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Medical Student
VCU Health System
Richmond, Virginia, United States
Helen Query, Mariam Hammad and Sheel Shah are first year medical students in the ACCESS Program at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, a longitudinal, academic program that aims to prepare medical students to become global citizens and physician-leaders in healthcare delivery and system strengthening in low resource settings. Helen graduated from the University of Virginia in 2020 with degrees in Biology and Spanish. She is the student leader of the Panamerican Trauma Society at VCU and is currently assisting with research to investigate the use of fNIRS to diagnose overactive bladder. She worked as a scribe in the UVA Emergency Department prior to matriculation. Mariam graduated from Christopher Newport University in 2021 with a degree in Neuroscience. She is the co-president of the Class of 2025 ACCESS Cohort and is involved in global health research examining pulmonary disease in Uganda. She has previously worked as an Emergency Department Technician and volunteered as an Emergency Medical Technician in Hampton, VA. Sheel graduated with a degree in Human Biology and Society from UCLA in 2021. He previously worked as an Emergency Medical Technician in the Los Angeles community, and has pursued faculty-sponsored, NIH funded research in female traumatic brain injury and Parkinson’s disease. James Dittman is a graduating fourth year medical student at VCU who was in the founding class of ACCESS and recently matched into Vascular Surgery. Megan Donohue is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine at VCU Health System with specific interests in population health, global health, healthcare systems development, outcomes-based research and quality improvement. She is the Emergency Medicine faculty advisor for the ACCESS Program. Edgar Rodas is an Associate Professor of Surgery and Co-Director of VCU’s Program for Global Surgery and the faculty leader of the ACCESS Program. He is a founding member of the CINTERANDES foundation, which he now leads, and he is committed to the evaluation and development of trauma systems with the Panamerican Trauma Society.