Meet ACCMA’s Newest Team Members

IAN ERLICHMAN, OPIOID OVERDOSE PREVENTION COORDINATOR

Ian

Erlichman is an AmeriCorps VISTA and the newest addition to the ACCMA’s East Bay Safe Prescribing Coalition. Ian’s experience in social work and research have sharpened his compassionate drive to help people in need through practical, data-driven solutions. Before coming to the ACCMA, Ian managed clients at a local homeless shelter while ghostwriting and editing manuscripts for a small publishing company. His foray into social service began shortly before. While volunteer teaching in highland Nepal, Ian created a campaign for rural teachers in financial jeopardy. He successfully raised $7,000 for the fund, securing employment for at least one teacher last year, with many more to come. Though he discovered many things in Nepal, education was not one of them. In the years prior, Ian worked as a private writing tutor and preschool teacher to pay the bills as he explored the world of academia.

Beginning in his senior year of undergraduate studies, Ian designed and co-authored a two-year protest research project investigating the effects of newspaper publications on protest movement success. Currently in peer-review, this project granted Ian rare fluency in data literacy, formal prose, and is proving relevant to current challenges faced as an Opioid Overdose Prevention Coordinator with the ACCMA.

With these experiences in tow, Ian will develop a white paper on the obstacles and avenues for expanding Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) among the East Bay homeless population while aiding in grant writing and website management. During the coming year, Ian will seek to improve systems of care that treat substance use disorder (SUD) and opioid use disorder (OUD) patients while gaining community knowledge to fuel his future in homelessness relief projects.

In his spare time, Ian enjoys dancing, singing, and creative writing. Most recently, he has taken up brewing homemade kombucha but he has yet to find any test subjects willing to try it.

HANNAH EL-SABROUT, HEALTH EQUITY INTERN

Hannah El-Sabrout (she/her) is a second-year medical student at the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP) as well as a UCSF Program in Medical Education for the Urban Underserved (PRIME-US) scholar. Hannah joins the ACCMA for a summer internship focused on health equity.

Hannah grew up primarily in San Diego but considers both San Diego and Egypt (where her extended family lives) to be home. She attended UCLA and graduated with a BS in Human Biology and Society and a concentration in Public Health and Medicine. She set out to learn more about community health by taking classes that exposed her to disease prevention in at-risk populations, and the effects low socioeconomic status, racism, and gender could have on health and well-being. Moreover, she joined organizations that allowed her to work with community members in clinical and non-clinical settings. As a result, she began to understand some of the subtleties of the healthcare system and a physician’s role within it. Through a combination of community service clubs and learning about the intersections of health and society as part of her undergraduate major, she realized how multifaceted physicians’ roles are. They not only help remove barriers to care in the clinic but also strive to extend healthcare access throughout the community. This aspect drew Hannah to a path in medicine. By combating the issues patients experience, she aims to help, empower, and uplift marginalized groups within society who are often overlooked.

Hannah chose to attend medical school at the JMP because of its focus on health equity and social justice since this was a large part of why she wanted to become a physician. More specifically, the JMP drew her attention because of its emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and culture of intellectual exploration. At the JMP, she has been able to broaden her understanding of healthcare while simultaneously exploring its connections with other fields, including policy, quality improvement, ethics, and law.

Hannah is excited to be a part of the ACCMA as a Health Equity Intern to learn more about medicine, to better understand healthcare systems, and to seek solutions for the challenges patients face.