Crossing Silk Roads: Exploring Intersections and Connections of AAPI Identity and Healthcare

Date: Saturday, October 12th, 2024

Location: Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA

2024 Region IV/IX Conference Booklet

Registration Details: Click below for more info

Registration and Tickets

We are thrilled to announce a collaboration between APAMSA Regions IV and IX for this year’s regional conference, themed “Crossing Silk Roads: Exploring Intersections and Connections of AAPI Identity and Healthcare.” This in-person event will be hosted at Emory University School of Medicine and is open to both APAMSA members and non-members. Attendees can look forward to an exciting day filled with AAPI speakers, engaging panels, interactive workshops, valuable networking opportunities, a poster session, and more!

Conference Information:

Theme: “Crossing Silk Roads: Exploring Intersections and Connections of AAPI Identity and Healthcare”

Date & Time: Saturday, October 12, 2024 | Time 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM

Location: Emory University School of Medicine | Atlanta, GA (2015 Uppergate Dr, Atlanta, GA 30307)

Schedule

Pre-Registration: 7:45 AM – 8:30 AM

Welcome: 8:30 AM – 8:45 AM

Opening Statements and Introduction: 8:45 AM – 9:00 AM

Keynote Speaker: 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM

Be The Match: 10:00 AM – 10:20 AM

Breakout Session 1: 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Lunch: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Poster Session: 1:00 PM – 1:50 PM

Breakout Session 2: 2:00 PM – 2:50 PM

Breakout Session 3: 3:00 PM – 3:50 PM

Closing Statements: 4:00 PM – 4:30 PM

Stay tuned as we reveal more speakers!

Dr. Sandra Wong, MD, MS

Sandra L. Wong, MD, MS, an accomplished surgical oncologist and health services researcher who joined Emory School of Medicine as Dean in March 2024. She also serves as the chief academic officer for Emory Healthcare.

Dr. Wong is a surgical oncologist specializing in the management of soft tissue sarcomas, melanoma and non- melanoma skin cancers. She is among the most widely recognized health services researchers in academic surgery, with an extensive record of research funding and more than 250 peer-reviewed studies to her credit. She has held leadership positions in several prominent professional organizations including the Society of Surgical Oncology, the Society of University Surgeons, and the Society of Surgical Chairs. Wong has been honored with numerous medical student and resident teaching awards.

She completed her bachelor’s degree at the University of California Berkeley. After receiving an MD from Northwestern University Medical School, she completed a surgical residency at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and a surgical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Wong spent a decade at the University of Michigan where she was an instrumental leader as a vice chair of academic affairs and an associate chief of staff. As chair of the Department of Surgery at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, she was responsible for overseeing all aspects of research, education and clinical operations. During her tenure at Dartmouth, she co-founded the federally-funded Center for Rural Health Care Delivery Science, which provides infrastructure to train junior investigators who focus on solving challenges associated with the provision of equitable health care.

Dr. Amy Chen, MD, MPH, MBA, FACS

Amy Y. Chen, MD, MPH, MBA, FACS is the Willard and Lillian Hackerman Professor and the Inaugural Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion of the Department of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at The Emory University School of Medicine.   She serves as the Director of Head and Neck Endocrine Surgery and was the Program Director for the Head and Neck Surgery Fellowship.   Her expertise is in thyroid and parathyroid surgery.  She has also served as Director of Health Services Research in the Department of Surveillance and Health Policy Research of the American Cancer Society.  She serves on the Board of the American Thyroid Association, Asian Pacific Institute on Gender Based Violence, and the Partnership for Southern Equity.

Dr. Chen has been instrumental in developing a team approach to patient care.  She developed and currently leads the multidisciplinary thyroid and head and neck tumor conferences.  Her primary focus of research is in measuring outcomes of oncology treatment as well as measuring determinants of successful outcomes of care.  Dr. Chen’s research agenda is to create a multi-disciplinary, multi-site center dedicated to health services research, outcomes, and quality of care.  Her secondary focus of research is directed toward translational research of head and neck and thyroid malignancies.  She is also an implicit bias facilitator and a diversity, equity and inclusion champion.  

Dr. Chen joined the Emory faculty in 2001 after a fellowship in Head and Neck Oncologic Surgery at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.  Prior to that fellowship she was a resident in Otolaryngology and General Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, also in Houston.

She is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology and holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Texas School of Public Health.  She also recently completed her Master of Business Administration at Goizueta Business School at Emory.   Dr. Chen has received numerous awards and honors, among them the Helen F. Krause, MD Trailblazer Award, Emory Eminent Physician Award, the Margaret Butler Award for Outstanding Mentor of Women Head and Neck Surgeons, Emory School of Medicine Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award, Top Atlanta Doctor, Gussack Memorial Award for Teaching, Percy Memorial Research Award, the Rande Lazar Health Services Research Award, the American Head and Neck Society Scholarship Award, and The Women’s Fund for Health, Education and Research Grant.  She is married and birthed two daughters.  She misses her recently deceased rescue yellow Labrador retriever.  

In January 2025, she will be moving to City of Hope Cancer Center in Newnan, GA as Chief of Surgery and Director of Thyroid Oncology.   

John William Eley, MD, MPH

​​Bill Eley is a native of Georgia who received his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry, Doctor of Medicine, and Master of Public Health from Emory University. He holds faculty appointments of Professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health. A Board-certified medical oncologist, he has practiced oncology within Emory Healthcare and at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Dr. Eley was initially appointed in the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) where he investigated disparities in cancer survival.  He has taught medical students clinical epidemiology and served on the Admissions committee at the Emory University School of Medicine (SOM).  In 2000 he became Associate Dean and Director of Admissions in School of Medicine and in 2004, he was appointed Executive Associate Dean for Medical Education and Student Affairs.  In his current role he oversees the six degree programs within the School of Medicine and the Graduate Medical Education programs and is overseeing the Medical Education Curriculum Transformation Initiative.

Dr. Eley is committed to the spread of compassion – compassion for others and self, as embodied by the Cognitive Based Compassion Training (CBCT) course developed at Emory.  He is privileged to teach CBCT within the School of Medicine and is interesting in incorporating compassion training in the field of medicine.

Dr. Reena Hemrajani, MD

Dr. Reena Hemrajani completed medical school at Florida State University and internal medicine residency, followed by chief residency at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She subsequently served as an academic hospitalist and in residency education leadership at George Washington University and VCU. In 2017, Dr. Hemrajani moved to Atlanta to be an academic hospitalist in the inaugural Hospital Medicine Program at Grady Memorial Hospital. At Emory, she has held roles as the Associate Division Director for Faculty Development in Hospital Medicine and Associate Program Director for the residency. In 2022, she stepped into the role of the Internal Medicine Residency Program Director at Emory and values her role in supporting residents to achieve their goals. In her free time, she is an avid city walker in the vibrant neighborhoods of Atlanta, enjoys trying out new local restaurants, and takes advantage of opportunities for travel.

Dr. Emily Herndon, MD

Emily Herndon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family & Preventive Medicine at Emory and currently serves as a Staff Physician at Emory Student Health. She, along with a registered dietician and chef, teaches a second-year elective on Culinary Medicine. She is a graduate of Emory School of Medicine, a past Small Group Advisor and Clerkship Director, and practicing community physician for over 20 years.  Much of her clinical experience was working at a Grady Neighborhood Center that served many immigrants and people from a wide variety of cultures. She enjoys traveling, cooking, dancing and yoga. 

Contact Information:  eherndo@emory.edu

Dr. Wei Huang, MD, PhD

Dr. Wei Huang is an Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. She received her medical degree in Shanghai, PhD in Neuroscience/Psychology at Vanderbilt University, and residency training at UNC Chapel Hill. Besides being a Board-certified physiatrist, Dr. Huang is also certified in Integrative Holistic Medicine and is a certified acupuncturist in Georgia. She is the founding physician of the first acupuncture clinic and the first integrative medicine clinic at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, and often acts as a consultant to regional medical centers about acupuncture services. She is currently co-Medical Director of Emory Acupuncture Service. Dr. Huang serves on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of PMR. Her own research and publications have been in sleep, pain, traumatic brain injury, and geriatric medicine; but her long-standing passion is to integrate the best of world’s traditional medicines with Western Medicine in clinical practice.

Dr. Jeane Khoo, DO
I am the oldest of 3 siblings with a younger sister and brother. I grew up in the cold winters of the Chicago suburbs and attended the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for undergrad. During that time, I was also in Army ROTC and commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army. Upon graduation, I attended medical school at Lincoln Memorial University – DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine in East Tennessee. While in school, I happened to meet my wonderful husband, Kevin during clinical rotations in Memphis, TN who works as a traffic engineer. After graduating medical school, I was stationed at Fort Benning in GA (now Fort Moore) and had the priviledge of wearing the uniform for 5 years. Due to the nature of training and working as a soldier, I was able to see and travel to a lot of states and cities and live a variety of experiences. Upon completing my time, I was accepted into residency at Wellstar Family Medicine in Douglasville, GA. The program provides a wealth of pathology, procedures, and ability to see and treat patients of all ages and backgrounds. I have enjoyed my time with the program and can see the trajectory of my growth. As this is my final year in residency, I am excited to take advantage of every learning opportunity before I graduate and practice independently. In my free time, she enjoys a variety of hobbies including playing intramural soccer with her husband, ultimate frisbee, working out, baking, and hanging out with her dog and cat (Loki and Leia), friends, family, and residents (also her friends).
Dr. Abhi Kole, MD, PhD

Dr. Abhi Kole received his MD from Emory and PhD in Immunology from the University of Oxford. He is a graduate of the Internal Medicine residency program at Emory and was subsequently a fellow with the HEAL Initiative (Health Equity, Action, and Leadership) through UCSF and spent two years in India with this program. He returned to Grady as a hospitalist in 2020. He also teaches the Community Learning and Social Medicine course for first-year medical students. His areas of interest are in addressing structural causes of inequity in our healthcare system. 

Contact Information: akole@emory.edu

Dr. Gerald Lee, MD

Dr. Gerald Lee, MD is an associate professor of pediatrics and medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. He is an allergist/immunologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Grady Memorial Hospital. He completed his Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in New York City and an Allergy/Immunology fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.  He is the director of the Emory allergy/immunology fellowship and the preclinical immunology thread for the medical school. His academic interests are medical education, quality improvement in allergy/immunology, and hosting the AllergyTalk podcast.  

Dr. Rebecca Sanders, MD, PhD

Dr. Sanders has served as Emory Pediatrics Residency Program Director since 2021. She works as a hospitalist for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at both the Hughes Spalding and Arthur M Blank campuses. She has a strong interest in curriculum development, particularly in improving mental health care education for pediatric residents and fellows. In her spare time she loves reading, gardening, and building Lego.

Dr. Jessica Wu, MD

Dr. Wu was born in Los Angeles, CA but moved to Houston, Texas at a young age. She then spent the next twenty-years in the Lone Star state, where she acquired her love for country music, football, and BBQ (mostly the sides!). She attended The University of Texas-Austin (Hook ‘em!) and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biochemistry with a minor in Business Administration. After doing a year of research at MD Anderson, Jessica attended The University of Texas Medical Branch – Galveston for medical school.

At this time, Jessica decided it was time to explore places outside of Texas. She left the great state of Texas and moved back to Los Angeles for her General Surgery training at USC. During her residency at USC, Jessica developed an interest in hernia surgery and bariatric surgery. Her research focused on optimizing hernia surgery and bariatric surgery outcomes at a safety-net hospital. Given such interest, Jessica is currently pursuing a MIS fellowship at Emory University with hopes of becoming a future hernia, foregut, and bariatric surgeon.

Dr. Ju Zhang, PhD

Ju Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow in bioethics at the Emory University Center for Ethics. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from The University of Texas at Austin in 2022. Her current research focuses on developing and defending a trust-oriented model of the patient-physician relationship. Her goal is to promote reasonable patient-physician trust by modifying relevant concepts such as patient autonomy, informed consent, and justified intervention in light of her model. She intends to extend her research on patient-physician trust to nonexpert-expert trust in general and to trust between a relatively disadvantaged individual/group and a relatively advantaged individual/group. She is also interested in studying trust and cooperation among communities, societies, and nations, believing that reasonable trust is key in tackling global issues such as climate change and pandemics.

Email: ju.zhang@emory.edu

Christopher Doan

Christopher Doan is a an MS4 from UTMB Galveston and has recently been recognized as a member of the GHHS and AOA. He grew up in the Dallas metroplex and attended UT Dallas for his undergraduate degree. He is currently one of the National APAMSA Hepatitis Initiative Directors and has research interests in AANHPI disaggregation of cancer data, cancer screenings, and medical humanities. Previously, he also served as a local chapter president and was one of the founding members of the Hepatitis B screening initiative with outreach to Asian immigrant fishermen working in the Galveston port.

Need help finding accommodations? Check out our Accommodations Guide!

                                                   Michael St. Entrance

                                                   Walk to Entrance

If Ubering/Lyfting: Request a ride to 100 Woodruff Circle, which will drop you off in front of the School of Medicine’s quadrangle. Walk around the left wing of the building to access the Means Drive entrance in the back of the building (see reference image above).
If driving: Access free guest parking at the Michael Street lot at 550 Houston Mill Road. Take the skybridge on the parking deck’s 3rd floor, and follow the chalk signs to navigate to the School of Medicine (and see reference image above).

APAMSA Regions 4 and 9 invite you to submit an abstract for the Regional Conference on October 12, 2024. There is no cost for submitting an abstract.

Deadline for abstract submission: September 28, 2024

Submissions are now closed. Thank you all who submitted their abstracts. If you have not bought your ticket, please do so as soon as possible.

Accepted Posters

“Novel compound heterozygous mutations in ILNEB syndrome”

  • Hannah Wu

“Kidney Utilization in the Context of a Shifting Donor Landscape”

  • Helen Jeon

“Our Approach to Vitrectomy Surgery in Diabetic Retinopathy is Changing Due to Intraoperative Fluorescein Angiography Guidance”

  • Mariam Omar

“Comparing Outcomes for Proximal Tibia Replacement in High Grade Primary Bone Sarcoma, Low Grade Primary Bone Sarcoma and Metastatic Bone Disease”

  • Linhan Ha

“Revolutionizing Mandibular Osteoblastoma Treatment: The Power of Computer-Assisted Virtual Surgical Planning”

  • Leon Liu

“Mechanisms of Action of Kavalactone on Nociceptive Pathways: A Systematic Review”

  • Daiana Takashima

“Clearance of Purinergic Molecules with Hemodialysis”

  • Zijian Tan

“Prevalence of Comorbid Conditions in Young Men Presenting with Erectile Dysfunction”

  • Troy La

“Characteristics of Men Switching Testosterone Formulations – Who, What, and Why”

  • Troy La

“Utilization of Long-Term Video EEG Monitoring in Pediatric Patients: Experience of a Large Pediatric Tertiary Care Center”

  • Phillip Sumardi

“Use of Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring (ABPM) to Predict Left Ventricular Mass Index (LVMi) in the Pediatric Population: A Single-Center Experience.”

  • Isha Patel

“Understanding Cultural Barriers and Mental Health Disparities in Treatment-Seeking Behaviors Among Asian Americans”

  • Carrie Chen

“Skin Cancer Screening and Perceptions Quality Improvement”

  • Danielle Flores

“Enhancing Alzheimer’s Dementia knowledge and utilization through trainings for healthcare professionals”

  • Winnie Chen

“Hidden Epidemic of India’s Most Marginalized: Sickle Cell Amongst Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes”

  • Supriya Jain, Esha Mohnalkar

“Sex Ed for Med”

  • Harrison Goodall

“Improving Health Literacy and Diabetes Management Adherence with Updated Novel Educational Technology”

  • Michael Xie

“Transfer of low-risk patients in emergency general surgery: Patient survey on the process of care and perceptions of safety”

  • Min Hyuk Jang

“Metabolic Biomarkers of Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections Among Post-Menopausal Women”

  • Ivy Nguyen

National Board

Amelia Huynh

Membership Co-VP
Pacific Northwest University
of Health Sciences

Paul Tominez

Membership Co-VP
University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine

James Chen

Region IX RD
University of Texas Medical Branch – John Sealy School of Medicine

Daiana Takashima

Region IV RD
Emory University School of Medicine

Jerry Liu

Region IX RD
Texas A&M School of Medicine

Yuna Seo

Region IV RD
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (North Georgia)

Francis Khuong

Region IX RD
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

Neil Vuppala

Region IV RD
Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine

Local Chapter Leadership

Brandon Lee

Emory University School of Medicine

Janet Mao

Emory University School of Medicine

Katherine Tong

Emory University School of Medicine

John Choi

Emory University School of Medicine

Hithardhi Duggireddy

Emory University School of Medicine

Max Su

Emory University School of Medicine

Margaret Lim

Emory University School of Medicine

Akshay Nair

Emory University School of Medicine

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