Community/Urban Health
Track Leadership
Lisa Alexander, Track Director
Dr. Alexander is the Assistant Dean for Community-Based Partnerships in the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She has been instrumental in expanding the capacity of safety net clinics in Washington DC to serve as training sites for clinical students from multiple disciplines and universities. In addition, she is a leading member of the primary care community which has been actively engaged at the policy and service delivery levels for the last 10 years to reform health care delivery for low-income residents of the District of Columbia.
Dr. Alexander has been a faculty member at GW for more than 20 years. After completing her training at GW as a PA, she worked in internal medicine and surgery in the District of Columbia. In 1982 she accepted a position as a faculty member in the PA program and assumed the leadership of the program in 1989. Over the next 10 years, Dr. Alexander served as the Director and facilitated the transition of the program from an undergraduate certificate course to a master's-level program. In 1996, she completed a research fellowship with the Caribbean Health Research Council in Port of Spain, Trinidad where she completed a study on the effectiveness of clinical practice guidelines on hypertension control rates. After completing her doctoral degree in Education, she was named Assistant Dean for Community-based Partnerships at GW School of Medicine in 2003.
Dr. Alexander's areas of interest and expertise are community-based primary care, cardiovascular disease prevention and management, and models of primary health care delivery. She has published articles about those and other topics in peer-reviewed journals and has lectured extensively to audiences both in the United States and internationally. Active in the community, Dr. Alexander serves on number community boards and professional associations that focus on health care and education. She continues to practice clinically, is an active proponent of physician assistants and continually strives to advance the team approach to medicine. She is a founding board member of the DC Primary Care Association and currently serves as the director of a federally funded program (DC Area Health Education Center) that promotes the training of health professionals in underserved areas throughout Washington. In addition, she is also working to develop a primary care service delivery model and educational opportunities for clinicians to learn more about caring for adults with developmental and cognitive disabilities.
Janice Blanchard, MD, PhD, MPH
Janice Blanchard is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health. Dr Blanchard received an MD and a master’s degree in public health from Harvard University. She completed her residency in emergency medicine at George Washington University. She is an alumnus of the UCLA/RAND Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. She recently completed her PhD in policy at the RAND Graduate School where she has served as a consultant on various projects related to quality and access to care. Dr. Blanchard’s research interests include racial and ethnic disparities in health status, health practices, and access to health care. She has worked on a number of projects focusing on the Washington DC health system including an analysis of data needs of the District of Columbia Department of Health, tracking rates of avoidable hospitalizations and primary care use in the District, as well as development of the DC State Health Plan.
Seiji Hayashi, MD
Dr. Seiji Hayashi is the Director, Community Oriented Primary Care Program in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Dr. Hayashi received his undergraduate degree from Vassar College and his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. After completing his family medicine residency at University of California, San Francisco he completed a fellowship in Minority Health Policy at Harvard University, along with his MPH degree. In 2001, he accepted an academic appointment in the Department of Community Health at Georgetown University. He practices clinically at Congress Heights Community Health Center in Washington DC, which is designated as one of the city's neediest health professional shortage area. He has published nationally and internationally on service learning, ethnicity and risk factors, and culturally competent health care.
Fitzhugh Mullan, MD
Dr. Fitzhugh Mullan is the Murdock Head Professor of Medicine and Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and a clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He is also a member of the medical staff at the Upper Cardozo Community Health Center in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Mullan graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1964 with a degree in history and from the University of Chicago Medical School in 1968. He trained in pediatrics at the Jacobi and Lincoln Hospitals in the Bronx, New York. In 1972 he was commissioned in the United States Public Health Service and practiced in New Mexico as one of the first physicians in the National Health Service Corps. From 1977 through 1981 he served as Director of the National Health Service Corps in Washington, D.C., followed by tours as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute of Medicine, as a senior medical officer at the National Institutes of Health and, in 1984-1985, as the Secretary of the Health and Environment Department for the state of New Mexico. During 1986-88 he was on faculty in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health followed by a two years on the staff of the Surgeon General, directing the Office of Public Health History. He was appointed Director of the Bureau of Health Professions in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in 1990 and to the rank of Assistant Surgeon General (Rear Admiral) in 1991. In subsequent years, he served on both the President's Task Force on Health Care Reform and the Council on Graduate Medical Education. In 1996, he retired from the Public Health Service and joined the staff of the journal Health Affairs as a Contributing Editor and the Editor of the Narrative Matters section, positions he continues to hold.
Dr. Mullan has written widely for both professional and general audiences on medical and health policy topics. His books include White Coat Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician (Macmillan, 1977), Vital Signs: A Young Doctor's Struggle with Cancer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service (Basic Books, 1989), Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care (University of California Press/Milbank Fund, 2002). He is the senior editor of Healers Abroad: Americans Responding to Human Resource Crisis in the HIV/AIDS (National Academy Press, 2005).
Dr. Mullan is the Founding President of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. He is the recipient of the American Cancer Society's 1988 Courage award, the Society for Surgical Oncology's 1989 James Ewing medal, as well as the Surgeon General's Medallion, and the United States Public Health Service's Distinguished Service Medal. He serves as Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Health Museum. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Howard Straker, PA
Professor Howard Straker is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Care Sciences and Director of Community Medicine at the GW Physician Assistant Program. Professor Straker graduated from the Yale University Physician Associate program and University of North Carolina School of Public Health in Chapel Hill. Upon completion of his MPH degree he returned to his home of Brooklyn New York where he established an adolescent clinic in the clinic of Brownsville Medical Services.
At GW, he works to improve the training of clinicians to work with people of color and underserved communities. He is a faculty preceptor for the ISCOPES program and also oversees the other outreach activities for PA students not affiliated with ISCOPES. Professor Straker is responsible for integrating cultural competency, social determinants of health, and public health into the educational curriculum, as well as coordinating clinical experiences in underserved communities. He works directly with students of GW's dual degree Public Health/PA (MPH/MS) program. Professor Straker is a member of the District of Columbia Primary Care Association's Board of Directors.
Professor Straker's commitment to improving PA education for service in underserved communities began in 1988 when became a faculty member at the City of New York/Harlem Hospital PA Programs. Later he was a faculty member at Medex Northwest 's Sitka, Alaska satellite, a federally funded a rural health demonstration project to increase the number of Alaskan Native and Native American PAs. He has also served on faculty at Howard University's PA Program.
He is active in local and national professional organizations. Currently he serves as past-President President of the District of Columbia's Academy of Physician Assistants where he is rebuilding the organization's infrastructure and promoting legislation to improve PA practice in Washington DC. He is on the editorial board for the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants and volunteers as a site visitor for the Accreditation Review Commission for Physician Assistants. He has served on the Committee of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity for both the American Academy of Physician Assistants and the Association of Physician Assistant Programs. While on these committees he helped start Project Access, an outreach program targeting the career development of minority and disadvantaged students. He helped establish the AAPA's African Heritage Caucus and is a member of the PAs of Latino Heritage and Asian Pacific Islander Caucuses. In 2005, he was selected to enter the Master Teacher Program sponsored by the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at GW.
Robert Zarr, MD, MPH, FAAP
Robert Zarr, MD, MPH, FAAP, is a board-certified pediatrician at the Upper Cardozo Community Health Center in Washington, DC, where he cares for a low-income and immigrant population in a setting with few resources. Dr. Zarr graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine and completed his pediatric residency at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. He also has a Master of Public Health degree, specializing in International Health, from the University of Texas School of Public Health.
Dr. Zarr is fluent and literate in Spanish and has worked in the US and abroad with Spanish-speaking populations. He is active in Washington, DC, in a variety of quality improvement initiatives including asthma management, injury prevention, literacy promotion, breastfeeding awareness, youth advocacy, tuberculosis screening, and compliance with EPSDT standards. He is an Executive Board Member and Secretary of the DC Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and served as DC co-CATCH Facilitator. Dr. Zarr holds adjunct professorships at Children’s National Medical Center, George Washington University, and Georgetown University. He is also co-chair of the DC PNHP Chapter.