For Immediate Release
9/24/13
Contact: Catherine Direen, 415/595-7050
cdireen@familydocs.org
CA Academy of Family Physicians Congratulates Future Leaders in the Specialty
San Francisco – The California Academy of Family Physicians is pleased to announce that two outstanding California medical students will be awarded $28,000 Pisacano Leadership Foundation (PLF) scholarships on September 28, 2013 in San Diego. The awards ceremony follows the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Annual Scientific Assembly being held this week at the San Diego Mariott Marquis and Marina.
The recipients are Brenda Campos-Spitze, a fourth-year medical student at the University of California,
Irvine (UCI) School of Medicine, and Chas Salmen, a fourth-year medical student at the University of
California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine.
“The dedication to primary care and community health already demonstrated by Ms. Campos-Spitze and
Mr. Salmen make them ideal recipients of this scholarship,” said Mark Dressner, MD, president of the
8,300-member California Academy of Family Physicians. “With their vision and hard work, these future family medicine leaders will help shape the future of health care.”
The Pisacano Leadership Foundation provides educational programs, leadership training and funding for outstanding fourth-year medical students identified as future leaders in family medicine. Since 1993, the
PLF has selected 116 medical students from among some 2,200 applicants.
Brenda Campos-Spitze, Irvine
Ms. Campos-Spitze holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of California, Davis and a master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she received the Reed-Frost Scholarship, a full-tuition, merit-based scholarship given in recognition of her outstanding work and future potential in public health.
As an undergraduate, Ms. Campos-Spitze was a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, recognized for her outstanding academic achievement. She served as a Spanish translator for the
Communicare Health Center in Davis, and as an employee of the Manor College Office of Continuing
Education, where she created a curriculum and taught a Spanish class to medical professionals.
Prior to attending medical school, Ms. Campos-Spitze worked for two years as a medical assistant to family physicians in an inner-city primary care clinic in Philadelphia that served the local Puerto Rican community. After beginning medical school, she served as a medical student volunteer on several trips

to Valle Redondo, Mexico and also for two months at a clinic in a rural village of Kenya between her first and second years of medical school. She serves as co-chair of the Referrals Committee for the UC-Irvine
Outreach Clinic (UCIOC), the school’s free clinic. UCIOC is dedicated to improving the health of the mostly Spanish-speaking uninsured population in Orange County.
Ms. Campos-Spitze says working with the community of Duroville, a low-income trailer park near Palm
Springs, has been her most rewarding leadership experience to date. She helped formulate a community needs assessment that helped bring some $200,000 in grant funds to support health programs and renovate the park’s community center. The grants also paid for five local women to be trained as health promoters for diabetes and children’s health programs.
She plans to practice patient-centered primary care among California’s Latino immigrants and hopes to partner with these communities in creating a health promoter model to better reach those most marginalized. She also looks forward to becoming a leader in diabetes and obesity prevention through her work in food and nutrition policy.
Chas Salmen, San Francisco
Chas Salmen graduated with honors from Duke University with a bachelor of arts degree in English literature. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue graduate studies at Oxford University, where he was awarded highest distinction upon receiving his master’s degree in medical anthropology.
While at Duke, Mr. Salmen was founder and chairman of Peace or Pieces, an Arab-Jewish student coalition. With his leadership, the group raised more than $20,000 for twin communities in Southern
Lebanon and Northern Israel that were linked through this program.
While in graduate school, he was founding director of the Organic Health Response (OHR), a community health organization that partners with organic farmers, teachers and health workers on Mfangano Island in Kenya. He directs a team of 12 U.S.-based staff and volunteers and 42 full-time Kenyan staff for the nonprofit OHR, which has an annual budget of more than $250,000.
At UCSF School of Medicine, Mr. Salmen was awarded the Dean’s Yearlong Research Fellowship, which allowed him to spend a year on Mfangano Island investigating the impact of a micro-clinic intervention to improve health outcomes among people living with HIV. He is senior vice president of special projects at MicroClinic International (MCI), a global nonprofit with programs in Jordan, India and Appalachia
(USA). There he directs the MCI-OHR initiative for HIV/AIDS. In 2010, after a one-to-one interview with the then-director of google.org, Mr. Salmen secured a $100,000 catalyst grant to launch the world’s first
MicroClinic program for HIV/AIDS on Mfangano Island.
He looks forward to continuing his clinical training as a rural family physician. Eventually, he hopes to build a community-based practice in the rural Midwest while continuing to grow clinical services on
Mfangano Island. Mr. Salmen and his wife, Jenna Hines, an organic farmer and teacher, plan to explore new collaborations between family farmers and family physicians to promote healthy families, communities and ecosystems in both the U.S. and Kenya.

About the California Academy of Family Physicians: With more than 8,300 members, including active practicing family physicians, residents in family medicine, and medical students interested in the specialty, CAFP is the largest primary care medical society in California. Family physicians are trained to treat an entire family’s medical needs, addressing the whole spectrum of life’s medical challenges. FPs serve a broad base of patients in urban, suburban and rural areas, often in California’s most underserved areas.