ASA Diversity Mentoring Grant Winners from California

ASA week is approaching, and we at CSA believe it’s the perfect opportunity to highlight the Californian recipients of the ASA’s Diversity Mentoring Grant, who will be celebrated at a reception in Philadelphia. This year was particularly competitive, with 40 applications submitted.

The Californian winners include the following:

1. Odinakachukwu A Ehie, MD, FASA – University of California, San Francisco 
2. Varina R. Clark Onwunyi, MD – UCLA Health 
3. Betelehem M. Asnake, MD – UCLA Health 
4. Bryan Ramirez, MS3 – University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine
5. Odmara Liz Barreto Chang, MD, PhD – University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine 
6. Suwayda Ali, MS3 – University of California, San Francisco 
7. Ludwig Lin, MD – University of California, San Francisco

We persuaded several of these grant recipients to share some insights about themselves and the inspiration behind their application for the ASA Diversity Mentoring Grant.

Title and a Brief Description of Grant Proposal

Title: ImpACT: Implementation and Assessment of a Global Health Curriculum for Trainees in a resource-limited setting

Description: Project ImpACT will develop and implement a virtual didactic curriculum for Ethiopian trainees. This project will help to deliver high-yield educational seminars, establish resources and cultivate cross-cultural training for trainees in high- and low-income settings

What are your grant’s goals and your individual goals in undertaking the grant?

The primary goal of our grant is to develop and implement an annual didactic curriculum that will include a robust, virtual education series over a 6-month period for first-year anesthesiology residents in resource-limited settings of Ethiopia (Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa) delivered by UCLA senior residents and faculty using teleconferencing software. Implementation of this education series will include virtual presentations, Q&A and formal feedback. The effectiveness of the program will be evaluated using pre- and post-curriculum assessments, which will help to further develop the high-yield curriculum and create a sustainable learning model. This ASA grant will provide financial resources to help us do so. 

The greatest strength of the ImpACT project is that it relies on bidirectional interactions, requiring facilitation and participation from health care providers from the US (UCLA) and Ethiopia (Black Lion Hospital). Furthermore, Project ImpACT strongly aligns with the Diversity Committee’s mission and duties by promoting resident engagement with trainees of diverse backgrounds within anesthesiology. As a trainee, I hope to develop skills in medical education, curriculum development, global health advocacy, and cultural anesthesiology. I am grateful for Dr. Asnake’s continued mentorship and leadership in pursuing these endeavors.

What is the significance to you in being one of the award winners?

It is an honor to be selected for such a prestigious award. As we continue to emphasize the importance of global health as an academic discipline that is directed towards enhancing surgical safety and health care outcomes within the field of anesthesiology, we hope that our project is one of many that will empower trainees to take leadership roles in driving forward the mission of advancing health equity locally and globally. 

Title: Survey of Gaps in Anesthesia Provider Electroencephalogram Education 

Description: Our project aims to identify the gaps in anesthesia education regarding the intraoperative use of electroencephalogram (EEG) and application of its information. By surveying members of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), we hope to gather enough data to understand EEG usage nationwide. We will use this nationwide data to evaluate if there is currently a gap in the level of understanding, training, and practices of intraoperative EEG monitoring in the U.S., with the ultimate goal of creating tools that can improve providers’ knowledge base and comfortability to use and interpret intraoperative EEG in clinical practice.

What are your grant’s goals and your individual goals in undertaking the grant?

The goal of this grant is to provide awareness to the American Society of Anesthesiologists and all its members of an educational gap that may exist in intraoperative EEG usage, comfort, and knowledge. Without the grant, the impact of this study would have been at an institutional level instead of a national level. My individual goal in undertaking this grant is to shed light on the importance of training and educating future anesthesia providers to improve the quality of care. Being in my last two years in medical school, I hope to see improved anesthesia residency education where gaps may exist such as EEG usage.

I’m thrilled to be selected for the ASA CPD Mentoring grant with my mentor Dr. Odmara Barreto Chang who is passionate about uplifting and guiding medical students to become great physicians. In this project, I have the opportunity to collaborate with other investigators, including Dr. Niti Pawar at Stanford University and Drs. Alex Papangelou and Philip Kalarickal at Emory University School of Medicine.

What is the significance to you in being one of the award winners?

I am honored to be one of the grant award winners, especially as this is my first grant proposal. This opportunity will allow me to develop my research interests and network with other members of the ASA Committee on Professional Diversity.