Public Psychiatry Fellow Bios
Fellows
Dr. Anna Fiskin was born in Belarus and immigrated to the United States at age
eleven. She obtained her MD at Case Western Reserve University and an MSc in
Medical Anthropology at Oxford University. Throughout her time in medical
school, she sought out opportunities to work on health promotion in the
community. This ranged from volunteering to design nutrition workshops for the
student run free clinic, collaborating with an African American congregation in
Cleveland to develop a Health & Wellness series, or organizing diabetes
workshops within the Lumbee tribe as a health justice intern in North Carolina.
Her decision to become a psychiatrist was sealed after she did a Community
Mental Health rotation in her fourth year. She observed the development of a
mental health clinic within a recovery oriented clubhouse and traveled to see
clients in homeless shelters and tent camps to provide mental health treatment
alongside social services. It was during this experience that she saw how she
could have a career that brings together her interests in community organizing
and public health with stimulating and rewarding clinical work. During residency,
she worked at the Connecticut Mental Health Center serving those with chronic
mental illness and in the Specialized Treatment for Early Psychosis clinic. She also
worked with the Programme for Improving Mental Health Care on a project to
pilot integration of mental health with primary care in several districts in Nepal.
During these experiences, it became clear to her that in order to create mental
health services that meet the needs of community members and health providers
at home and abroad, she will need advanced training in Public Psychiatry. She is
excited to be Public Psychiatry fellow this year at the UCSF Public Psychiatry
Fellowship at SFGH.
Dr. Dawn Sung was born in San Francisco General Hospital to Korean immigrant
parents and grew up in the East Bay area. She attended UC Berkeley for her
undergraduate studies, where she began volunteering with homeless and
mentally ill communities. She was also a health policy intern at the Greenlining
Institute, where she advocated for underserved minority communities at the
state level. After graduating she volunteered for a year as a Community
Appointed Special Advocate (CASA worker) for Alameda County with foster youth
in inner-city Oakland. She then attended UC Davis School of Medicine and fell in
love with psychiatry while working with ethnic minority community clinics and
conducting cross-cultural research in India and Kenya. She pursued her psychiatry
residency and child psychiatry fellowship at New York University/Bellevue
Hospital. While there she helped to found the Association for Culture and
Psychiatry and in the past year both taught and developed a course on cultural
issues in child mental health for undergraduates at NYU. Dr. Sung has returned to
San Francisco to pursue further training in public psychiatry and systems of care.
Her interests are in working with underserved minority youth, adults, and
families, community program development, and providing culturally sensitive
care.
Dr. Chris White grew up just outside the mighty town of Okanogan in rural
Washington State, where he learned to fish and hike from a young age. After
graduating high school, he relocated to California and graduated from UC Santa
Cruz with a double major in Mathematics and Philosophy. During this time he
took a year abroad in New Zealand and traveled throughout Southeastern Asia
and really enjoyed himself. He returned home and gained his pre-requisites for
medical school at Humboldt State University, where he discovered a passion for
extremophilic microorganisms and kinetic sculptures. He raced in the “Kinetic
Grand Championship” in Arcata, California, with his good friend. He attended
medical school at UC Davis. During this time, he co-directed a student-run clinic
focused on providing psychiatric and medical care to Sacramento’s homeless
population and hiked the John Muir Trail with his beautiful wife. He is now at San
Mateo Behavioral Health and Recovery Services Psychiatry Residency Program. He
is an APA Public Psychiatry Fellow and counts himself lucky to be able to care for
the underserved in San Mateo County. His interests include tele-psychiatry,
hypnosis, hot yoga, group therapy, relational psychodynamic psychotherapy,
community psychiatry, and health informatics.
Dr. Keith Wood grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended the University of
Kentucky where he engaged in leadership with campus community service
organizations and conducted research in organic chemistry. Keith graduated
summa cum laude with a B.S. in biology and shortly after entered medical school
at the University of Louisville where developed interests in the interaction
between mind and body. Upon completion of medical school he entered
residency training in psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis. While at
Washington University he became actively involved in medical student education,
conducted research examining the relationship between personality
characteristics and subjective well being in patients with severe mental illness,
and developed an interest in methods of mental healthcare delivery in the
outpatient setting. Following residency, Keith completed a Master’s in Population
Health Sciences at Washington University to further his knowledge of public
health and statistical methods in medicine. His areas of clinical interests include
psychopharmacology, consultation-liaison psychiatry, substance use disorders,
and public health.
Auditors
Dr. Maithri Ameresekere grew up in Dubai, Hanoi and Edinburgh before finding
her home in New York City. She completed her residency at the Massachusetts
General Hospital/McLean Hospital adult psychiatry residency program where she
was the administrative chief resident and the public and community psychiatry
chief resident. Prior to medical school she completed her undergraduate degree
at Stanford University and her M.Sc. from the Harvard School of Public Health.
She completed her medical degree at the Tufts University School of Medicine and
graduated with research honors relating to academic work on Somali Refugee
Women’s Birth Experiences. She also had the unique experiences of teaching at
the University of Juba College of Medicine in South Sudan and the E.S. Grant
Mental Health Hospital in Liberia fueling her interest in capacity building in
resource poor environments. Currently she is working on a research project
related to patient-level barriers to accessing mental health services amongst
African immigrant communities in Lowell, Massachusetts. She is interested in
refugee and immigrant mental health, emergency psychiatry, and health systems
improvement to better serve those with serious mental illness both at home and
abroad.
Uyen-Khanh Quang-Dang, M.D., M.S., was born in San Jose, CA. She received her
B.A. from Harvard College in 2002, graduating cum laude with honors in History
and Science. For her summa cum laude undergraduate thesis, she received a
grant to conduct field research in Vietnam’s psychiatric hospitals. Dr. Quang-Dang
received an M.S. from the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of
Population and International Health in 2005; her graduate thesis focused on
creating new gender equality & women’s empowerment indicators for the United
Nations Millennium Development Goals that factored in sexual/reproductive
health. Dr. Quang-Dang received her M.D. from New York Medical College in
2010, and completed her general adult psychiatry residency training at University
of California, San Francisco in June 2014. She received the UCSF Edwin F. Alston
Award for Leadership in Psychiatry, which is awarded annually to a PGY-4 resident
who is judged to be an outstanding psychiatric physician leader. Dr. Quang-Dang
was a founding member of the Cultural Psychiatry Area of Distinction at UCSF, as
well as its first graduate.
In 2013-14, Dr. Quang-Dang was Chair of the American Psychiatric Association
Leadership Fellowship and a non-voting member of the American Psychiatric
Association Board of Trustees. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for
the American Psychiatric Association Foundation as well as for VietHope, Inc., an
educational nonprofit organization she cofounded in 2002 as an undergraduate.
VietHope is celebrating its 13th year and has provided over 5,000 scholarships for
disadvantaged students in Vietnam. Her professional interests include geriatric
psychiatry, cultural psychiatry, individual, family, and group psychotherapy, and
advocacy. More recently, she has become fascinated by the opportunities for
advancing the field of psychiatry by promoting the leadership of women and
minorities in psychiatry.