NPA Board of Directors

Valerie Arkoosh, MD, MPH

Valerie Arkoosh is Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology and Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.  Her primary clinical focus is Obstetric Anesthesiology and she holds a Master’s of Pubic Health degree, with a concentration in Health Policy, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Her current policy focus is on comprehensive state-based health care reform efforts and their impact on the uninsured.  Dr. Arkoosh is a former President of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology.  Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania, she was Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at Drexel University College of Medicine.

Charlie Bergstrom, MD

Charlie Bergstrom, MD is a pediatric hospitalist and director of the third year clerkship in pediatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY.  His policy interests focus around limiting corporate bias in medical decision making and expanding health care access to all people.

A. Gene Copello, MSW, PhD

Gene Copello is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for Public Policy Research and Ethics at the University of South Florida College of Medicine. He is also the Executive Director of The AIDS Institute, a national nonprofit and nonpartisan public policy research, advocacy, and education organization.  Previously, Dr. Copello served as Chief of HIV Services for the City of San Francisco and also spent six years as Executive Director of the San Mateo County AIDS Program in California.  He began his career in HIV/AIDS as a faculty member at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he also founded and directed the Vanderbilt AIDS Project.  Dr. Copello received his doctoral degree in medical ethics and public policy from Vanderbilt University.  He also holds a master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt University in ethics and a master of social work degree from the University of Tennessee. 

David Evans, MD

David Evans is a board-certified family physician offering a broad scope of services, including operative obstetrics and endoscopy, to members of his rural community.  He is the recipient of several community service and teaching awards.  Viewing the marketing tactics of the pharmaceutical industry as a negative force on patient care, his practice, Madras Medical Group, is pharm-free.  He practices in Madras, Oregon where he lives with his wife and two children.

David Grande, MD, MPA

David Grande is a general internist in Philadelphia and a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.  His policy research focuses on improving the health and well being of vulnerable populations, and he co-leads a Philadelphia voter-initiated project to improve access to health care in the city.

Amy Lu, MD

Amy Lu is a board-certified general surgeon and specializes in abdominal organ transplantation.  She is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Associate Director of Kidney/Pancreas Transplantation at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC.  She is also the Director of pediatric kidney transplantation at Children’s National Medical Center.  Her interests include HIV and transplantation and innovations in minimally invasive liver surgery.  She received a Masters of Public Health degree at Tufts University School of Medicine in conjunction with her medical degree.  She also recently completed a Masters in Business Administration at Auburn University in 2005.

Rishi Manchanda, MD, MPH

As a member of the National Health Service Corps, Rishi Manchanda works as a full-time physician at the nation’s largest free clinic, Venice Family Clinic. A board-certified internist and pediatrician with training in community health and advocacy from UCLA, he provides primary care to uninsured patients, with a focus on HIV and homeless health care. He serves as the coordinator of a homelessness prevention collaborative based at St.John’s Well Child and Family Center, a progressive clinic based in South Los Angeles. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter

Jennifer Ng’andu

Jen Ng’andu is a senior health policy analyst with the National Council of La Raza, where her work focuses on parity in health care; quality and affordability of health coverage for Latinos; immigrant eligibility barriers to health care; and culturally- and linguistically-appropriate health care for people with limited English proficiency.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Duke University and has previously worked as a policy assistant at the National Immigration Law Center.

Josh Rising, MD, MPH

Josh Rising is a pediatrician in San Francisco, CA.  He will be starting the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale University in the summer of 2007.  He was the Legislative Affairs Director for the American Medical Student Association from 2000-2001.

Ben Schaefer, MD

Ben Schaefer is the chief of cardiology at St. Joseph’s hospital in Bangor, Maine, and the former president of the University of Washington Housestaff Association.

Erica Schockett, MD

Erica Schockett is a resident in Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed both her undergraduate and graduate studies at Brown University and served as Director of Student Programming of the American Medical Student Association from 2003-2004.

Stephen R. Smith, MD, MPH

Steve Smith currently serves as associate dean of medicine at Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island. He also holds the rank of professor in the Department of Family Medicine. Dr. Smith has been a long-time activist, helping to create the National Health Service Corps while a medical student, serving as deputy mayor in his hometown of New London, Connecticut, caring for patients at the Rhode Island Free Clinic, and working to bring universal health insurance to Rhode Island.

Anjali Taneja, MD

Anjali Taneja is a resident in family medicine in Los Angeles, California.

Rupin Thakkar, MD

Rupin Thakkar is a primary-care pediatrician at the Children’s Clinic in Edmonds, Washington.  As a medical student he chaired the Health Policy Committee of the American Medical Student Association.  During his residency training at the University of Washington, he held leadership positions in the Association of American Medical Colleges and in the Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.  His current policy interests include regulating marketing tactics of the pharmaceutical industry and expanding access to health care and to early learning programs.

Lydia J. Vaias, MD, MPH

Lydia Vaias is a board-certified general surgeon on staff at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Bellflower, California.  She completed her Masters in Public Health at UCLA with an emphasis in Health Policy.

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Jean Silver-Isenstadt, MD, PhD

Executive Director

Jean Silver-Isenstadt holds a doctorate in the history and sociology of medicine from the University of Pennsylvania, a medical degree from the University of Maryland, and a master’s degree in nonfiction and science writing from the Johns Hopkins University.  Her doctoral work focused on 19th-century American health reform.  She is the author of Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), a biography of the infamous and influential health advocate and social reformer best known for her leadership of the water-cure movement and for her scandalous public lectures to women on anatomy and physiology.