Alumni

Alex Sable-Smith, MD 

Class of 2017

They say you can do anything with the broad training you get in family medicine.  I guess I took that idea and ran with it! 

After finishing residency I completed two fellowships; one in hospice and palliative medicine and the other in interventional pain management, both at Stanford.  I’m now living in San Francisco and working in private practice, though I’m still involved with palliative care education.   

How did I get here? I can trace it back to one of the very first patients I took care of in the hospital at Denver Health.  He was an elderly man who had fallen, and as a result of his injuries couldn’t swallow safely.  I asked him if he wanted a feeding tube, because if not, he would probably die.  He asked me, “If I was your grandfather, what would you do?”  I was taken aback.  I learned in med school that we should be patient-centered, which I interpreted as “lay out the menu of options and let patients decide.”  As this case taught me, I needed to learn how to be an active partner in helping patients navigate a vast amount of uncertainty.  I wanted to do a palliative fellowship to really sharpen my communication skills; talking with patients about goals and values so we could come up with treatment plans that make sense for them. 

Coming from a background of family medicine is a huge asset in palliative care because you really have an appreciation of all the bio-psycho-social factors that shape a patient’s illness experience.  I missed the “hands-on” element of full-scope family medicine though.  As a palliative care physician I was already doing a lot of pain management, and I saw an opportunity to learn a new set of procedural skills to keep my hands busy.  All the while, I found a cool niche in palliative care by adding procedures to my repertoire.  I really enjoy doing ultrasound-guided procedures now as well as various nerve blocks that can help relieve pain from cancer.  Now, what should my next fellowship be?  Just kidding. 

Allison Edwards, MD

Class of 2016

I founded a direct primary care clinic, Kansas City Direct Primary Care, about 6 months after graduating from UCFMR.  Our clinic focused on providing transparently priced, affordable primary care, and after 6 years of growth and success, I was able to sell the practice in 2022 to a local direct primary care clinic.  While I loved (LOVED!) being at the helm of a small DPC practice, I'm even more excited to have more flexibility (and boundless opportunities in family medicine) in this next chapter of my life.  

While I never learned about how to run a business in residency (nothing can prepare you for it, really!), UCFMR allowed me to develop the most important skill in medicine and life: I learned how to teach myself and how to find information I need to make the best decisions.  Medicine requires quick thinking and adaptation; so does running a business.  

As the business grew, so did my interests in and around family medicine.  I found that in addition to my love for entrepreneurship, I really loved my work as a locums provider across rural Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri.  I loved the opportunities I found in the health tech space, finding a home as medical director of Sesamecare.com and helping the tech startup grow.  I have even loved the flexibility of stepping up during the pandemic to be the physician on record for COVID testing and vaccination for a local nonprofit to serve traditionally underserved areas of the community.  

As I move to this next chapter of my career and continue to dabble in locums, health tech, volunteering, and direct primary care, I reflect back on my time at UCFMR and know that our training and our people were instrumental in allowing me to be the best family physician, business owner, consultant, and medical director I could have ever hoped to be! It was an incredible privilege to be immersed in such a great learning environment. Anyone interested in direct primary care, locums, consulting, or owning (and selling!) a small business is always welcome to reach out.

Jonathan Seyfert, MD

Class of 2016

Rewinding my life seven years ago I chose to rank the UC residency #1 on my match list because it was clear I would receive training in an innovative culture with leaders that valued critically examining the way we deliver care. During my three years of residency, I worked on a team that lead quality improvement initiatives, saw all support staff (MA, front desk, RN) elevated to their highest potential and was exposed to innovative models of delivering primary care. All of these experiences strongly impacted how I was able to look at my current practice at NorthShore University HealthSystems.

Since graduating and joining NorthShore about 4 years ago I have become Chair of the Department of FM Quality Committee, which aims to improve quality metrics (chronic condition control, cancer screening rates) within the FM department. Often at these meetings it is said by my senior colleagues, “Jonathan’s residency is the standard in delivering outpatient care” or “let’s ask Jonathan about how his residency would do this.” At my practice of four FM doctors, I have become the leader in quality improvement and introduced the concept of the PDSA process. My work is primarily clinical and leadership, but I continue to enjoy teaching at the University of Chicago FM residency and by having medical students in my office.

None of the above experiences could have been attained had I not had excellent training by innovative attendings and leaders at University of Colorado. I truly believe that by doing residency at University of Colorado and getting a top-quality training experience I was much better prepared to be a next generation leader in my current organization. Residency was truly a magical time for my personal and professional development. I will carry my experiences and relationships from residency with me for the rest of my life!

Susie Piggott, MD, MPH

Class of 2018

I am a family medicine physician working in primary care, urgent care, and leadership for Kaiser Permanente Colorado.

Out of residency, I knew I wanted a combination of patient care modalities given my interest developed at UCFMR in continuity, procedures and higher acuity. I was fortunate to find an opportunity with Kaiser that allowed me to split my time, with most of my time spent in continuity clinic initially. However, I really enjoyed the fast pace, acuity & ability to handle sicker patients in urgent care (including diagnosing appys, managing Afib with RVR, and utilizing IV diuresis for mild fluid overload while coordinating close follow up with myself in clinic 2 days later!).

I also got to put my fracture management and ski trauma experience from a month during 3rd year in Winter Park to good use! When the opportunity arose, I became involved in leadership for urgent care, working with two other site chiefs and our regional chief, all ER physicians. We oversee the three urgent care sites around metro Denver, which are run by a combination of core family medicine docs, ER docs and APPs. I felt well-prepared to work on a multidisciplinary care team from my continuity clinic experience at AF Williams, where routinely working with staff, RNs, social work and behavioral health were integrated into quality patient care.

Working for Kaiser under a shared vision of evidence-based, cost-effective patient care, with a diverse care team, we handle many medical issues that otherwise would require ER-based care in our urgent care sites. I still spend about 80% of my time in clinical work, divided between clinic and urgent care, with about 20% of my time devoted to leadership admin. With this combination, I’m able to use my knowledge of how the larger Kaiser medical home works in both departments to offer a unique perspective while at the same time balancing my own well-being and (hopefully!) creating career longevity for myself while minimizing burnout.

Jessica Zha, MD

Class of 2019

I am currently completing a fellowship in global health called Health, Equity, Action, Leadership (HEAL) through University of California, San Francisco, for which I have been working part time on Navajo Nation and part time in rural Nepal.

Being an immigrant myself, I have always had interest in serving a more global community, but it was through working at the Lowry Clinic in residency that I realized I wanted a career committed to global health justice. At Lowry, I had the unique opportunity to work with and take care of people from around the globe. This gave me a better understanding of how interconnected our world is, and how the basic privileges that I can access in my daily life are emblematic of a great imbalance of power in our world.

After my fellowship is complete, I hope to continue serving victims of oppression by providing care through safety net health systems in the US.

Harriet Huang, MD

Class of 2018

Hello! I graduated from the UCFMR Denver Health Track in 2018 and was thrilled to stay on as faculty for Denver Health.

My first career was teaching at a high school for newcomer refugee and immigrant students and when I transitioned to medicine, I was specifically looking for a program where I could continue working in such vibrant communities. I am grateful for the training I received with UCFMR and the opportunity to be part of a family of brilliant, kind, mission-driven individuals.

The things I love most about my practice today I learned through my residency training: caring for LGBTQ+, refugee and immigrant communities, treating patients with substance use disorders, and teaching/mentoring the next wave of physicians.

These days I split my time between primary care at the Westwood Clinic and urgent care at the Pena Clinic. Outside of medicine, I have fully embraced the wonders of living in Colorado: sunshine, mountains, and endless adventure. I also enjoy painting, cooking and eating all the foods!

Hayley Marcus, MD

Class of 2017

I am a proud graduate of the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency (UCFMR), Urban Underserved (Denver Health) track, class of 2017.

Currently, I am providing full spectrum primary care at a federally qualified health center (FQHC) and community hospital in the Denver-metro area. In the clinic, I love the variety of family medicine, but I am especially fond of women’s health, prenatal care, procedures, OB ultrasound, gender affirming care, and substance use disorder treatment. I derive great joy in speaking Spanish with patients for whom it is their preferred language, which is one many approaches I take to helping those who often feel marginalized or not welcome into healthcare or this country feel valued and respected.   

In the hospital, I love caring for newborn babies, delivering patients that I cared for in the clinic, and using my outpatient perspective to provide whole-person care to hospitalized adults.

UCFMR trained me well with a broad skill set from a myriad of clinical experiences and armed me with the tools to continually pursue evidence-based knowledge.

William Kim, MD

Class of 2017

I am a full spectrum family physician at Northern Navajo Medical Center (NNMC), an Indian Health Service (IHS) facility serving the Navajo Nation. In addition to caring for patients in clinic, on the wards, and on Labor and Delivery, I have been privileged to fill other unexpected roles. 

Working in the clinic, I am often reminded of my time at the Lowry Family Health Center. I'll have a day where I speak to an elderly patient with a Navajo interpreter about their need for insulin while he spends most of the visit talking about how hard it is to get to the hospital (whether it's dirt roads, limited funds for fuel, or having to hitchhike), and then finish by saying that his family member needed dialysis because they started insulin. All this feels like a day at Lowry, where the patients are typically refugees new to a medical system and culture that is totally foreign to them.

Working on the Family Medicine Service (FMS), I got involved in a quality improvement project to review resident safety. This took me on a journey where the 2 x 2 tables and odds ratios that I first used in residency have helped me to approach inpatient quality improvement at our hospital now. In a small rural hospital, there are always needs to be filled, and I have felt well equipped to take on the role of Family Medicine inpatient coordinator. The responsibilities associated with this role unexpectedly expanded during the COVID pandemic, requiring adjustment of our admission protocols, critical appraisal of new research, and internally assessing our inpatient practices. 

While I could not have predicted my journey here, the UCFMR was instrumental in preparing me for where I am now.

Lisa Asamoto, MD

Class of 2017

I have been working at Northern Navajo Medical Center for the past 3 years. This is an Indian Health Service (IHS) facility that serves the Navajo (Diné) people. This is my first job out of residency, and while it’s sometimes hard to believe I live in Shiprock, New Mexico, UCMFR played a big role in where I am today. 

A large reason why I chose UCFMR was for the diverse faculty and huge support system. I appreciated the broad training that allows me to be a rural full-spectrum doctor, but the most valuable thing was the support we had from faculty to follow our passion. I wanted experience with more high-risk obstetrics, and the faculty helped the residents develop a longitudinal curriculum to get that experience. When I wanted to do an international rotation that took me to one of the poorest regions of India, I had a faculty advisor that helped make sure it was possible (and who worried on my behalf). When deciding on a job out of residency, it was a faculty member who had done IHS and suggested it as a good starting ground for global health, and through that, here I am. 

Working at a rural hospital on the Navajo Nation, I have seen the resiliency of the community here as they face incredible social challenges. I have cared for patients that have difficulty addressing their own medical issues all while caring for elderly family members that were the source of their own childhood trauma. I have been part of care coordination meetings where the most important need for a new mom with a substance abuse history was basic housing.

I’m not sure that any residency could have prepared me for some of the struggles that my patients face on a regular basis, but I am grateful for how UCFMR helped cultivate my passions and encouraged me to find my place in family medicine.

Morgan Hungenberg, DO

Class of 2020

Coming from a family of farmers in Northern Colorado, medicine was not the obvious career choice. Though growing up in a farming community instilled in me a commitment to serve others and to take care of the people around me.

Growing up I became aware of the healthcare shortage in rural areas and the need for quality healthcare providers. This inspired me to go to medical school, and pursue my residency in the Rural Training Track through the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency Program.

Being a part of the RTT gave me opportunities to train in both high quality academic health centers in the Denver area, and to join the thriving community of Fort Morgan. In Fort Morgan, I have gained the skills to become a full scope family medicine physician. I have also been able to become part of the community having started several community health projects such as a Walk with a Doc Program. In staying on as faculty with the RTT, I am continuing my work in expanding rural specific didactics for the residents, quality improvement projects led by residents, and developing a community medicine curriculum.

My training through the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency Rural Training Track gave me the leadership skills I need to accomplish all of these things and has offered continual support for my growth as a physician, a faculty member, and a community leader.

Joe Adragna, MD, MHA, MGH

Class of 2015

The University of Colorado Hospital Family Medicine Residency prepared me for all the wonderful challenges and opportunities in medicine.

Six weeks after finishing residency in 2015, my small team started a rural practice. I took any and all, did inpatient critical care, outpatient clinic, and nursing home rounds. I was inundated with patients. Lines were forming at the door each morning. All the while, I was hiring and training staff, configuring our EMR, and setting up policies and procedures.

Fast forward to today and our organization has grown from a one-provider practice to a team of 11 providers in the fields of family medicine, urology, chiropractic, and psychology. We have two clinic sites.

Family medicine training at the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency ensured that my challenges stepping out as an attending were not clinical. I was well prepared to tackle the sick, the well, and everything in between. A family doctor cannot fix everything, but we have a role in every pathology and the residency prepared me for that role.

This has allowed me to serve on our Physician-Hospital Organization (PHO) Board, our local health information exchange (HIE) Board, committees within the hospital, medical director to two nursing homes, and most recently as the incident commander for the county’s COVID-19 pandemic response and medical advisor to the public health director.

The future is bright for family medicine and even brighter for a University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency graduate. You set your limit!

Kyle Knierim, MD

Class of 2012

I am an Associate Professor in the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine, where I also completed residency and fellowship training in Primary Care Practice Transformation. The CU Family Medicine residency appealed to me because of its strong clinical training and the CU Department of Family Medicine’s reputation for collaborative practice improvement projects across the state. As a faculty member I continue to blend clinical care with leading practice transformation efforts in the UCHealth system and around the state. I provide direct patient care at AF Williams Family Medicine Clinic, and I precept residents and other health professionals. I help lead cross clinic practice transformation activities for the CU School of Medicine’s primary care clinics, and I recently helped our clinics rapidly transition to virtual health during the COVID pandemic.

My scholarly work stems from being a curious, system-based thinker, which has driven me to seek out solutions to common problems faced by health care teams. I am the Associate Director of the Practice Innovation Program where I help deploy practice facilitation, data systems, and peer learning networks to disseminate evidence-based approaches into the daily workflows of busy healthcare teams. Our program’s mission is to foster innovation and improvement in health and healthcare. We aim to be a leading source of innovative tools, support, education, evaluation, and research designed to improve healthcare practices, systems, and communities of health. It has been a rewarding challenge to adapt our methods of support to numerous clinical content areas and to grow the network of trained physicians, practice facilitators, and other healthcare team members adept at making improvements in their own settings.

Aimee English, MD, CLC

Class of 2014

The ability to make an impact in the systems in which our patients receive care is one the reasons I was drawn to family medicine.

When I was a 4th year medical student, I helped my medical school implement a University-sponsored patient-centered medical home pilot project. At the time, not much was published, but I saw some info coming out of Colorado. I interviewed at UCFMR and found out we had a whole curriculum developed to Practice Transformation (at that time, the focus was patient-centered medical home). That is what led me to UCFMR, where I now get to lead the curriculum that drove me here! After residency, I did a one-year fellowship in practice transformation with amazing family medicine research leaders within our department. I was hired as a core faculty member in 2015 during which time we undertook a very large clinic transformation project based on higher MA: provider ratios and increased MA scope of work.

I have been in a leadership role within the clinic since that time and transitioned to being medical director in 2018.

Eric Kim, MD, PhD

Class of 2021

I came to Denver out of an MD/PhD program that had me 5 years in a research engineering laboratory designing and building micro-neural interface devices. Starting residency, I wasn’t sure how I was going to leverage this incredibly niche technical skill, especially as the time constraints of residency began to take hold. Lucky for me the program knew just how to plug me in. By my 4th month in residency, I was talking to the CMIO of the hospital system. By my second year, I was a part of technical staff meetings working to improve the electronic health record, and was working closely with a mentor to gather informatics data. During my third year, that information transformed into a publication discussing the critical role of human relationships and human contact in redesigning and optimizing the computer systems that support our work. Beyond all the technical training, UCFMR helped me understand that solutions are woven into a system of people, not plugged into a concrete structure. 

Today I am on my way to completing my 2-year fellowship in clinical informatics at Case Western Reserve University/MetroHealth System. Metrohealth is the county safety-net health system in Cleveland, OH, filling a role very similar to Denver Health. I provide full spectrum primary care in clinic as well as serving on labor and delivery at our main hospital. I am an Associate Director of Informatics, offering a bridge between the builders who design the computer systems, and the providers who use them. I have worked on many projects including an effort to reduce pediatric secondhand smoke exposure by automating tasks to connect parents with cessation resources, as well as a screening system to improve connection of Medicaid patients to dental care. Just like at UCFMR, my growth as a physician informaticist has been learning systems of people just as much as it has been building technical skills. I am excited to continue weaving solutions into systems and could not be more grateful to the people of UCFMR who set me on this path.

Cleveland Piggott, MD, MPH

Class of 2018

Hi everyone, my name is Cleveland Piggott, and I'm an Assistant Professor and the Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Department of Family Medicine.

When I was looking for a residency program, I looked all over the country and quickly fell in love with UCFMR. The behavioral health training, unique clinic model at AF Williams, and mentoring support from our faculty were all incredibly attractive. It's hard to find programs around the country where I knew I'd get great training in working in the "ivory tower" and underserved care. Ultimately, all of that was the icing on the cake as I ultimately fell in love with the people here.

We're incredibly supportive and when people see a problem or a gap, we work together to make this place better for our learners and our patients. That's why I haven't left and many of our faculty are former residents of the program. We're a unique place to both work and play. I truly believe we attract incredible people and make them better physicians. During residency, I was able to explore my passions for medical education and social justice while furthering my leadership and behavioral health skills. I now have my dream job. I'm core faculty at our family medicine residency program (University Track), teach/advise medical students, have my own panel of patients, and lead efforts around social justice and health equity for our Department.

The training and doors opened to me at UCFMR has led to me becoming the first person of color in senior leadership in our Department of Family Medicine.  Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!

Kari Mader, MD, MPH

Class of 2015

My driving passion is equity. I did not know what that meant for me when I entered residency.

UCFMR through its curriculum, flexibility to pursue my evolving areas of interest, amazing faculty and larger network of mentors helped me “discover” myself. During residency, I was supported to help start a Colorado chapter of Primary Care Progress, given elective time and mentorship to help co-found the 501c3 DAWN student-run free clinic alongside interprofessional students, and supported to be the first Community Medicine and Public Health Fellow after graduation.

These experiences helped me realize that (for now), my “niche” within justice-oriented work is through supporting innovative health education programs, leadership development, and systems-based health change that includes community at the center of the system. The training and support I received set me up to be in my dream job from the time I finished fellowship.

I have been fortunate to practice and teach full-scope family medicine in underserved healthcare settings, teach the residency Population Health, Advocacy and Community Engagement (PHACE) curriculum and was Co-Director of the Family Medicine Undergraduate Medical Education program for several years. I have been a coach and consultant teaching Relational Leadership™ with Primary Care Progress since 2015 and am now Director of Clinical and Education Innovation for the Aurora Wellness Community project, a community-campus collaborative aimed at improving population health outcomes in Aurora, Colorado.

UCFMR was my place to help me discover and become the generalist family physician I wanted to be. It can be for you too.

Morgan Schiller, MD

Class of 2020

I had never seen myself becoming a clinical teacher until I was presented with the opportunity to become one at UCFMR. I entered residency with the plan of becoming a strictly outpatient clinician in a safety net community health center. I chose the Denver Health track for the experience caring for a diverse patient population, the commitment toward social justice and equity, and the ability to care for vulnerable patients in a well-developed health system.

My training there provided me with all of those things, and with no less passion for health equity and caring for vulnerable populations than I started, but it gave me more too. As a third year resident, and especially as a chief resident, I became responsible for the education of interns and med students. I began to feel the ways that I could magnify my fight against health disparities by teaching family medicine through a lens of individual compassion and societal justice. Teaching felt rewarding. It reminded me to always question my assumptions, to never stop learning, and to look at clinical and societal problems from different perspectives. And from a scope of practice standpoint, a career in academics afforded me not only opportunities to continue teaching, but also to continue practicing full-spectrum family medicine including inpatient and obstetrics, which I had learned to love during my training and didn't want to let go. 

I am now a tenure-track faculty member of the OHSU Department of Family Medicine. I am a primary care physician in a rural community on the outskirts of the Portland metro area, where I care for a patient population that is often low-resourced, though often not for the same reasons as my patients at Denver Health. I train third year medical students as a clerkship preceptor in this clinic, and starting in July of 2021, I will be helping to welcome our first class of family medicine residents to the new OHSU Hillsboro Family Medicine Residency. I will precept these residents in clinic, help teach their didactic sessions, supervise deliveries, and attend on the inpatient teaching service. I hope to provide these students and residents with an excellent basis of clinical knowledge, but also to imbue them with the same values of health equity and compassionate care that my own residency faculty so consistently demonstrated to me during my training at UCFMR. 

Kenneth "Kenny" Herring, MD

Class of 2020

As a recent graduate of UCFMR, I took a core faculty position out of residency back in the southeast. I was fortunate to join an incredible leadership team at Duke Family Medicine Residency, where I have two major roles -- dedicated outpatient clinical family medicine and now Associate Program Director of the residency program. My clinical time is comprised of comprehensive outpatient family medicine at the Duke Family Medicine Center, precepting the family medicine residents, and leading clinical didactics. As APD and core faculty, I manage both our longitudinal didactics and curriculum committee, serve as an intern advisor, and oversee both recruitment and educational opportunities in conjunction with the resident directors in each of these roles. I also help to manage curricular and programmatic changes in conjunction with the residency leadership team.

My time at UCFMR went above and beyond in preparing me for life after residency -- I received exceptional training in both inpatient and outpatient medicine. Training at AF Williams clinic taught me the importance of a high-functioning clinic, and I am incredibly thankful for my experience there. UCFMR afforded robust opportunities for residents interested in pursuing faculty positions during their time in training -- this included research endeavors, mentorship, scholarship, and a multi-disciplinary faculty development elective, to name a few. At UCFMR, I was fortunate to be surrounded by an incredible group of teachers, educators, clinicians, and mentors that made this pathway possible for me.

Roberto Silva, MD

Class of 2005

I am a family medicine physician at Denver Health, Denver’s largest safety net institution. Prior to that, I practiced in rural Colorado for five years. I graduated from the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency’s Denver Health Track.

During residency, I sought training that prepared me for a broad-scope practice in low resource settings. Once I accepted a job in the San Luis Valley, I knew I would be practicing in a rural FQHC and small hospital with limited local specialist support. My patient panel would be comprised of mostly uninsured and underinsured patients with essentially no access to specialty care. The residency faculty fully invested in helping me prepare for this during my training. In addition to outstanding training in primary care of a medically and socially complex diverse patient population, I bolstered my skills with additional training in office procedures, high-risk obstetrics, urgent and emergency care, and nursing home care. This training proved invaluable during the first years of rural practice. I provided advanced care in my primary care clinic to which my patients would otherwise not have access. I performed procedures and provided hospital care that in urban hospitals would only be provided by subspecialists.

After five years in rural practice, I returned to Denver and accepted a faculty position at Denver Health. I practice primary care, inpatient adult care, obstetrics, and newborn care. In addition, I am very active in medical education at the CU School of Medicine and am now the Co-Director of Undergraduate Medical Education in the Department of Family Medicine and Assistant Director of the CUSOM Rural Program. My teaching experience during residency provided a strong foundation for developing into a successful educator at the bedside and in the classroom. I now split my time between clinical care and medical education.

I was able to shape this fulfilling combination of activities in large part due to the CU Family Medicine Residency training that produces highly-trained, highly-versatile family medicine physicians with the adaptability to pursue, further develop, and thrive in numerous career paths.

Cristi Rabaza, MD

Class of 2020

I fell in love with the concept of continuity of care the first time I walked into a Family Physician’s office as a medical student, and ever since then have set out to become the kind of doc who takes care of the whole patient and the whole family.

During residency, I found that I enjoyed clinic days doing office-based procedures and managing patients with chronic diseases, but I also loved taking care of those same patients when they came into the ER needing to be admitted to the hospital. The time I spent with my mentors at UCFMR also taught me that there is a world of careers in Family Medicine, from Palliative Care and Community Medicine to Women’s Health and Sports Medicine. I’ve gotten to see our Family Docs in action at the bedside, in national research conferences, on Capitol Hill, and throughout the community.

Among all of these influential experiences, I felt most drawn toward taking care of mothers and their babies, and I joined our comprehensive Advanced Maternity Care Concentration to focus my training on obstetrics and newborn care, both in the clinic and the hospital. As the program’s OB Chief, I spent time putting together case reviews, giving didactic lectures about labor & delivery topics, conducting quality improvement projects, and most of all - delivering babies! Following that, I completed a fellowship in surgical obstetrics to fulfill that same vision of continuity of care that first inspired me to become a Family Physician.

I now practice full scope Family Medicine “from the womb to the tomb,” spending my clinical time on the inpatient hospital service, in clinic, on labor & delivery, doing c-sections, and in the newborn nursery. As a core faculty member, I spend much of my time teaching residents and med students as well as assisting with recruitment of new residents to our program, with an interest in those under-represented in medicine. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, after my family emigrated from Cuba, I feel especially drawn to Denver's Hispanic community and find myself using my native language of Spanish as a tool to bridge health literacy disparities among my fellow Latinos.

Karin VanBaak, MD

Class of 2015

Hi, I’m Karin VanBaak. I’m currently faculty at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Family Medicine and Primary Care Sports Medicine, and I’m a UCFMR graduate. I spend my time here wearing a few different hats – family doctor, sports medicine doctor, team physician at CU Boulder Athletics, and assistant director of our sports medicine fellowship.

When I chose UCFMR as my preferred residency, I knew I was considering a career in sports medicine, and wanted to be at a place that could prepare me for a competitive fellowship. The primary reason I chose this program, though is because I felt like this was a place that was a good fit for me to become the best family doctor I could be. I chose the University track because I was drawn to a program with a robust academic foundation and training, and where exciting and innovative things were being done to advance the field of family medicine. As a resident, I was able to customize my training, with electives such as academic sports medicine, community sports medicine, and obesity/weight loss.

My current practice combines a lot of really fun aspects of primary care, medicine, and sports/orthopedics. I am particularly interested in the intersection of mental health, bone health, and nutrition. Often this looks like coordinating multidisciplinary care for a young endurance athlete with an eating disorder. I am comfortable doing this type of team-based care because I trained in a program with really strong integrated behavioral health.

My sports practice also involves a lot of community outreach, which started as a resident, when I spent 3 years as the head team physician for a local high school. I would not be able to do what I do without a solid foundation of training in primary care, medicine, mental health, and community medicine.

Stephanie Eldred, MD

Class of 2019

Hello! I am a family medicine physician working as a hospitalist for Kaiser Permanente Colorado.

During residency I gained a passion for inpatient medicine and quality improvement/patient safety. I found myself drawn towards the relationships that can be built with patients during their most challenging times. Our inpatient rotations were where I learned how to deal with critically ill patients in a calm and confident manner and how to help patients transition out of the hospital back to their daily lives. Once this passion developed, UCFMR worked to focus my rotations on the hospital setting, providing me with additional ICU and geriatric hospital training that has become integral to my practice today. I was also given the opportunity to become involved in inpatient quality improvement and learn firsthand how this can shape the care that is provided within a hospital setting.

After residency, I completed a hospital medicine fellowship at UCH in Quality Improvement, Patient Safety and Clinical Systems Redesign. This gave me the opportunity to not only further my training in hospital medicine, but to learn more about the overall hospital system and quality improvement on a larger scale.

While the career that I have chosen is not a traditional family medicine career, it was because of UCFMR's support and training that I had the confidence and skill-set to pursue it.

Stephanie Gold, MD

Class of 2015

Even before entering med school, I knew I wanted to dedicate time to both individual patient care as well as work to improve population health on a broader scale. In my third year of residency, I did an elective rotation with then-State Senator Irene Aguilar (who is also an internist). The more I learned about how policy decisions impact health and healthcare, the more I knew it was the right track for me. Our family medicine departments at Denver Health and the University of Colorado also allowed me invaluable mentorship opportunities and guidance - they are home to past presidents of all of the alphabet soup of family medicine professional organizations with more achievements than I could list here! 

I did one of our program's fourth year fellowships in health policy with the Eugene S. Farley, Jr. Health Policy Center after finishing residency and joined the Board of Directors of the Colorado Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP). I've continued to practice at the Lowry Family Health Center as well as working part of my time at the Farley Health Policy Center, with particular focus areas in integrated behavioral health and payment reform for primary care. I joined the executive committee of the CAFP Board and was elected president of the academy in 2022. I enjoy bringing policy and advocacy to the curriculum at UCFMR, including through a policy-focused didactic series, a monthly health policy journal club, and as part of the Population Health, Advocacy, and Community Engagement (PHACE) longitudinal curriculum.