HEAL Initiative Global Health Fellowship

UCSF’s HEAL (Health, Equity, Action and Leadership) Fellowship aims to train health professionals partner with underserved communities both in the US and abroad.

There are two types of HEAL fellows: Rotating Fellows and Site Fellows. Over two years, our rotating fellows work at both Natividad and our international partner site, Companeros en Salud, in Chiapas, Mexico. Site fellows are health professionals selected by Natividad who engage with the local community over their two year fellowship.  All three receive Global Health Training and participate in a cohort community of HEAL fellows across all sites who work and learn together.

For more information about the HEAL Fellowship, please visit: https://healinitiative.org

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HEAL 2022-2024 Rotating Fellow: Ka Yi (Kiki) Li

Ka Yi (Kiki) Li was born in Hong Kong. At the age of twelve, her family immigrated to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. Growing up in a working-class environment, Kiki witnessed firsthand her non-English speaking parents face significant barriers to access health care services. She was inspired to pursue medicine and made a resolute mission to serve the most vulnerable communities in the United States and abroad. She attended Temple University for undergraduate studies where she obtained a major in Biology and a minor in Spanish.
As an AmeriCorps member, she taught English as a Second Language at a Chinese Senior Center. Meanwhile, she deepened her language fluency in Spanish and French while volunteering in Panama and studying in France, respectively. For medical school, she attended Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, New Jersey. There, she coordinated two Latino Policy Summits with medical students across the country. Next, she completed her residency training in Family Medicine at Boston Medical Center, where she cofounded a residency curriculum in “Immigrant and Refugee Health.”
Through HEAL fellowship, she strives to advocate for the health and human rights of immigrants and refugees in the United States. In her free time, she enjoys singing karaoke, playing video games, dancing salsa and outdoors hiking on short trails.

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HEAL 2021-2023 Rotating Fellow: Dalia De la Cruz

Dalia was born in Salinas. As the daughter of Mexican farm working immigrants, she set out from an early age to seek out a vocation that emphasized service to others. Upon completing high school, she started working as a Certified Nursing Assistant and quickly found a passion for improving the health of others, especially the farm working community in which came from.
She pursued additional education and obtained her LVN in 2009. She has worked at Natividad Hospital for 13 years, first as a CNA and for that last 12 years as an LVN in a primary care clinic, at Natividad Medical Group. She enjoys all aspects of her job but finds most joy educating patients about their health and how to improve it. She was a key member of the hospital team who provided farmworkers with education on Covid-19 in Spanish. Among her accomplishments she is most proud to be the mother of her two daughters who she hopes to inspire to pursue their dreams. They are her pride and joy, as well as her continuing inspiration to pursue further education. She intends to return to school and get her BSN in the next two years.

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HEAL 2023-2025 Rotating Fellow: Dr. Sara Scott, MD

Dr. Sara Scott grew up in Seattle, Washington. She attended medical school at University of Michigan and completed Family Medicine residency at The Ohio State University. During residency, she volunteered weekly at a student-run free clinic, Clínica Latina, which provides care for uninsured, Spanish-speaking patients. This experience highlighted the challenges of providing quality care in under-resourced settings and motivated her to learn more about how best to serve marginalized patients, in particular immigrant and refugee communities. She has completed global health work over the past two years focusing on global medical education in Mexico and Malawi and hopes to build on these experiences during HEAL. She is excited to become part of the HEAL community and Natividad to learn more about how to build sustainable global health education programs and inspire and teach others to work in under-resourced communities. Outside of medicine, she enjoys playing ultimate frisbee, casual vegetable gardening, and backpacking.