The Pisacano Leadership Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), recently selected its 2012 Pisacano Scholars. These 5 medical students follow in the footsteps of 84 scholar alumni who are practicing physicians and 17 current scholars who are enrolled in medical schools and family medicine residency programs across the country. The Pisacano Leadership Foundation was created in 1990 by the ABFM in tribute to its founder and first executive director, Nicholas J. Pisacano, MD (1924–1990). Each Pisacano Scholar has demonstrated the highest level of leadership, academic achievement, communication skills, community service, and character and integrity.
Kathleen Barnes, a 2012 Pisacano Scholar, is a fourth-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. She graduated summa cum laude from Boston College with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She was a Boston College Dean Scholar her junior and senior years and received the Knights of Columbus Scholarship for her 4 years of undergraduate studies. In addition, she was chosen as one of 15 students to receive the Boston College Presidential Scholarship, also a 4-year scholarship. During college, Kathleen spent a summer and semester in South Africa and Tanzania conducting research for her thesis and participating in service learning.
During the year after college, Kathleen volunteered with The Los Angeles Free Clinic as a medical assistant to family doctors, working to coordinate daily primary care clinics for a panel of 16,000 uninsured, low-income patients. She also volunteered with the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Human Trafficking.
Kathleen has continued her leadership and community service since beginning medical school. She is the founding member of Primary Care Progress, a grassroots network of innovators, educators, trainees, and advocates united by a new vision for revitalizing the primary care pipeline. In recognition of this role, Kathleen was appointed as the student member of the Dean's Primary Care Advisory Group; she is now the co-leader of the Student Leadership Committee of the Harvard Center for Primary Care. She also led the local chapter of the Physicians for Human Rights and the Primary Care Interest Group at Harvard. She has served as a student leader of Harvard's Family Medicine Interest Group since 2010 and has volunteered with the Crimson Care Collaborative, Harvard's new student-faculty collaborative clinic, since 2011.
Kathleen recently completed her Masters in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and currently is finishing her final year of medical school. At the beginning of 2012 she spent a month conducting primary care research at the Center for Excellence in Primary Care at the University of California, San Francisco, with Dr. Kevin Grumbach and Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer as her mentors. She recently was published in the New England Journal of Medicine for a perspective piece on the developing vision of primary care.
She plans to practice full-spectrum Family Medicine with an emphasis on women's health. She looks forward to becoming a leader in the transformation of how primary care is organized, financed, and delivered.
Jillian Fickenscher, a 2012 Pisacano Scholar, is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), where she also is completing her Masters in Public Health in Community-Oriented Primary Care. She graduated summa cum laude with high distinction from Hastings College (Hastings, Nebraska) with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology. Jillian received numerous awards and scholarships at Hastings, including the college's highest and most prestigious award, the Hastings College Walter Scott Scholarship, a 4-year scholarship awarded for superior academic achievement and expected contributions to the Hastings College campus. Jillian was named to the Dean's List each year and to Who's Who at Hastings College during her senior year. During college, Jillian was employed for 3 years as a ballet, tap, and pointe teacher and choreographer at a performing arts studio.
As a medical student, Jillian has received many additional scholarships and awards, including the Service Learning Experience Student Leadership Award, the Nebraska Medical Association/COPIC Insurance Scholarship, the Nebraska Academy of Family Physicians Foundation's Student Scholarship, and a DeRoin Scholarship. Jillian recently was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. She has been a member of the Family Medicine Interest Group since beginning medical school and for the past 3 years has served on UNMC's College of Medicine Admissions Committee.
Jillian was one of the first student members and president of “Do JuSTIce,” an interprofessional, student-run program that formed in 2009 as a partnership between the Douglas County Jail in Omaha and UNMC. This program works to address the epidemic rates of sexually transmitted infections in Douglas County, which are some of the highest in the nation, by providing education, testing, and treatment to high-risk individuals in the jail. She also has been an avid volunteer for other underserved populations both home and abroad, participating in various community service programs, UNMC's “SHARING” Clinic for the underprivileged, and medical service trips to Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Jillian is now a subintern in the Advanced Rural Training Program, part of the Family Medicine Residency Program at UNMC. This program is offered to selected senior medical students, allowing entrance to UNMC's Family Medicine training in their fourth year. Jillian's selection to this program highlights her potential as a family physician because it demonstrates her commitment to the specialty and will provide her with the advanced training needed for practice in a rural area. Jillian is dedicated to both Family Medicine and Public Health and plans to integrate their ideals to provide high-quality and respectful health care, education, promotion, and advocacy to her future patients and community.
Justin Mutter, a 2012 Pisacano Scholar, is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, where he also attended college. He graduated with distinction with a Bachelor of Arts in Modern Studies and Religious Studies. As an undergraduate student, Justin received a number of scholarships and awards, including the Echols Scholarship and recognition from the Deans of the College of Arts and Sciences for “outstanding academic achievement and service.”
After completing his undergraduate studies, Justin served for 2 years in central Haiti as a health worker for Zanmi Lasante, the sister organization of the global health organization Partners in Health (PIH). Justin's role included managing a hospital outpatient nutrition program as well as agriculture and food security initiatives with a large farmers' organization. He also served on the Board of Directors of Zanmi Lasante's Project on Social and Economic Rights, which assists people living with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. After his work in Haiti, Justin received the American Rhodes Scholarship and pursued graduate studies at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. While at Oxford, he completed a Master of Studies in the Study of Religions and a Master of Sciences in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology. His thesis about the political economy of black lung disease in Appalachia was awarded the Jane Willis Kirkaldy Senior Prize from the Oxford Faculty of History. Justin subsequently completed the Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Program at Johns Hopkins University. Just before entering medical school, he worked as Research Associate for Health Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress in Washington, DC, where he helped coordinate the Commission on US Federal Leadership in Health and Medicine.
Justin matriculated at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2009 as one of 5 members in his class of the Generalist Scholars Program, a longitudinal primary care training curriculum. During medical school, he has continued to pursue his passion for community-based medicine, assisting with a community health status assessment for residents of local public housing and serving as a summer fellow at the Healthy Appalachia Institute in southwest Virginia, where he interned at the LENOWISCO Health District. His interdisciplinary Generalist Scholars Program scholarly project utilizes the history of medicine and health policy to focus on the future of primary care in central Appalachia. Justin recently has been selected as a student director of the Board of the Virginia Academy of Family Physicians.
As a future family physician, Justin hopes to center his work around critical issues in health and medicine facing underserved rural communities. In addition to working to establish high-quality innovations in clinical and preventive care in rural America, Justin plans to continue to write about and advocate for the transformation of health systems for all underserved populations.
Ben Pederson, a 2012 Pisacano Scholar, is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities campus. He graduated from Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology. At Macalester, Ben completed internships with local organizations focused on immigrant and refugee health and he ran cross-country. After college, Ben received a Post-Baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award, which supported 1 year of research at the National Institutes of Health.
Returning to Minnesota for medical school, Ben focused his training and volunteer time on primary care and global health projects. During the summer after his first year of medical school, Ben worked in Tanzania doing field research and analysis on a USAID-sponsored 5-year Child Survival Project. Returning from this experience, he co-founded “Just Health Network,” a nonprofit organization that provides small capital grants for community-based health initiatives focusing on maternal/child health and HIV; this organization has supported projects in 5 low- and middle-income countries in South America and Africa.
During his third year of medical school, Ben was selected as 1 of 2 students at the University of Minnesota to participate in the pilot year of the Metropolitan Physician Associate Program (MetroPAP). MetroPAP is a new 9-month clinical rotation located in the underserved urban community of North Minneapolis. The program emphasizes continuity of care and threads clinical education with community outreach and research in primary care in an urban underserved setting. His work focused on the impact of patient-centered medical home services on health disparities specific to North Minneapolis and on Family Medicine resident education in Minnesota.
After MetroPAP, Ben spent a year working at AMPATH in Eldoret, Kenya, as a Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholar, where he worked on a project focused on improving the availability of tuberculosis diagnostics and the integration of tuberculosis/HIV clinics. His work included managing the implementation of a new molecular diagnostic assay at rural health facilities in Western Kenya. During that year, Ben also organized the Minnesota-Organic Health Response Kenya Alliance (MOKA), an early career research/volunteer experience for first-year medical and public health students on Mfangano Island, Lake Victory, Kenya. In partnership with Organic Health Response, MOKA volunteers contribute to community-based health projects focusing on HIV education, environmental sustainability, and health service development for the island. Ben plans to pursue a career in academic Family Medicine that integrates urban underserved medicine, global primary care development, and medical education innovation.
David Rebedew, a 2012 Pisacano Scholar, is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He completed his Bachelor of Science in Neurobiology and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW). David received numerous awards and scholarships as an undergraduate, including the Wisconsin Alumni Association Senior Outstanding Student Award, given to only 2 male seniors, and the Herfurth and Kubly Award for Initiative and Efficiency. Of 200 applicants, David was 1 of 2 students chosen to receive this award. David served for 2 years each as Chairman of the Student Activities Committee and President of the Student Government Association at UW-Fond du Lac.
As a medical student, David has continued his academic achievements. In 2010, he was the Elseiver “Cool Med Apps” Contest Prize Winner, and in 2011 he received the Korbitz Scholarship for students pursuing a career in family medicine. David recently published a Kindle book about how to get into medical school, titled, Your Questions Answered: Getting into Medical School and Graduating Debt Free—A Guide to High School, Pre-Medicine, and Medical School.
David served for 2 years as the co-leader of UW's Family Medicine Interest Group (FMIG), recruiting more than 132 students as the local student membership coordinator for the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), which resulted in the highest number of FMIG and AAFP members ever at UW. He currently serves as the co-leader of Advocacy and Intervention for Medical Students, which provides education, support, and advocacy for students whose lives may be adversely affected by a variety of problems including, but not limited to, alcohol abuse, chemical dependence, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems. David is also the founder, president, and secretary of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)–Trempealeau County. As part of this role, he assisted with the planning of suicide prevention training at 2 high schools and constructed NAMI brochures and a mental health display for a local clinic and health fair. David also currently serves as a Pre-Medicine Peer Mentor and as a MEDiC volunteer. He recently was 1 of 16 individuals in his medical school class of 178 to be elected into the Gold Humanism Honor Society for demonstrating the qualities of humanism in medicine.
During residency, David intends to continue mentoring students and encouraging them to pursue a career in health care. Thereafter, he plans to create a free clinic for the underserved in rural Wisconsin that also will serve as a teaching center for health care students. On a broader scale, David wants to serve as an advocate to decrease childhood obesity at the national level.
Jane Ireland
American Board of Family Medicine—Communications