Current title:
Medical Director, Polytrauma Transitional Rehabilitation Program, VA Palo Alto, Palo Alto CA

Fellowship: Brain Injury Medicine at UT Health, TIRR Memorial Hermann Hospital, Houston, TX

Residency: University of Utah Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Salt Lake City, UT

Medical school: The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH

Undergraduate: UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA

What kind of identities do you inhabit?
-Woman in Medicine
-Advocate for people living with brain injury
-Daughter
-Wife
-Animal lover
-Outdoor enthusiast

I was fortunate to have several mentors and sponsors along the way. I was also raised in a medical family. Both of my parents are primary care physicians and my interest in helping underserved populations started young from the values they taught me. I am more proud of their path to medicine than my own. Unlike me, they did not have easy access to role models in medicine or support for the extra years of education and training. I am especially proud of my mom who chose this career at a time when few women entered medical school.

In college I tried multiple majors and sought opportunities to shadow to learn more about various career options. I didn’t want to choose medicine just because it was in my family.

As an aside, I grew up working with animals and had a brief stint as a professional equestrian, exercising and training horses for various barns in the area, and worked a couple years as a veterinary technician. I also became heavily involved with an organization called Doctors Without Walls which offers free mobile health clinics for the homeless.

Ultimately, I felt that becoming a physician was the right trajectory for me and would offer a stimulating career where I could make a positive impact.

As a physiatrist I see health inequities up close all the time. I see social determinants of health dictating what services a person has access to regardless of their needs. The people who tend to have the most rehabilitation needs often have the least number of resources and support to afford it.

We are a society set up to address emergencies and we have become great at this, with our technology and advanced medicine we can save people from things we never thought possible, but we have not built the infrastructure for recovery to match the abilities we have to save a life.

We all know there is more to life than survival, and that is where PM&R comes in. I see an organization like this offering information sharing about PM&R and championing what is possible for people living with disabilities. I also see this as a possible forum to foster discussion surrounding inequities and how to address this moving forward.

I am passionate about brain injury rehabilitation and giving my patients the best opportunities to maximize their recovery. Most of my patients come from underserved backgrounds and I knew this when I chose the field, advocating for this population is important to my mission.

When I was in training, I was often sheltered from the inequities built into our healthcare system. Emerging into practice, I quickly saw our healthcare system is arranged in a way that makes it easy for many of my patients to fall through the cracks.

My instinct is to fight these inequities but the effort is a huge undertaking and at some points has made me question why I chose a field that comes with these moral and ethical challenges.

The way I overcome this urge to run is to remind myself of my mission and my core principles. I also lean on my friends, mentors and colleagues in the field. They understand and offer helpful advice.

I enjoy teaching and mentoring and since I have the opportunity to work with residents and medical students, one of my aspirations is to show them what is possible for people recovering from brain injury.

On a larger scale, my wishlist includes shifting society views on living with disability.

I would love to see our society become more welcoming to those living with disabilities, not just physical but also cognitive and emotional disabilities. In many cases, people can do more after injury but our society structure is rigid and so they cannot access the services they need to be successful. I am also excited to see advancements in technology used to champion my patient population and empower them to do more whether that is communicate more clearly with family and friends or live independently, or return to work.

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