Debbie is a first-year medical student at UCSF. She grew up in Englewood, New Jersey and graduated from The University of Maryland, College Park with a double degree in Biological Sciences and Spanish. Her research and clinical interests center community outreach and advocacy as well as local and global health in the context of non-communicable diseases. Through the ESP, Debbie seeks to expand her understanding of how environmental exposures disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities.

Aditya is a medical student in the UCSF SJV PRIME program. He grew up in Fresno, CA and went to UC Berkeley where he studied Nutritional Sciences: Physiology and Metabolism. Growing up in the Central Valley, he observed social determinants that impacted his community shaping his research in college around migrant farmworker health, community health workers, toxicology, and quality improvement. He also worked on analyzing the effects of the Richmond Refinery and PM 2.5 on adverse COVID-19 outcomes. He's excited about leveraging knowledge from community members and ESP peers to advocate for better environmental health.

Gabriela is a rising 4th year medical student at UCSF with interests in integrative medicine and environmental health. She is currently working on research projects to understand how interpersonal trauma changes epigenetic age, whether yoga can serve as a monotherapy for depression, and how an Ayurvedic approach can be implemented to treat breast cancer survivors with a reduced quality of life. This summer, she will begin a gap year to do integrative oncology research at the Osher Center for Integrative Health and will complete the EaRTH Center's Environmental Scholars Program. Her focus during the program will be to explore the effects of unhealthy air quality indices from Bay Area wildfires in 2020 on reproductive health and IVF outcomes, and to uncover disparities in these effects. After her gap year, she plans to apply to combined internal medicine-psychiatry residencies. She hopes to become a clinician-researcher, and to combine her interests in disparities research and integrative medicine to design clinics that can deliver integrative care affordably and at scale.

Sorvena is a second-year medical student at UCSF. She is originally from Boston, Massachusetts. She obtained her BS in Public Health from University of Massachusetts Amherst where she first became interested in addressing the social determinants of health and their impacts on the health and wellness of Black communities. Her interest was driven by her service trip to Haiti where her family is from, to which she learned of the numerous environmental pollutants poisoning her community. She hopes to continue to work on eradicating health disparities of Black individuals locally and eventually globally. What she is most excited about ESP is connecting and collaborating with community members. 

Hannah is a medical student at the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program and a UCSF PRIME-US scholar. She grew up in San Diego, California and graduated from UCLA with a degree in Human Biology and Society, and a concentration in Medicine and Public Health. Her research interests include how climate change affects cardiovascular disease, water-/vector-borne illnesses, and nutrition as well as exploring if and how microplastics affect health. Hannah is excited to be a part of the ESP to gain more experience working on environmental health initiatives as well as working with community leaders to help eliminate the vast health disparities that exist within our society. In her free time, Hannah enjoys dancing, hiking, baking, crocheting, and doing yoga!

Valerie is a first-year medical student at UCSF. Her undergraduate studies in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology inspired a love for the natural world and sparked an interest in environmental issues. After graduation, she spent several years doing conservation work on public lands in Utah and doing research on coral bleaching in Hawai'i. These experiences helped to elucidate the intimate connections between human health/society and the environment. Through the ESP, she seeks to combine her interests in protecting the health of marginalized communities along with advocating for rapid decarbonization and environmental protection. Her interests include investigating the health impacts of climate change in poor and vulnerable communities and climate change fueled food insecurity. In her free time, she loves reading, photography, trail running, surfing, and backpacking.

Lizbeth is a Family Health Nurse Practitioner candidate at UCSF’s School of Nursing. She received a B.S in Nutritional Science: Physiology and Metabolism from UC Berkeley. Liz has over six years of experience in reproductive health, community outreach and education. Her interests include learning more about how environmental exposures disproportionately impact unstably housed families in San Francisco and how to build effective screening tools for clinical application in identifying these exposures.

AC is a first-year medical student at the UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint Medical Program. A native New Yorker, she graduated from Cornell University in 2017 and subsequently worked as a case manager and Spanish language interpreter at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Immigrant Health & Cancer Disparities Service. Her research interests lie in the community health benefits associated with federal and local renewable energy transitions. She plans to focus her time with the Environmental Scholars Program examining the impact of fossil fuel extraction on reproductive health in rural communities. She will be working with faculty in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology this summer to investigate the relationship between wildfire smoke exposure and adverse birth outcomes. In her free time, she loves playing basketball and the ukulele, DJing, and fantasizing about adopting a dog.

Olivia is a first-year medical student who grew up in Venice, California and went to Swarthmore College where she studied neuroscience. She initially got interested in environmental health and climate change through her work in Tanzania as the founder of a nonprofit organization raising money for a public primary school. There she learned how poor water quality was negatively impacting the communities’ health and that the mitigation strategy of rainwater harvesting to provide clean water was negatively impacted by climate change as the community experienced increasing drought. She's excited to cultivate skills to address environmental determinants of health that are exacerbated by climate change.

Madeline is a first-year medical student at UCSF. She's from Santa Barbara, CA but traveled to North Carolina to attend Duke University, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Biology, Bachelor of Arts in French, and a minor in Chemistry. She (promptly) returned to California to work for 2 years as a patient advocate and clinical researcher at the UCSF Breast Care Center, where she studied personalized breast cancer screening regimens. Madeline's love of all things outdoors is what sparked her interest in environmental health, sustainability, and climate health research. When she's not bothering her friends about reducing their plastic usage, you can probably find her cycling up Mt. Tam, backpacking in Pt Reyes, or swimming in the bay!