Rebecca A. Leff, MD

Dr. Leff is an emergency medicine resident at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She graduated with an MD from Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel. Prior to studying medicine, she graduated with a BA in Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science, and Film and Media Studies with a certificate in interdisciplinary human rights from the University of California, Berkeley. She completed a research year with the Yale Emergency Medicine Global Health Section to focus on the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in humanitarian crises, refugee barriers to care, barriers to care for low English proficiency patients, and humanitarian intervention development for both children and adults, with a particular focus on East Africa. She was the resident representative to the Global Emergency Medicine Academy (GEMA) and has served as co-chair of the humanitarian task force as well as the pediatric emergency medicine task force in GEMA. She received the 2023 GEMA Young Physician Award. She now serves as the chair-elect of the EMRA pediatric emergency medicine committee. She has worked in and around the human rights sector in both the Middle East and the United States for the past decade while completing her education, working with such organizations as Physicians for Human Rights-Israel in the Palestinian West Bank and with African asylum seekers in Israel, the Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, the Center for International Migration and Integration (CIMI) where she served as a medical liaison to connect Sudanese and Eritrean refugees throughout Southern Israel to health care, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Turkey, Save a Child's Heart, and the Olive Tree Initiative. She served on the Physicians for Human Rights National Student Advisory Board and founded the Israeli medical student chapter of Physicians for Human Rights.