2 New Citizen Physicians Chapters at Georgetown and Dartmouth!

Originally posted 11/10/2016
(Photos omitted from re-post)
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During election season, two more medical schools founded chapters of Citizen Physicians, encouraging medical students to prioritize civic engagement. Meet the presidents of the newest chapters of Citizen Physicians at Georgetown Medical School and Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth!

Marwah Shahid grew up in Nashville, TN and attended Vanderbilt University for her undergraduate studies. Her most formative experience while at Vanderbilt was as a member of the Ingram Scholars Program, a four year program committed to developing scholars in service to the community. Because of her interest in health policy and advocacy, she moved to Washington, DC and is currently a fourth year medical student at Georgetown University. She is a Health Justice Scholar at Georgetown and the Legislative Affairs OSR Delegate for the Northeast chapter of the AAMC. She hopes Citizen Physicians can serve as a platform to dissect the intersection of medicine and government. 

Ariel Wampler is a second year at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and a 2015 graduate of Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology.  She intends to pursue a M.D.-M.P.H dual degree through The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, where she is currently involved in research on shared decision-making and identifying high-value care practices.  During college, she performed research on health risk communication, steered and wrote for two student publications focused on health and medicine, and served as both a peer counselor and trainer for prospective counselors.  Additionally, she mentored younger pre-health students, twice oversaw Cornell’s annual week-long healthcare conference, and performed extensive fundraising for the Ithaca Free Clinic as well as for a local food bank as part of the Kappa Omicron Nu honor society.  During the summer of 2014, as a Public Policy Associate for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, she tracked legislation, media coverage, and current research to support mental health advocacy.  She ultimately hopes to combine practice with teaching and advising policymakers on healthcare payment reform.

Ashley Dunkle is a second year medical student at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Originally from Ohio, she attended undergraduate at Denison University, majoring in biology with an interest in health sciences. After college, Ashley worked in Copenhagen, Denmark planning and leading academic travel at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad. As her global interests grew, Ashley pursued an MPH from Boston University School of Public Health, concentrating in global health and epidemiology. During her studies, she worked as a research assistant on a multi-national childhood pneumonia etiology study called PERCH in Lusaka, Zambia. She has also participated in research in OBGYN at Boston Medical Center, and completed a summer internship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, studying refugee health. Ashley spent two years as Program Coordinator for the Global Primary Care Program at Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health. She helped manage a global health residency program, global health electives for internal medicine residents, and partnership initiatives in rural Uganda. Prior to starting medical school, she served as a Global Health Corps Fellow in Kampala, Uganda developing curricula to train health workers in managing non-communicable diseases. Ashley believes that health is a human right and aims to serve vulnerable populations in medicine and public health so we may have greater health equity both in the United States and globally. ​​