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SAPHA Board Members 2004-2006
Reena Antony, MPH
Bhaswati Bhattacharya, MD, MPH, MA
Sujana Bhattacharya
Linda Groetzinger, MA
Salma Shariff-Marco, MPH
Arnab Mukherjea, MPH
Shilpa Patel MPH
Iram Qidwai, MD
Anuradha Sharma,
MA
Naseem Zojwalla, MD
Reena Antony,
MPH
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Reena Antony currently works for the City of Philadelphia Department
of Public Health as the Tobacco Control Program Analyst. She has experience
in advocacy, program adminstration/management, and health education.
Reena serves on several committees including the American Cancer Society
Philadelphia’s Asian Advisory Council and The Pennsylvania Tobacco-Related
Health Disparities Strategic Planning Committee. She is also actively
involved with Philadelphia’s South Asian Cardiovascular Risk Reduction
Program and the South Asian Intimate Partner Violence program. Though
early in her career as a public health practitioner, Reena has a great
interest in community mobilization, intimate partner violence, and intergenerational
health among the South Asian communities. Reena has a Master of Public
Health degree from MCP Hahnemann University (Drexel University). She
has been involved with SAPHA since 2003.
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Bhaswati Bhattacharya,
MD, MPH, MA
New York, New York
Trained as a scientist, international public health specialist, and
primary care clinician before gaining skills as a holistic healer, Dr.
Bhaswati Bhattacharya practices and teaches holistic medicine in New
York City.
As an attending physician at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, she serves
both as the Director of Research in the Department of Medicine and as
Director of the new Division of Complementary & Alternative Medicines,
where she provides care to underserved patients and teaches holistic
medicine at the Women’s Health Center. Her work was featured in
a documentary called Healers: Journey into Ayurveda, in 2003 on The
Discovery Channel.
She is an Assistant Professor of Family Practice in Medicine at Weill
Medical College of Cornell University and currently teaches second-year
medical students. Bhaswati is one of the contributing experts to Dorland’s
Medical Dictionary. She served as founding co-Principal Investigator
of an NIH grant that successfully created a curriculum integrating holistic
medicine into medical schools in the US. She is a co-author of the SAPHA
Brown Paper and has been involved with SAPHA since its inception.
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Sujana Bhattarharyya
Palo Alto, California
Sujana Bhattacharyya is a Researcher with the Department of Psychiatry
at Stanford Medical School, currently examining alternative treatments
for depression in pregnant women. Her interests lie in holistic and
international public health. She has also worked at UCSF’s Department
of Family and Community Medicine and Center of Excellence in Women’s
Health, and thus her research has focused primarily on women’s
issues such as infertility, reproductive health, and mental health.
In addition, Ms. Bhattacharyya has been a Health Specialist/Counselor
for a San Francisco non-profit women’s health clinic, an Assistant
Director for a Bay Area educational-start up working with API youth,
and an Advocate for several Domestic Violence prevention organizations.
Her passion for South Asian issues blossomed in her early college years
at Stanford, where she was a Founding Member of Saheli, the university’s
first South Asian women’s coalition. Ms. Bhattacharyya’s
undergraduate work at Stanford University was a dual focus in Biological
Sciences and History. Ms. Bhattacharyya joined SAPHA in 2001 and serves
on the local SAPHA-SF planning committee.
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Linda Groetzinger
MA
Chicago, Illinois
Linda L. Groetzinger has been active with the SAPHA community since
1999 and authored the chapter on HIV/AIDS in the Brown Paper. She graduates
with a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois School of Public Health
in 2004; her thesis title was “Culturally contextualizing HIV
risk among men from South Asia.” With her husband Norman, she
worked two years at a rural primary health center in central India with
the U.S. Peace Corps (1966-68), and has returned for personal and professional
visits. For twenty years she worked in medical social work in Chicago,
focusing on maternal and child health, child abuse and neglect, intimate
partner violence, sexual assault, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse. She was
the director of Social Work at Mile Square Health Center in Chicago,
and she taught at Jane Addams College of Social Work. Recently, she
has provided workshops on Sexuality and South Asians, and on Stigma
and HIV/AIDS among Asian Americans. She is particularly interested in
the preparation of health professions students for practice in a global
and diverse society, integrating her background in community organizing
and individual social work. Her recreational activities include camping,
travel, swimming and reading, especially books about the South Asian
diaspora. Dr. Groetzinger received her BA from Swarthmore College (German
Literature) and her MA from the University of Chicago (Social Work).
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Salma Shariff-Marco, MPH
Riverdale, MD
Salma Shariff-Marco is a second-year doctoral student in Social and
Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Health Policy & Management
at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.
Salma's research interests include cancer health disparities and
understanding the roles of race/ethnicity, class and culture on health
behaviors and outcomes. Prior to entering the doctoral program, Salma
worked at the American Cancer Society, Eastern Division in the areas
of community outreach, breast cancer and colon cancer control as well
as nutrition and physical activity. In her early years at the American
Cancer Society, Salma was a Community Fellow funded by the Open Society
Institute to establish the South Asian Outreach Project in Queens, NY.
The aim of this project was to provide culturally appopriate outreach,
education and services to the South Asian community. Salma has also
helped conduct cultural competency trainings for clinicians to increase
provider-patient communication and reduce breast cancer screening barriers
for Asian American women. Salma has been a member of the SAPHA list-serve
since its inception and is looking forward to serving
as a board member.
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Arnab Mukherjea,
MPH
Berkeley, California
Arnab Mukherjea became a member of SAPHA in 2000 and currently serves
as the co-chair on the SAPHA Executive Board of Directors.
He is also the coordinator of the local SAPHA group in the San Francisco
Bay Area. Arnab Mukherjea's primary interests include looking at how
cultural behaviors, knowledge, values and attitudes play a direct role
in disparate health outcomes among South Asian populations in the United
States. In addition to his commitment to the South Asian community in
health and education, he is also a staunch advocate of cultural competency
and diversity in health care education, practice, and delivery. Arnab
is the program director of Health Careers Connection, a non-profit organization
dedicated to inspiring undergraduates to choose careers in health care
and public health through practical exposure and support. He is also
a post-graduate researcher and instructor at the School of Public Health
at the University of California, Berkeley. Arnab received his MPH in
Health and Social Behavior in 2002 from UC Berkeley with a specialty
in multicultural health.
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Shilpa Patel MPH
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Shilpa Patel is a Project Manager with the Division of Infectious Disease
at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Ms. Patel's has also
worked as a Program Coordinator/Analyst with the Asian and Pacific Islander
American Health Forum, a national advocacy and policy in San Francisco.
She is committed to health issues affecting API communities and authored
the substance abuse chapter of the Brown Paper. Her research interests
include HIV and substance abuse among communities of color. Ms. Patel
holds a Masters degree in Public Health, Health Services Administration
from Boston University.
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Iram Qidwai, MD
San Francisco, CA
Dr. Iram Qidwai is a gynecologist and obstetrician in the Bay Area.
Her areas of interest include reproductive health issues and international
health issues, specifically HIV/infectious disease, domestic violence,
female circumcision, honor killings, and fistula work. Locally in the
US, she has a strong commitment to and has worked with local groups
on issues of cultural competency, partner violence, the health needs
specific to Muslim women, and access to healthcare for the underserved
API community.
Iram is currently completing her third of four years in obstetrics and
gynecology training at UCSF. She received her MD from Stanford University
in 2001. After completing residency, she plans on practicing in the
Bay Area, as well as completing further studies in public health.
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Anuradha Sharma, MA
Rockville, Maryland
Anuradha Sharma is an ASPH Intern at the Health Resources and Services
Administration (HRSA,) Office of Policy and Program Development in the
HIV/AIDS Bureau. She is also completing her MPH in Sociomedical Sciences,
with a concentration on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, at
Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to returning
to graduate school in public health, Anuradha was active for 10 years
in the movements to end domestic and sexual violence against women and
girls, with a focus on the API and South Asian communities. She is a
co-Founder and Steering Committee member of the national Asian and Pacific
Islander Institute on Domestic Violence (APIIDV) based in San Francisco,
and the former Executive Director of Sakhi for South Asian women in
NYC and ASHA, Inc. in the metro DC area. In addition to her public health
background, Anuradha has a MA in Art History, with a focus on South
Asia, from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in History of Art
from Bryn Mawr College. She is interested in how individual creative
expression and social support networks, within the South Asian context,
may help in healing from disease and illness, as well as injury and
abuse. Anuradha has been a member of the SAPHA community since January
2000. She currently serves as Treasurer.
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Naseem Zojwalla,
MD
New York, NY
Naseem Zojwalla is currently a clinical fellow in Hematology/Oncology
at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. She has a research background
in cancer screening and prevention and experience in public health in
the South Asian community through participation in a National Cancer
Institute project entitled AANCART, the Asian American Network for Cancer
Awareness, Research, and Training. The New York site of AANCART focuses
on access to health care and cancer screening in the Korean and South
Asian communities. She is co-author of the cancer chapter in the Brown
Paper and has also volunteered for the women’s health initiative
branch of SAKHI, a domestic violence group for South Asian women in
New York City. She has been a member of SAPHA since 2001.
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SAPHA Board 2002-2004 Bios
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