Health Equity & Global Health, MedStar Academic Affairs

“Of all of the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

MedStar Academic Affairs is committed to advancing health equity and reducing health disparities through education, community partnership, advocacy, and clinical care.

Whether providing care locally, nationwide, or globally, our Social Medicine & Health Equity Track and Global Health Equity Track aim to provide residents and fellows with a longitudinal experience through which to gain further education and experience in:

Health disparities and the social determinants of health
Communities facing barriers to health and healthcare
Skills in culturally competent patient care
Opportunities for scholarship and community partnership related to health equity

Learn more about our tracks

Please click on the links below for an overview of our tracks, their objectives, and the application process.

Social Medicine & Health Equity Track

Global Health Equity Track

Leadership Team

Philippa Soskin, MD, MPP

Director of Health Equity & Global Health, MedStar Academic Affairs

About Dr. Soskin

Contact: Philippa.Soskin@medstar.net

Dr. Soskin is the Director of Health Equity & Global Health for MedStar Academic Affairs and directs the Social Medicine & Health Equity Track. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine working clinically at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and Washington Hospital Center. She received her Master in Public Policy with a concentration in health policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government prior to obtaining her medical degree from Stanford University and completing her residency in emergency medicine at UCSF-San Francisco General. Dr. Soskin also serves as the Fellowship Director for the MedStar-Georgetown Emergency Medicine Health Policy Fellowship.

Kathy Stolarz, DO

Associate Director of Global Health, MedStar Academic Affairs

About Dr. Stolarz

Contact: Katherine.Stolarz@medstar.net

Dr. Stolarz is the Associate Director of Global Health for MedStar Academic Affairs and oversees the MedStar-Georgetown Global Health Equity Track. In this role, Dr. Stolarz manages MedStar-Georgetown Academic Affairs’ international network of longitudinal, bidirectional partnerships, which span across the globe. She was a Global Health Scholar at the Georgetown University-Providence Hospital Family Medicine Residency program. She has on the ground experience in multiple countries in Central America and Africa. Due to her experiences responding to the 2015 European Migrant Crisis, Dr. Stolarz remains deeply invested in teaching about refugee and migrant care. Dr. Stolarz has been performing forensic asylum evaluations for Physicians for Human Rights since 2013, and continues to mentor faculty, residents, and students to perform these exams. She has been active in development work in Central America since 2006, serving on the nonprofit board for Companion Community Development Alternatives since 2014. She speaks regularly on global health and health equity on the local, regional, and national levels. She teaches Georgetown residents and students about these issues and is an Assistant Professor within the Georgetown University Department of Family Medicine. She also serves as the Associate Program Director and Director of Global Health for the MedStar Family Medicine Residency Program.

Jocelyn Gelineau, Program Manager

Contact: healthequity.academics@medstar.net

Andrea Gaspar, MD

Assistant Director, Social Medicine & Health Equity Track

About Dr. Gaspar

Dr. Gaspar is a faculty member with MedStar Health’s Internal Medicine Residency in Baltimore, Maryland. Originally from Houston, Texas, she completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin and her medical degree at McGovern Medical School in Houston. She then moved to Boston for her internal medicine residency, where she had the privilege to serve a predominantly urban underserved population at Boston Medical Center. She was also part of the global health track, where she found that the interdisciplinary nature of global health combined her love of service, culture, humanities, and clinical medicine. She then pursued a global health fellowship with the University of Washington, where she spent one year working as a hospitalist on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and another year doing research in Lima, Peru, on patient-reported outcome measures in primary care. Her interest in health disparities and health equity led her to take a job in Baltimore, where she now serves as Medical Director of MedStar’s mobile health clinic. She continues to apply her interests in global health through teaching residents who are part of the MedStar Global Health Track, and she most recently has served as a volunteer physician for refugee clinics in Mexico. In addition to her clinical work, she has a strong interest in health equity and in establishing innovative solutions that effectively address the social determinants of health.

Elizabeth Selden, MD

Assistant Director, Global Health Equity Track

About Dr. Selden

Dr. Selden is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Assistant Program Director for Global Health at Medstar Georgetown Internal Medicine Residency. Following graduation from Cornell University, she worked as a 3rd grade teacher through Teach for America. She later pursued a Master of Social Work at the University of California, Los Angeles and worked as a social worker, focusing her work on HIV advocacy both in Los Angeles and in Jamaica. She received her Medical Degree from Boston University School of Medicine. She then completed residency in internal medicine at New York University, following which she worked as an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. While at Bellevue she served as Director of Primary Care at the Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture, a program which provides medical care, legal assistance, and social services to those seeking asylum in the U.S. She now volunteers with Physicians for Human Rights conducting asylum evaluations. She has spent time working in Haiti, Botswana and Namibia and has a strong interest in issues surrounding health equity both locally and globally.