal and child health, and worked on public health projects in Ecuador. During her Obstetrics/Gynecology residency, she co-wrote legislation currently in effect that assures that rape victims receive emergency contraception when they present to a Massachusetts emergency room, and that patients in Massachusetts can obtain Plan B through a behind the counter arrangement. She was also a plaintiff in a law suit against Wal-mart that resulted in a national policy change by Wal-Mart to agree to stock Plan B in its pharmacies.
She has been active in professional organizations and was a student leader in the AMA, serving on a national advisory committee for Scientific Affairs. She is currently on the Gynecology practice bulletins committee for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which helps define standards of care for gynecology. Dr. Gee is the recipient of numerous awards during her training, and the recent recipient of the Choice USA Award for her commitment to women’s health. Her current research focuses on and measuring levels of domestic violence in a population of women obtaining gynecologic care and abortions and barriers to access of contraception.

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Giridhar Mallya, M.D.
University of Pennsylvania

Giridhar Mallya, MD is a family physician who completed medical school at Brown University through the Program in Liberal Medical Education and residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. During medical school, he co-directed medical student initiatives at a free clinic serving undocumented Latino immigrants and engaged in clinical and advocacy work in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Eldoret, Kenya. As a resident, he conducted research on Medicare Part D through the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care in Washington, D.C. His research interests as a Clinical Scholar focus on access to primary care for vulnerable populations. He is collaborating with another Scholar on two projects exploring the impact of high-deductible health plans on use of preventive services. Plus, he is working with community health centers in Philadelphia to understand how spatial access and social and environmental factors affect access to care for low-income and uninsured city residents.

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Craig Pollack, M.D., M.H.S.
University of Pennsylvania

Craig Pollack, MD, MHS is an internist and a Veteran's Affairs Fellow. He graduated from the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine where he received the Robert Crede Award for excellence in primary care. During medical school, he spent a year in Duesseldorf, Germany performing social epidemiology research on the built and social environments. For his master’s degree in Health Sciences from UC Berkeley, he traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina with funding provided by the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center. He examined repatriation and mourning of the survivors of the massacre at Srebrenica. He did his residency at UCSF and the San Francisco General Hospital Primary Care Track. His current research focuses on reducing socioeconomic disparities in health. He is investigating how different insurance designs, specifically consumer-directed health plans, affect doctor-patient decision-making for patients with low socioeconomic status. Additionally, he is examining disparities in the treatment of prostate cancer and the measurement of wealth in health research.

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Joahd Toure, M.D.
University of Pennsylvania

Joahd Toure, M.D. is an internist who was raised in Stroughton, Massachusetts and attended Harvard University where he obtained an undergraduate degree in biochemistry. He then moved to New Haven to attend medical school at Yale and upon graduation remained to complete the internal medicine residency program at Yale New Haven Hospital. He became interested in outcomes research during residency where he studied referral and treatment patterns among patients with chronic hepatitis C. Dr. Toure’s research interests include appropriate models of care for chronic hepatitis C patients and outcomes in hepatitis C. He is also interested in work which demonstrates how the removal of socioeconomic barriers improve overall health – in particular how health outcomes are improved when the unemployed find work.

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