Current Research and Scholarly Interests
As Chief of General Primary Care, I led a team who is innovating primary care strategies that serve as a model for the US and abroad. Stanford Primary Care delivers innovative, high-quality, personalized and holistic care for patients and families throughout their lives. Our team is pioneering the shift from a health care system focused on medical care for individual patients toward an integrated health system focused on health and wellness of a population. Stanford Primary Care partners with multiple stakeholders across Stanford Health Care and Stanford University to achieve the quadruple aim. To optimize the health of our patient population, we build upon the biomedical and biopsychosocial models, augmented by recent advancements in big data and genomics, to better understand and address determinants of health throughout the life course. This emphasis on population health management promotes health and prevents disease in addition to managing and treating disease.
Stanford Primary Care, staffed entirely by internal medicine and family medicine faculty members in the division, include those with extensive research and medical education backgrounds. With 11 clinics across the Peninsula, high-performing primary care at Stanford relies on effective and efficient interprofessional care teams to meet abroad spectrum of needs presented by a diverse population of people --to the healthiest who need only preventive maintenance and wellness experts to those with multiple, complex chronic disorders that require painstaking attention to details that make it possible to maintain a normal life. Stanford Health Care’s primary care providers take time during office visits and between visits to fully understand our patients’ illness and partner with the patient on successful implementation of their self-management plan.
Stanford Primary Care is part of the larger primary care network at Stanford Health Care including the University Healthcare Alliance. With sweeping access to Stanford’s world-renowned specialists, Stanford Primary Care offers world-class, innovative patient and family care.
Related to this work, I am a Visiting Associate Professor at the Aga Khan University East Africa and a lead consultant for the Integrated Primary Health Care Program which is a public-private partnership between AKU, government and community. At IPHC, we develop and assess strategies that lead to a better integrated primary health care system in a rural region of Kenya. This setting provides educational and research experiences for medical students, residents and masters students from U.S. and AKU. Current research projects include an assessment of the health information system, enumeration of community, population based survey of district maternal child health indicators, population based research on common mental illnesses, and population based research on hypertension.
As the inaugural family medicine residency director at Aga Khan University in Nairobi, my main focus was generating well-trained family physicians who can provide high-quality and cost-effective ambulatory care in urban and rural resource-constrained settings. An important aspect of previous position was relationship building among different health sciences disciplines and different stakeholders, including Ministry of Health and community health committees. Recent curricular developments include community-based primary care and interprofessional, community-based education, in partnership with AKU School of Nursing and Kenya Ministry of Health Community Health Workers.
In addition, I assist in providing placements for family medicine and emergency medicine residents who are doing their elective at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, and have mentored Global Health students during their field experience in Kenya.
