Shamsher Samra, MD, MPhil
Attending Physician - Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Structural Racism and Health Equity Theme Co-Chair, Assistant Clinical Professor - David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
About
Dr. Samra is an attending physician in the emergency department at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and also works clinically in the LA County Jail System. He is a graduate of the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at UCLA and Olive View Medical Centers. He completed his medical training at Harvard Medical School during which time he completed coursework at the Kennedy School of Government. He has a Masters in Development Studies from Cambridge University where he was a Gates-Cambridge Scholar. He has an interest in global health, structural violence, liberation medicine and the use of health services to advancing community organizing and social change.
His research includes understanding the barriers to right to health faced by emergency department patients in Los Angeles, health inequities stemming from World Bank water reforms in rural India, and the influence of social movements on ongoing health reforms in El Salvador. He has worked to support harm reduction initiatives with the PACT program in South Boston, organizing to promote hotel worker health, hospital based violence intervention with the Wrap-Around Project in San- Francisco, and health autonomy for the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico.
He currently works with the Department of Health Services on the community health worker driven Whole Person Care program with a focus on jail reentry and serves on the board of directors of Doctors for Global Health and Strategic Action for a Just Economy in South Los Angeles.
Affiliations: www.dghonline.org