Building Pathways for Underrepresented Minorities:
A Pediatric Career Panel
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Wed., Oct. 28th | 6:30 - 8:00 pm ET |
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The NYS AAP - Chapter 3 Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
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OVERVIEW:
The NYS AAP - Chapter 3 Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion invites URM pediatric trainees to join us on Oct . 28th from 6:30 - 8:00 pm for a panel of four leading pediatricians whose careers highlight alternatives for academic, private, and the public sector. Space is limited for this virtual event. Login info will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
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Joanne Fernandez-Booker, MD, MPH, FAAP is originally from Brooklyn, NY. She attended the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education at The City College of New York, a BS/MD program. She earned her medical degree from New York Medical College (NYMC) and her Master of Public Health from the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). She completed her residency training at Westchester Medical Center - Maria Fareri Children's Hospital.
Dr. Fernandez-Booker has a long-standing passion and commitment to community health, engagement and empowerment. She has assumed a number of leadership and community organizing roles. As an undergraduate, she hosted discussions on colonoscopy screenings in Harlem and engaged the Latinx community at neighborhood salons on the importance of breast cancer screening. As a Health Literacy Fellow at the Aguilar Center for Reading and Writing in East Harlem, she taught health literacy skills to clients with first to sixth grade reading levels in order to reduce barriers to care. She organized the 2011 New York Life Symposium hosted by the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies titled "Civic Engagement in the Era of New Media" with the hope of encouraging and enlightening local organizations from the Harlem community to use the powerful tools of social media to promote their mission.
As a medical student, Dr. Fernandez-Booker recognized the importance of successful representation of underrepresented minorities in the health care professions. She served as a workshop coordinator for the National Dominican Student Conference and created a workshop for pre medical students titled, "The Road Less Traveled: Tips and Strategies to Enter Healthcare Professions". The workshop highlighted the underrepresentation of Dominicans in healthcare professions and the impact on vulnerable communities and patients. She co-founded the Sophie Davis chapter for Latino Medical Student Association (LMSA) to continue the advocacy and outreach efforts. During her tenure at Yale School of Public Health, she was featured in a video for Yale School of Public Health's Diversity and Inclusion Committee discussing her time and experience at Yale. During her residency training, Dr. Fernandez-Booker served as the Education Chair for her program's diversity initiative. She was also one of the founding members of her pediatric residency wellness committee.
Dr. Fernandez-Booker is also interested in childhood obesity. As part of her Masters of Public Health training, she assisted in creating a health promotion intervention and a mixed-media campaign to combat childhood obesity. The initiative provided outreach to pregnant women in Sharkey County, MS, which has an obesity prevalence of 75% and the highest pregnancy rate in the state. She joined the NYS AAP Chapter 3 Committee on Nutrition & Obesity in 2016 and focused her efforts on increasing resident involvement in the community. She was co-creator of the “MY C.H.O.I.C.E.: Choosing Healthy Options in Childhood Experience” campaign. The goal of the resident-led initiative was to encourage and empower adolescents in an underprivileged community with high rates of obesity to make healthy life choices. In two years, the program was able to create a community partnership with a local elementary school, secured $5750 in grant funding and successfully implemented a 6 week-long curriculum. The program continues today and is run by the current residents during their community pediatrics rotation. The results of the initiative were presented at the 2018 AAP National Conference and the meeting abstract was published in Pediatrics.
Now as an early career physician, Dr. Fernandez-Booker continues her work as a member of NYS AAP Chapter 3 Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Dr. Fernandez-Booker has expanded her current interests to include Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and asthma care management. She is a dedicated field physician in the South Bronx for the DOH Office of School Health's Vulnerable Populations Program. In her free time, she enjoys running, spending time with her 20-month-old daughter and husband, learning to play the piano at the local community college and if any energy remains, cooking.
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Danielle Laraque-Arena, MD, FAAP joined The New York Academy of Medicine as a Senior Scholar-in-Residence in 2019. She is President and Professor Emerita of SUNY Upstate Medical University, Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, Columbia University and Associate Director of the Injury Free Coalition for Kids, a national program modelled after the Nova award-winning program, the Harlem Hospital Injury Prevention program.
Dr. Laraque-Arena completed her medical studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, earning a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. She received full academic support as the Roy Markus Scholar (1977-1981) for her medical studies. Her internship and residency were completed at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania where she was also a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in General Academic Pediatrics (1984-86). Her fellowship research focused on lead poisoning and calcium status in black pre-schoolers. Driven to address the health needs of disadvantaged communities, she accepted her first academic position at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University and Harlem Hospital Center where she rose to the rank of Associate Professor (1986-2000). She then accepted a position as Chief of the Division of General Pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. During that period (2000-2010) she was promoted to the position of tenured Professor of Pediatrics and received the endowed chair as the Debra & Leon Black Professor of Pediatrics and became Vice-Chair for Public Policy and Advocacy. Subsequently, she accepted the position of Chair and Vice President of the Maimonides Children’s Hospital of Brooklyn—the first woman and first African-American to hold that position in the 100 year history of the hospital, and was Professor of Pediatrics (Investigator Track, 2010-2015) at Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY. She was appointed the seventh President of SUNY Upstate Medical University on September 10, 2015 and began her tenure in January,2016, and held the positions of tenured Professor of Pediatrics with additional appointments in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Public Health & Preventive Medicine. She completed her tenure at the university in 2019. She was the first woman and the first African-American to hold the position of President at SUNY, Upstate Medical University.
Dr. Laraque-Arena is board certified in Pediatrics and in Child Abuse Pediatrics. Her scholarly work has focused on adolescent health behaviors, injury prevention, especially related to penetrating trauma, mental health integration in primary care settings, and global child health and has resulted in over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, multiple chapters and media resource and educational materials. She was continuously funded for 30 years through foundation, state and federal grants. Most recently she has edited the book Principles of Global Child Health: Education and Research. She has mentored hundreds of students and faculty and trained dozens of fellows in general pediatrics and child abuse pediatrics. She is the Past President of Academic Pediatric Association (2009-2010), former member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Board of Directors (2012-2016). She was elected as a Fellow of The New York Academy of Medicine (2000) and the American Pediatric Society (2005), served as member to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies Committee on Integrating Primary Care and Public Health (2011) and Co-Chaired the NYS Governor’s Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Disparate Racial Outcomes (2018-2019). She currently serves on the board of Directors of Prevent Child Abuse America and the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation.
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George Ofori-Amanfo, MD, FACC is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Chief of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine for the Mount Sinai Health System. Dr. Ofori, as he is affectionately called by his peers, is board certified in Pediatrics, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, and Pediatric Cardiology. Motivated by a passion and dedication to care of critically ill children and children with complex heart diseases he was one of the first double boarded cardiac critical care doctors.
Dr. Ofori began his career journey in his home country Ghana, where he received his MBChB degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. He spent the early part of his career as a physician working at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) initially as a House Officer and then as a pediatric resident. Dr. Ofori traveled to the US to pursue advanced training. After completing pediatric residency at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York (CHONY), Columbia University, he proceeded to pursue successive fellowships in pediatric cardiology and pediatric critical care medicine. Dr. Ofori was on staff for several years at CHONY and was recruited to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he worked as cardiac intensivist for a few years. He went on to assume the position of Director of Cardiovascular Inpatient Operations and Associate Medical Director Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care at Duke University Medical Center. After five years of working at Duke Children’s Hospital, developing cardiac critical care and inpatient cardiovascular services, Dr. Ofori was recruited back to New York as Division Chief of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center where he worked prior to assuming his current role at Mount Sinai Health System.
Dr. Ofori’s clinical focus is the pre- and post-operative management of critically ill newborns and children with complex congenital heart diseases, cardiac arrest and resuscitation, and management of patients requiring mechanical circulatory support devices such as ventricular assist devices, total artificial heart and cardiopulmonary support utilizing Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO). Dr. Ofori is a master clinician and educator in the field of pediatric critical care and cardiac critical care medicine and has trained several fellows and provided mentorship and career guidance to several trainees and junior faculty.
Dr. Ofori’s research interest is in cardiac arrest and resuscitation. He has authored several peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, editorials and commentaries. He has also been featured in the lay press, especially in his work with COVID-19 disease in children. Dr. Ofori is the recipient of several teaching awards and most recently received the 2019 Care for Kids Distinguished Service to Children award.
Dr. Ofori has dedicated his career to the care of children here and abroad. He has been part of multiple medical missions dedicated to care of children in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Kenya and in his native country, Ghana. In the last several years he has focused on teaching and developing critical care services in Ghana. He has partnered with KATH where he trained to develop a high-functioning pediatric intensive care unit. His work with sick children continues to ring far and wide impacting on the lives of children and their families.
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Prantik Saha, MD MPH, FAAP has been practicing general pediatrics for more than 20 years in a variety of different contexts, including inpatient and outpatient, rural and urban. He is currently at a thriving primary care practice in New York City called Manhattan Valley Pediatrics. He sees a variety of patients ranging from newborns to 21 years of age. His particular areas of interest include child development, adolescent mental health and children with special medical needs.
Approximately 50% of his time is devoted to work as an educator and medical school professor at the Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. His specific areas of education there include: precepting medical students in narrative medicine and communication skills practice with standardized patients (SP), directing a block of curriculum devoted to public health promotion and motivational interviewing, and preparing students for the Step 2 Clinical Skills exam through SP simulation and feedback.
He is also a member of MINT (Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers) and teaches motivational interviewing for medical students, nutrition students, health care providers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center as well as at numerous other institutions in New York through the Columbia HIV Mental Health Training Project. His particular interests in medical education are communication skills (especially with behavior change), understanding the nature of the patient/physician relationship, and the crucial importance for doctors and future doctors to not only understand but get involved in matters of public health, including socioeconomics, environmental health, and health systems and policy.
He is a member of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and conducts medical and psychological evaluations for asylum applicants through the Columbia Human Rights Initiative Asylum Clinic. He is also a member of the Physicians for a National Healthcare Program (PNHP), and a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
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