Global Health
Emergency Medicine Abroad
Since the early days of the residency, the UCLA-Ronald Reagan/Olive View Emergency Medicine Residency Program has responded to the need for the development of high-quality Emergency Medicine capabilities abroad. Some examples of our work include:
Dr. Breena Taira, Director of Social Medicine and Professor of Emergency Medicine at Olive View-UCLA, is the current ACEP Ambassador to Nicaragua. She also serves as the US Executive Director for Project SEMILLA, a non-profit international partnership with the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN) School of Medicine that works on improving emergency healthcare capacity in Latin America through education, system organization, and improved access to technologies. Dr. Taira also chairs the International and Domestic Health Equity and Leadership (IDHEAL) Section of the UCLA Department of Emergency Medicine.
In 1984, Dr. Robert Simon, then a UCLA Emergency Medicine faculty member, along with the support of fellow volunteer physicians and nurses, started the International Medical Corps. This has since become a large global non-governmental organization supporting health relief efforts in over 30 countries.
Dr. Tom Lee, a long-time faculty member at Ronald Reagan-UCLA and Antelope Valley Hospital, founded Community Partners International, which has been working in Myanmar for over seventeen years, serving the health and development needs of those in low resource settings.
Dr. Alan Chiem, our Ultrasound Director and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Olive View-UCLA, maintains a partnership to promote ultrasound education in Chile.
Dr. Matt Waxman, Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at Olive View-UCLA, has a degree in tropical medicine and took part in fighting the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, worked as frontline emergency physician in Mosul, Iraq as with the World Health Organization and NYC Medics, and is member of the Supervisory Board for the Refugee Health Alliance in Tijuana, Mexico.
Dr. Brittany Guest, Health Sciences Assistant Clinical Professor, works closely with other medical education leaders as a part of EM:RAP GO, to help bring emergency medicine education worldwide. Her work takes her frequently to Kenya, where emergency medicine is in the early days of being established as a distinct specialty. There, she partners with local physicians to help create an emergency medicine curriculum that can address the needs of their community.
As evidenced by the above examples, many of our graduates continue to do international work and become leaders in this field. This, in part, stems from flexible elective time allowing residents interested in global health to work in locations around the world. Recently, our residents have done electives in Guam, South Africa, Nepal, and Kenya. All of our faculty members welcome interested residents on their projects and UCLA remains one of the few programs in the country that will pay your resident salary for an international emergency medicine experience!