2006-2008 Clinical Scholars

Brendan Carr, MD (Emergency Medicine) trained in emergency medicine and fellowship trained in trauma and surgical critical care. He attended medical school at Temple University and residency and fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Brendan is interested in injury science, evidence based categorization of Emergency Departments, and applying the trauma model of regionalized care systems to other disease processes.

Nabila Dahodwala, MD (Neurology) is a neurologist who received her MD from Columbia University and then completed her residency in Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. As a medical student, she spent a year in Peru performing epidemiological research in sexually tramsmitted diseases and injury prevention. During residency, she worked on a research project exploring reasons to get tested for presymptomatic Parkinson's disease. Dr. Dahodwala's current research interests relate to Parkinson's disease and racial/ethnic disparities in access to care and diagnosis of this disease. She is also interested in exploring expectations regarding normal aging and how it relates to changes in movements.

Rebekah Gee, MD, MPH (Obstetrics and Gynecolgy) is an Obstetrician/Gynecologist. She studied history and obtained an M.P.H. at Columbia, obtained her medical degree at Cornell, and trained in Obstetrics and Gynecology at The Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospitals. Prior to residency, she gained experience in public health work in Cuba, Ecuador and the U.S. department of Health and Human Services. During her Obstetrics/Gynecology residency, she co-wrote legislation currently in effect that mandates that rape victims receive emergency contraception when they present to a Massachusetts emergency room.. She was 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 had a leadership role in the AMA and ACOG, helping to define public policy for organized medicine. She currently serves 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 Courting Justice award for her commitment to women's health. She is an outspoken advocate for access to contraception, and plans to work to increase access to contraceptive services for women nationwide.

Giridhar Mallya, MD (Family Medicine) is a family physician who completed his residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA, and medical school at Brown University through the Program in Liberal Medical Education in Providence, RI. During medical school, he coordinated a community-campus health education partnership and co-directed medical student initiatives at a free clinic serving undocumented Latino immigrants. He also engaged in clinical, research, and advocacy work in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Eldoret, Kenya. As a resident, he created a health policy curricular initiative and 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 current research interests focus on gaps in health insurance, particularly the take-up of low-income subsidy programs and the effect of high-deductible health plans on preventive care.

Craig Pollack, MD, MHS (Internal Medicine).is a Veteran's Affairs Fellow. He graduated from the University of California San Francisco and did his residency at UCSF and the San Francisco General Hospital Primary Care Track. He received a master's degree in Health Sciences from UC Berkeley where his research focused on survivors of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He spent a year during medical school performing social epidemiology research in Duesseldorf, Germany. His current research focuses on structural approaches to understanding and reducing disparities in healthcare. He is examining how physicians and patients make medical decisions under consumer-directed healthcare, insurance coverage of preventive services, and the role of the built environment in health disparities.

Edmondo Robinson, MD, MBA (Internal Medicine) has completed a three-year residency in the Internal Medicine Program at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He is a 2003 graduate and Dean's Merit Scholarship recipient of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. While at UCLA, Dr. Robinson participated in an AIDS Care Fellowship at the UCSF AIDS Institute. He also served as National Vice-President for the Student National Medical Association and was an appointee to the National Board of Medical Examiners. During a two-year leave of absence from medical school, Dr. Robinson earned a master's degree in business administration, with an emphasis in healthcare management, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. While at Wharton, Dr. Robinson traveled with a team of students and alumni to South Africa to assess state-sponsored, community clinic operations for the Director of Health Services for the Cape Town Metropolitan Region. Dr. Robinson graduated from Wharton with honors in 2002. He completed his undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego in 1997. His research interest involves the development of indicators to assess quality of health care delivery to special populations.

Joahd Toure, MD (Internal Medicine) 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. His research interests include appropriate models of care for chronic hepatitis C patients and outcomes in hepatitis C. This includes two major areas. The first examines how social variables such as race affect these outcomes. The second involves how variables within the system of healthcare affect these outcomes.