Rebecca Leff, MD

My name is Rebecca Leff and I am running for reelection as the GEMA medical student/resident representative. I am an emergency medicine resident PGY2 at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I graduated with an MD from Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel. Prior to studying medicine, I 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. I have worked in and around the human rights sector in both the Middle East and the United States for the past decade while completing my 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 I served as a medical liaison to connect Sudanese and Eritrean refugees throughout Southern Israel to healthcare, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Turkey, Save a Child's Heart, and the Olive Tree Initiative. I served on the Physicians for Human Rights National Student Advisory Board where I lead the advocacy team and helped coordinate PHR chapters globally and our yearly national conference after founding the Israeli medical student chapter of Physicians for Human Rights which has over 80 students actively participating weekly from Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University, and the Technion. I also completed a research year with the Yale Emergency Medicine Global Health Section mentored by Christine Ngaruiya, MD, MSc, DTM&H and Pooja Agrawal MD, MPH, FACEP 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. During medical school I was selected to participate in the EMRA/ACEP International Ambassador Mentorship Program - Global Emergency Medicine Student Leadership Program (GEMS LP) and upon completion joined the leadership team for last year's cohort. I have moderated the Middle East Section of the ACEP Ambassador Conference regional breakout meeting for the past two years. Currently, I am working on a project focusing on Pediatric Emergency Medicine education development in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, as well as work with the World Bank on NCD care in the Republic of the Congo with Christine Ngaruiya, MD, MSc, DTM&H. I am also leading a group of Israeli medical students in participating in the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel / Zochrot Nakba and Health Research Group, preparing a report in differences in emergency care access for different populations in our region.

As the resident representative this past year I have focused on making GEMA more accessible to trainees. I have also served as co-chair of the Humanitarian Task Force as well as the Pediatric Emergency Medicine task force in GEMA, helping to found the Pediatric Emergency Medicine task force this past year. We have created more opportunities on several task forces for trainees involvement and have plans for our first engagement session specifically for trainees this month. I have also been engaged in creating mentorship opportunities in several of our task forces including the Humanitarian and PEM task forces. I would like to continue to serve as the resident representative for GEMA, because I take my role seriously as a bridge for residents and medical students to engage in global health through the wide array of mentorship that GEMA SAEM members has to offer and I see more opportunity to grow our trainee involvement. Working over the past years with mentors with significant experience in academic global health and engaging in global health research has shown me how significant mentorship and guidance can be in helping medical student and residents achieve their own goals in global health. I am currently mentoring a medical student in Uganda who founded the first emergency medicine interest group in his country, and helping him develop his first systematic review and research protocol for a cross sectional study and watching him present that work at the African Federation for Emergency Medicine conference has proven to me that while I may be only starting my own journey (and still have much to learn), I can still offer mentorship and guidance to others and be a bridge to connect residents and medical students interested in global health to those who have more experience. I take joy in receiving emails from medical students and residents looking to get involved. I would like to continue to work on my goal of fostering a community for residents and medical students interested in academic global emergency medicine to share ideas, create community, and use each other a resources to move forward with our own projects and ideas.