Meet Our Students

David Elkin, MD

David Elkin is excited to join the incoming class of MSL students at UC Hastings! He is a psychiatrist working at San Francisco General Hospital on the Consultation-Liaison Service and Psychiatric Emergency Services at San Francisco General Hospital while also serving as a member of the faculty at UCSF. He co-coordinates medical student education for the department, including teaching core didactics and a weekly humanities seminar focused on professionalism and ethics. He also directs the physician wellness committee and is a very active member of the hospital ethics committee. Originally from the East Coast, David lives in Oakland with his family, including his wife, two teenagers, and a small menagerie of border collies as well as a cat. In his off time, David enjoys discussing books and movies, and hiking.

Jonathan Fortman

Jonathan is an Oakland CA native. He received his bachelors of Science degree in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics with a minor in political science at University of California, Los Angeles in 2006. Soon after he accepted a position as a clinical research coordinator at San Francisco General Hospital for the Department of Emergency Medicine at University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. He has worked with many UCSF faculty members on issues within emergency and critical care medicine as it relates to the medically underserved populations of city and county of San Francisco. His contributions have earned him authorship in several medical journals such as Critical Care Medicine and Journal of Trauma.

While he hopes to learn more about the legal side of research he hopes that ultimately he develops a better understanding of the law so he is able to work within it as a means for the research to have its intended impact. He was able to see this when he was sixteen years old. He conducted a project where he examined the levels of lead in the parks of Oakland, California. With the assistance of an environmental firm located in Hayward CA he found that two of the sites tested contained extremely high levels of lead. After submitting these findings to local city officials the city decided to investigate all parks for lead contamination and remove any objects that contained high toxic levels. The reason why it was successful is because before starting the project he had an understanding of both state and federal law concerning environmental health and the necessary steps when an individual violates this law.

He hopes that by having the opportunity at UC Hastings School of Law will allow him to have similar projects such as the one that he completed when he was sixteen years old to have the same if not greater effect both in research and in medicine.

Chieh-Wen Ed Hsu, PhD, MPH

C. Ed Hsu (HSU pronounced 'she') was an Associate Professor of the University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics (SBMI) and School of Public Health (SPH) specialized in Public Health Informatics. Hsu coordinated UT Houston MPH/PhD, MPH/MS dual-degree programs and a joint graduate certificate program in Public Health Informatics co-offered by UT SBMI and SPH. Hsu is adjunct professor with three schools of the University System of Maryland. Formerly he served on the faculty of University of Maryland and University of North Texas Health Science Center. Hsu served on federal, national non-for-profit and state advisory committees and study sections to advise health programs and policy developments. His research focused on applying informatics solutions, including spatial and temporal methods, geographic information systems, epidemiology and qualitative techniques in the improvement of health disparities, minority health, and public health preparedness and responses. Hsu completed several publicly and privately funded research programs, and co-authored more than 35 peer-reviewed research papers on the use of informatics methods in reducing health disparities, and enhancing public health preparedness and response in internationally and nationally circulated journals. Hsu is a regular contributor / commentator to national and regional media on public health informatics issues. He is an alumnus of the University of Texas where he was trained in health management and policy, health informatics, and health services research. He completed undergraduate training from Medical College of Fujen Catholic University in Taipei, Taiwan. Before attending college he was enlisted and served as a drill sergeant (cpl, artillery specialty). Being a former student veteran and the first generation in his family to go to college he has been committed, for the past 20 years, to working with adult learners, non-traditional students, students in uniformed service and veterans, and those from underserved communities who are motivated to improve their life chances through completion of higher education. In addition to having 11 years of academic career serving on the faculty of graduate schools, Hsu earned policy experiences serving as a congressional staffer, and gained disability policy experience serving as staff for the International Commission for the Blind for visually-impaired community.

Raji Koppolu, RN, BSN, MS, CPNP

Raji Koppolu is a pediatric nurse practitioner (PNP) for the Pediatric General Surgery service at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. In this role, she provides both inpatient and outpatient care to infants, children, and adolescents with a variety of surgical conditions. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Tufts University in 2000. She completed her bachelor of nursing degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in 2002 and earned her Master of Science degree to become a PNP at the University of California, San Francisco in 2004. She started working as a critical care nurse in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit at Lucile Packard and then as a PNP with the Pediatric Cardiology service providing care to children born with congenital heart disease. She currently serves on the board of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP) and is a member of the American Pediatric Surgical Nurses Association (APSNA). She is board certified as a PNP in both primary and acute care through the Pediatric Nursing Certification Board. She is also volunteer faculty at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. Her interest in the MSL program at UC Hastings is driven by the goal to analyze the breadth of legal implications of healthcare delivery, and in the process, enhance the public’s understanding of nurse practitioners’ role in this regard. She hopes to build on her clinical practice to better understand the development and implementation of laws which protect and support our most vulnerable patients and families. In turn, she hopes to continue to advocate for children and families by being better versed in health policy arena.

Cecilia Lipp, MA

Cecilia Lipp is the Program Manager for Survivors International at the UCSF Trauma Recovery Center, which provides services for survivors of torture and gender-based violence who have fled persecution in their homelands. Cecilia's work in international human rights has centered around issues related to gender and health. She has worked over the years with Amnesty International USA, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, and Survivors International. Cecilia completed her BA at UC Berkeley in the Interdisciplinary Studies Field Major, an individualized cross disciplinary research major, where she focused on "Multicultural Community". She completed her MA at the California Institute of Integral Studies in Philosophy and Theology with an emphasis on Women's Spirituality. Relevant professional training includes "Intensive Course on Health and Human Rights" (Harvard and BU Schools of Public Health) and "Making Governance Gender Responsive" (CAPWIP).

Raised in San Francisco, her passion for the international realization of human rights is paralleled only by a deep commitment to strengthening our community here in SF. Her current and past volunteer roles have varied widely: from former Co-President of the Board of Directors SF-USNC for UN Women to film series organizer to volunteer birth attendant for foster youth mothers. Her goal in service, however, is always the same: to empower individuals and communities to understand, embrace and defend their rights. Similarly, her participation in the MSL program at UC Hastings is in the hopes that a deepened understanding of law will improve her ability to positively impact the realization of gender-related and health-related rights. She aspires to improve upon the standards of excellence for inter-disciplinary and inter-agency collaborations towards those aims. Cecilia is Japanese-American, and speaks French, Spanish and some Japanese. She and her family all live, work, volunteer and play in SF's sunny Mission district.

John M. Luce, MD

John Luce was born and raised in San Francisco. He graduated from Cate School in Carpinteria, CA and Stanford University. He worked as a political campaign press secretary and a magazine writer and editor after college. He then attended the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine (UCSF). After postgraduate training at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver and the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, he joined the faculty at UCSF, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Clinical Medicine and Anesthesia.

Dr. Luce is a member of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). His research interests include biomedical ethics and treatment of the acute respiratory distress syndrome. He has authored or edited nine medical books and over 200 medical articles, editorials, and book chapters.

Dr. Luce is a former Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the Hamlin School, a former Vice-President of the Board of Trustees of Cate School, and a former President of the California Tennis Club. He is currently a Trustee of Cate School and a Director of the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Judith, also a Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and their two children, Caroline and Michael. He is a member of the California Tennis Club and the Bohemian Club, both in San Francisco. His recreational activities include reading, writing, running, tennis, and skiing.

Robert H. Lustig, MD

Robert H. Lustig is Professor of Pediatrics, in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Lustig is a neuroendocrinologist, with basic and clinical training relative to hypothalamic development, anatomy, and function. Dr. Lustig’s research focuses on the regulation of energy balance by the central nervous system. He is currently investigating the contribution of nutritional, neural, hormonal, and genetic influences in the expression of the current obesity epidemic both in children and adults. Dr. Lustig graduated from MIT in 1976, and received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. He completed his pediatric residency at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in 1983 and his clinical fellowship at UCSF in 1984. From there, he spent six years as a research associate in neuroendocrinology at The Rockefeller University. Dr. Lustig is the past Chairman of the Ad hoc Obesity Task Force of the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, a current member of the Obesity Task Force of The Endocrine Society, a member of the Steering Committee of the International Endocrine Alliance to Combat Obesity and of the Culinary Institute of America, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Heart Association of the Bay Area. He is the author of many articles, chapters, and reviews on childhood obesity, including the recent volume “Obesity before birth”. He is the author of the forthcoming book, “Fat Chance: beating the odds against sugar, processed food, obesity, and disease”.

Megan Miller

Megan Miller is a Bay Area native and Licensed Mental Health Counselor in the state of New Mexico who recognizes an urgent need for clinicians to learn more about mental health care law. Perhaps her most pressing motivation for legal training is to understand the complex and mysterious world of health care insurance. Daily, insurance companies make decisions regarding what they will and will not cover. We have all experienced or heard tales of insurance companies denying a seemingly necessary service. And while many of us would have the wherewithal to pursue a just end, the pursuit can exhaust even the best of us. We are the lucky ones. Having worked primarily with dual-diagnosis/co-occurring clients, Megan knows that many clients are simply incapable of effectively arguing for their care when they most need it.

It is imperative that clinicians understand how to advocate for their clients. Yet in Megan’s experience, clinicians may be responsible for requesting coverage from insurance companies and have little or no training in that area. While we learn on the job, clients suffer. While she would love to bring about quality affordable healthcare for all, her shorter term goals are simply to help empower clinicians with the knowledge they need to advocate effectively for their clients. Although work experience has gotten her part of the way, it can only go so far. Questions remain around how health insurance actually works, when clients can be legitimately denied, how the evidenced based practice movement is impacting coverage decisions, and how we can make mental health care a higher priority in this country. The MSL program at Hastings is part of her journey to becoming a health care advocate.

Stanton Gene Kawaihinano Otero, MSW

Stanton G.k. Otero is a graduate of the University of Washington where he earned his BA in Social Welfare (with a minor in Women's Studies), and his MSW in clinical-contextual social work practice. Stanton hails from the state of Hawai'i. His interest for pursuing legal studies at UC Hastings, is to explore and develop, new modalities of practice informed academic research with the intersection of the criminal justice system and field of mental health. He is looking to explore and develop new ways and means to produce useful data based on realistic objective measures to optimally address micro, mezzo, and macro issues of concern from the clinical perspective, the societal and economic perspective, the criminal justice perspective, and the civil rights perspective.

Stanton professional clinical background includes extensive graduate experience conducting research and outreach program revisions centering on health access for individuals who suffer from severe mental illness as well as substance dependency and chronic homelessness.

Stanton is a lifelong surfer and skateboarder. Since relocating to California, he has grown to appreciate the wide variety of surfing conditions in both Southern and Northern California, and is working on expanding the number of surfboards he currently has to take advantage of the wide variety of surf conditions that NorCal and SoCal present. He has a family, a wife and daughter and two dogs and four birds of whom currently reside in Los Angeles. He misses them very much.

Kelly K. Park, MD

Dr. Kelly K. Park, M.D. graduated from the accelerated Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine (B.S. /M.D.) program at the Northeast Ohio Medical University, where she also earned her Certificate in Bioethics. She completed her internship in Internal Medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan and subsequently became Clinical Research and Phototherapy Fellow at the Department of Dermatology of the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Park has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles that have been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Archives of Dermatology, British Journal of Dermatology, and the British Medical Journal, among others. She is the lead editor and contributor for the book, Vitiligo: Management and Therapy (http://www.intechopen.com/books/vitiligo-management-and-therapy). She also serves as a Consultant for Encore Health Resources.

Shirley I. Stiver, MD PhD

Shirley Stiver is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery at UCSF. She is Board Certified in neurosurgery in both Canada and the United States. Dr. Stiver did her undergraduate and PhD studies, medical school, and neurosurgery residency training at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. She subsequently moved to Harvard Medical School, Boston and completed a fellowship in cerebrovascular neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and research studies in blood vessel development at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In 2005, Dr. Stiver joined the Department of Neurological Surgery at UCSF and became a member of the clinical staff of San Francisco General Hospital. Her clinical subspecialty interests include the care of patients with traumatic brain and spinal cord injury and those with cerebral blood vessel abnormalities. Dr. Stiver’s laboratory research includes the study of blood vessels in brain injury processes, and her clinical research is focused on surgical complications and the costs of care in traumatic brain injury.

Lauren Strelitz

Lauren Strelitz is a southern California native who graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a BA in Psychology with Honors. After moving to the east coast and working in the field of child psychology for several years an interest in providing comprehensive care to patients and in exploring the physiological basis of mental illness compelled her to pursue a degree in medicine. She is currently taking time off of being a 4th year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco in order to take advantage of the opportunity to learn about law and advocacy in this unique MSL program.

Lauren’s entry into medical school coincided with the political debate to reform health policy. As reproductive health emerged as a pawn in this debate she became involved in advocacy for reproductive justice and co-organized an interdisciplinary class on the topic. Instead of a traditional third year in medical school she had the opportunity to do the Model SFGH program allowing her to spend the majority of the last year learning about the practice of clinical medicine in service to vulnerable and underserved patients. She feels that the MSL will inform her future clinical practice and enable not only to be an advocate for individual patients and their families but for the reproductive health rights of teenagers throughout the United States.

In her free time she enjoys catching up with friends, knitting (usually bizarre creatures but occasionally something useful like mittens), and exploring nature and the city.