Election — 2023 – 2024 AMWA Board of Directors
Newly Elected AMWA Board Members
AMWA congratulates the new president-elect, secretary, and four members-at-large on their election to the 2023 – 2024 Board of Directors. Thank you to everyone who voted.
President-Elect
Susan Hingle, MD
Please share your reason for seeking this AMWA position.
Albert Schweitzer was quoted as saying “I don’t know very much, but I do know that those who are happiest are those who find a way to serve.” This has always resonated with me. Gratitude and service have always been guiding principles in my life. I have been an AMWA member since I was a medical student. It has truly been an honor and a privilege to be involved with an organization that is guided by professional values and a true mission of service. As my career has progressed, I have become increasingly aware of the opportunity and responsibility I have to utilize my platforms and privilege to advance important work towards justice, equity and inclusion. AMWA’s mission of advancing women in medicine, advocating for equity, and ensuring excellence in health care and vision of a healthier world where women physicians achieve equity in the medical profession and realize their full potential align well with my goals. My professional experiences have enhanced my skills as a leader such that I believe that I can actively and meaningfully contribute to and advance AMWA as an organization. I have received so much personally and professionally from AMWA that I strongly desire to give back.
Please describe how you can help AMWA fulfill its vision of creating a healthier world where women physicians achieve equity and realize their full potential.
During my tenure as Chair of the American College of Physicians Board of Regents, I had the opportunity to serve as senior author on the ACP’s policy paper on gender equity and career advancement. This work opened my eyes to the need for much broader work on diversity, inclusion and equity. I have also had the opportunity to create, launch, and lead the SIU School of Medicine’s Center for Human and Organizational Potential which assists individuals and our organization in reaching its full potential through focused attention to wellness, leadership, organizational and professional development. My experiences on the AMWA Board of Directors have given me important insights into the organization and the amazing people who are AMWA. I have learned what is working well and also where there are opportunities for improvement. I have grown to have a strong sense of commitment to AMWA and truly believe it has enormous potential to reach its vision of a healthier world where women physicians achieve equity in the medical profession and realize their full potential. Other professional opportunities that I have been privileged to experience that will assist me in being an outstanding AMWA leader include serving on the AMA Women Physician Section Governing Council and the Wellness for Women through Equity and Leadership Steering Committee. My professional experiences have afforded me important expertise and skills that will enable me to assist AMWA in becoming an organization that gets closer to realizing its full potential and vision.
Please describe what diverse experiences and perspectives you bring that will help AMWA reach its full organizational potential.
My commitment to justice, equity and inclusion stem a great deal from the experiences that my son, who is on the autism spectrum, has had in his life. As a parent, it is heart-breaking to see your child struggle, especially because of differential treatment based on bias, fear, and intolerance. Another formative experience includes attending a Catholic high school and being asked numerous times by teachers and leaders in the school to strongly encourage my father, who was an OB-Gyn, to not volunteer his services at Planned Parenthood. Diversity of thought is essential to an inclusive world. Growing up in an agricultural community in central Illinois, healthcare was not easily accessible. My mother was ill quite often and died when I was 18. She needed to seek medical care from locations 3+ hours away. I am so proud to now work at a safety-net, state medical school whose mission is to optimize the health of the people of central and southern Illinois through education, patient care, research and service to the community. Addressing rural health disparities is important to me. Finally, as a woman in medicine, I have, like all of you, experienced inequity, gender bias, microaggressions, and sexual harassment. Some of my guiding principles in life are “to those who much is given, much is expected” and “we rise by lifting others”. I am committed to sharing my experience and talents to work 2 to assist AMWA in its work to make the world more just, equitable, and inclusive.
Biosketch
Susan Hingle an Internal Medicine specialist and a Professor of Medicine, who serves as Associate Dean for Human and Organizational Potential, and Director of Faculty Development at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University and a medical degree from Rush University Medical College. She completed an Internal Medicine residency at Georgetown University Medical Center, where she served as Chief Resident of Internal Medicine. Dr. Hingle completed the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program. She has received several awards including the AMWA Elizabeth Blackwell Career Award, the Golden Apple Award, the Excellence in Teaching Outstanding Teacher Award, the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, the Most Influential Faculty Award, and the Chair’s Resilience Award. Dr. Hingle serves on the AMWA Board of Directors. In addition to AMWA, she has been active nationally in numerous other organizations, including the American College of Physicians, the Alliance of Academic Internal Medicine, and the American Medical Association. She served as Chair of the ACP Board of Regents and Chair of the ACP Board of Governors. She was senior author on the ACP policy paper on gender equity in physician compensation and career advancement. She is active in the Wellness for Women through Equity and Leadership program. Dr. Hingle strongly believes that women in medicine have enormous potential to influence the profession and society for the better and is eager to share her experiences, expertise, and passion with AMWA.
Secretary
Paulette Cazares, MD
Please share your reason for seeking this AMWA position. This statement will be posted on the AMWA website during elections.
I am running for Secretary of AMWA because I care greatly about AMWA’s mission, and because I believe I am uniquely qualified for the position. I have previously served in this position, and at a time of tumultuous change in medicine, I believe I can offer continuity to the AMWA Executive Board, and those elected to other positions. I am an Active Duty Navy physician, and am able to bring the needs of Active Duty women to the Board, and to AMWA’s awareness, for inclusion in their efforts around Diversity & Inclusion. I am an organized leader with a track record of expanding the Active Duty representation of female physicians within AMWA, and am eager to continue this work within our organization.
Please describe how you can help AMWA fulfill its vision of creating a healthier world where women physicians achieve equity and realize their full potential.
I can serve on the Executive Board in a unique capacity, representing Active Duty women physicians, and continuing to elevate their status in their, and our, organization. My work in military medicine for years has aimed to shine light on the unique needs of AD women, and to elevate the role of women physicians in general. Continued work on the AMWA Executive Board will give me the opportunity to mutually bring this niche to AMWA, and aid military physicians by bringing AMWA’s work to its members.
Please describe what diverse experiences and perspectives you bring that will help AMWA reach its full organizational potential.
Over recent years on Active Duty, I served as the inaugural chair of the Female Force Readiness Clinical Community, bringing together a diverse team of leaders in women’s health, who advanced efforts to elevate the health of Active Duty women. I additionally served on VA Committees, and have liaised with numerous organizations to advance women’s health. I have lectured, researched and published on diverse topics within women’s health, and still do so currently. Since turning over some roles while in an overseas status, I continue to serve on committees aimed at recruitment and retention of female physicians, and annually plan the Female Physician Leadership course for tri-service physicians from around the globe.
Biosketch
Dr. Cazares attended Boston College and Drexel University for her undergraduate and graduate studies. She was commissioned in the US Navy and attended Uniformed Services University (USUHS), graduating with her medical degree in 2004. She completed a Psychiatry Internship at Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD) in 2005 and went on to be the General Medical Officer onboard the USS Pearl Harbor (LSD-52) from 2005-2007. Following this operational tour, she completed training in Psychiatry via the NCC Psychiatry Residency Program. Her staff tours have included time at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune (NHCL), 2 tours at Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD), and current work as the Director for Mental Health (DMH) at US Naval Hospital, Okinawa. In recent years, she piloted the Department of Defense’s 1st Women’s Mental Health program, which led to the formal creation of the Women’s Mental Health sub-community. She later chaired the Female Force Readiness Clinical Community, and led creation of the Comprehensive Women’s Health Clinic pilot, the first of its kind within the DoD, to focus multi-disciplinary care on the needs of Active Duty servicewomen. In her current role as DMH in Okinawa, she oversees all hospital Mental Health care, including a regional Inpatient unit, Substance Abuse treatment, and a Child/Adolescent MH Department. She 2 serves on the military’s Council for Female Physician Recruitment and Retention, contributing annually to the Female Physician Leadership course. She serves as PI on two studies researching women’s mental health, and teaches in the curriculum that supports the local Japanese Fellows.
Members at Large
CS Tse, MD
Please share your reason for seeking this position and your interest in AMWA.
Serving AMWA’s Residents and Fellows’ Division for 5 years has been a tremendous honor and I hope to continue in AMWA leadership as I progress through my medical career. Having served as the Residents’ Division’s President, Conference Chair, and liaison to the American Medical Association, I enjoyed the opportunity to connect with and nationally represent female physician trainees. 1 In my current role as an AMWA Board Member and a member of the finance committee, I am hoping to seek to continue serving in this capacity for the next term.
Please describe how you can help AMWA fulfill its vision of creating a healthier world where women physicians achieve equity and realize their full potential.
My personal and career goals align with AMWA’s mission and vision. In my medical subspecialty (Gastroenterology), I am conducting research on gender parity within gastroenterology Graduate Medical Education, with mentorship from Dr. Anjali Bhagra and Dr. Steven Moss. Our work was accepted for a podium presentation at the premiere gastroenterology meeting of the American Gastroenterologic Association in 2020 (link below). Through academic scholarship and research, I aim to help AMWA fulfill its vision to create a healthier world where there is equity for women physicians in a healthcare environment where women physicians and realize their full potential alongside men physicians.
Please describe what diverse experiences and perspectives you bring that will help AMWA reach its full organizational potential.
I hope that my leadership and scholarship experiences can serve as assets to AMWA’s Board of Directors. Moreover, I represent diversity as a first-generation immigrant, ethnic minority, and a women physician in a male-dominated procedural specialty (women represent only 18% of practicing gastroenterologists). I have leadership experience within AMWA and at external organizations, including the American Medical Association, Connecticut State Medical Society, American College of Gastroenterology, American Gastroenterological Association, Asian Pacic American Medical Student Association.
Biosketch
Chung Sang Tse, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated as a Farr Scholar from the Yale School of Medicine, where her educational research on hospice and palliative care was recognized by the John P. Peters Commencement Award. At Yale, she served as the Co-President of the Internal Medicine Interest Group, Women In Medicine group, American Medical Association (AMA) Yale Chapter, and as a Medical Student Council Member at the Connecticut State Medical Society. Dr. Tse completed her Internal Medicine residency training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, Gastroenterology fellowship at Brown University, and an Advanced Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Preceptorship at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Tse has stayed active in AMWA throughout her medical training in medical school, residency, and fellowship. She served as the AMWA National President of the Residents’ and Fellows’ Division from 2020-2021 and the MWIA Centennial Congress Residents’ Co-Chair in 2019-2020. She is a Core Faculty Member for AMWA Ignite. She is honored as a recipient of the AMWA Charlotte Edwards Maguire, MD Outstanding Resident Mentor Award (2017), AMWA Susan Love Resident Writing Competition (2017, 2nd place), and the AMWA Young Women in Science Award (2016). She continues to serve as a mentor for undergraduate students, medical students, and residents. She hopes to advance women in medicine through mentorship, networking, leadership, and academic scholarship.
Octavia Cannon, DO
Please share your reason for seeking this position and your interest in AMWA.
This statement will be posted on the AMWA website during elections. Please limit your response to 250 words or less. I have been interested & active in advocacy for women/families since high school. I have also been involved in national leadership roles dealing with medicine since residency. Now, as I enter the third trimester (ob/gyn joke) of my medical career, I want to continue to serve in a diverse capacity with women physicians both in & outside of my ob/gyn discipline. I stand in agreement with the mission of AMWA & would be proud to represent the organization.
Please describe how you can help AMWA fulfill its vision of creating a healthier world where women
The pandemic has been a source of depression, anxiety, fatigue & stress for all physicians, but I believe that women physicians have been affected the most. Certainly, barriers like inequity & gender/cultural/racial biases were present prior to 2020. However, I think that focused teamwork & strong leadership can make effective changes. While I was not the first woman to serve as National President for the American College of Osteopathic Ob/Gyn (ACOOG), I was the first African-American in 2018. The organization was established in 1934.It has truly been an honor to change the dynamic of ACOOG; while continuing to advocate for women medical students, residents & physicians. Since the completion of my ACOOG Presidential year, I’ve been serving as the Chair of the ACOOG Diversity, Equity & Inclusion committee & the Medical Education Foundation of ACOOG. I’ve also enjoyed serving on the national Women’s Health Care task force for ACOG (American College of Ob/Gyn) & have been a representative for ACOOG on the Collective Action Addressing Racism for ACOG; which is a coalition of 24 women’s health organizations. I plan to use all of these tools to propel the mission of AMWA toward fruition.
Please describe what diverse experiences and perspectives you bring that will help AMWA reach its full organizational potential.
I have served in numerous leadership roles involving medicine & healthcare since medical school. Similarly, my leadership roles involving my sorority & overall community service organizations have been challenging & fulfilling. Parliamentary procedure is another subject that interests me. I have enjoyed serving as the Parliamentarian/Bylaws committee chair in several organizations. I think that working in both rural & urban communities has given me a broad scope when it comes to patient care and the needs of female health care providers . I enjoy teaching as well as continuing personal lifelong learning. In 2017, I was honored to be 1 of 4 physicians chosen to represent the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) in a national media campaign. The Media Relations department of the AOA has been an invaluable vehicle! I have contributed to countless articles, television interviews & even an Emmy award winning documentary about women in osteopathic medicine. We must meet the needs of women of all ages on a national level. I am excited about meeting and working with a new group of phenomenal women who continue to lift each other up.
Biosketch
I am a Board Certified Ob/Gyn in private practice. I recently moved back to my hometown of East Lansing, MI after practicing in Charlotte, NC for 22 years. Our Charlotte Ob/Gyn practice was the lone private practice in the city with only female physicians. Prior to joining private practice, I was the Director of Women’s Health at Gaston County Health Department in Gastonia, NC. I received my medical school training at Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Davie, FL; which is just outside of Fort Lauderdale. I then completed my residency at St. john/Detroit Riverview Hospital in Michigan. I am a proud graduate of Johnson C. Smith University; a historically Black university in Charlotte, NC. Last year, I established a $25,000 scholarship for STEM students at the University. My personal mission includes health education, advocacy and public service for ALL women and their families. I enjoy active memberships in my Sorority (Alpha Kappa Alpha) & The Links, Incorporated; which is a national community service organization of women. I am a dedicated Auntie to 9 nieces & nephews; all of whom are in Michigan. When I have free time, I enjoy reading, listening & dancing to various genres of music and traveling.
Vidhya Prakash, MD
Please share your reason for seeking this position and your interest in AMWA.
AMWA holds a special place in my heart. As a mid-career faculty, I was in search of a strong organization committed to generating solutions to gender inequity and health disparities. Further, I sought a community with a genuine interest in the development of women leaders. AMWA welcomed me with open arms and provided a supportive environment to help me grow as a leader. I was a part of something transformational, and was able to hit the ground running with the autonomy to lead 1 initiatives using my unique style with only encouragement and love from the AMWA family. I owe much of my success in leadership to AMWA members who encouraged me and helped me see the light within. Joining the AMWA Board would be an honor and my way of giving back AMWA. I will use this platform to build, promote, and elevate other budding women leaders, and develop lasting solutions to gender inequity and health disparities. It would be a privilege to have a seat at the table of diverse, talented, and thoughtful leaders who are as passionate about gender and health equity as I am. Together, I am confident we will enact lasting change.
Please describe how you can help AMWA fulfill its vision of creating a healthier world where women physicians achieve equity and realize their full potential.
I will mobilize the AMWA community to promote awareness on gender equity, women’s health, and health disparities with a focus on solutions. Women have come a long way in the health care arena with more representation in medical school, but we have a long way to go with respect to promotion and tenure, representation in leadership, and navigating gender bias and harassment. Disparities in health abound and have come to the forefront during the COVID-19 pandemic. My approach is to offer safe spaces to promote honest dialogue around these topics, followed by a thoughtful process to include data as the foundation for generating solutions at scale. What better way to accomplish this than through service on the AMWA Board? As past chair and active member of the AMWA membership committee, I will also continue to expand the AMWA family through ongoing engagement with the membership committee. It will be through innovation and mobilization of our current AMWA members that we will continue to grow and achieve our vision.
Please describe what diverse experiences and perspectives you bring that will help AMWA reach its full organizational potential.
I will help AMWA achieve its full potential through my past experiences as chair of the AMWA membership committee and AMWA DEJI’s rural health committee. As chair of the AMWA membership committee, I worked with a fantastic team to steadily increase membership. We launched a membership portal, improving access for AMWA members. We hosted three virtual book clubs, showcasing authors in the AMWA community while bringing in new members. The #HeForShe initiative, “AMWA Action Coalition for Equity,” had its genesis in the AMWA membership committee, and hosted two powerful panel discussions on allyship. Our membership committee also hosted a webinar on how to start an AMWA branch. As chair of AMWA DEJI’s rural health committee, I led discussions during the “Diversity Dialogues” podcast featuring prominent leaders in rural health. I also contributed to vital discussions around optimizing the structure of the DEJI committee. At the regional level, as chair of the Illinois Council on Women and Girls Health and Health Care Committee, I led a successful statewide health equity summit which bolstered discussions around how to improve data collection on social determinants of health. As chair of the IDPH Diversity in Health Care Task Force, me and my team developed a survey for statewide health care institutions of higher learning to understand the current state of equity, diversity, and inclusion. As director of my organization’s women in medicine group, AWIMS, I led a phenomenal team who increased the number of women who were promoted to associate and full professor.
Biosketch
Dr. Vidhya Prakash is the Associate Dean of Clinical Affairs and Population Health and Chief Medical Officer at SIU Medicine in Springfield, Illinois. She is a Professor of Clinical Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases faculty. Dr. Prakash graduated from The Ohio State University with a BA in English. She received her MD degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She completed her Internal Medicine residency followed by Infectious Diseases fellowship at the San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium. After serving as an Infectious Diseases physician in the United 2 States Air Force for ten years on active duty status, she retired from the military in 2014 and joined SIU School of Medicine. Dr. Prakash is founder and director of SIU Medicine’s Alliance for Women in Medicine and Science (AWIMS). She serves as Chair of the Health and Healthcare Committee, Illinois Council on Women and Girls and as Chair of the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) Diversity in Health Care Task Force. She lives in Springfield, Illinois with her husband, Dr. Eric Black, and their children, Eric Shiva and Ethan Prakash.
Gloria Wu, MD
Please share your reason for seeking this position and your interest in AMWA.
I would like to serve on the Board of AMWA because I want to share my vision about the future of the organization. The values of AMWA align strongly with what I believe about Women in Medicine and our role in society. I have served as District Governor for AMWA for the past few years and have enjoyed the virtual meetings during COVID 19. Since 2008, I have been active in South Bay American Medical 1 Women’s Association in San Jose, where I am the current Co-President. These positions have led me to understand how we as female physicians play a huge role in health education and access to care as 85% of internet searches for health topics are done by women searching for answers for the benefit of their families. When I was Co-President during 2020, South Bay AMWA delivered more than 200,000 free PPE (masks, face shields) to our membership. This was at the time when there was a nationwide shortage of masks. We kept our membership informed about Payroll Protection Plans, Economic Injury Disaster Loans and SBA loans. We became a tight knit community. I saw first hand how our AMWA branch empowered our female owned physician practices, during the pandemic. I was elected to the Governing Council of the Women’s Physician’s Section of the AMA in 2022. I gained insight about the need for women MDs to inform their colleagues and US Congress about the questions facing medicine today: gun control legislation, reproductive access.
Please describe how you can help AMWA fulfill its vision of creating a healthier world where women physicians achieve equity and realize their full potential.
AMWA ‘s mission to represent women in medicine and we as women MDs face challenges. While I think the 21st century has made enormous strides in health care and scientific breakthroughs, we as women physicians face a 25% pay gap when compared to our male colleagues. Definitely, AMWA can play a role in dissemination of information in the form of webinars, discussion groups with Sociologists, Medical Ethicists, MBAs about the pay gap. AMWA could embrace telehealth, ehealth and virtual assistants for the use in community clinics to empower their shut- in and elderly female patients or the rural patients who cannot get a ride to their health clinic. As AMWA gains fluency with all these innovative platforms to care, we will be able to help our patients more efficiently. Mental health is of great concern to women MDs as they have to balance childcare, housework in addition to the stress of the frontline delivery of care in the COVID era. I suggest a password protected mental health blog for our members to share their stories of coping. Once a month, a psychologist can do a webinar for our members. AMWA could lead the way in creating an annual grant for the study of women’s health and health disparities. We could get corporate donors or hold fundraisers for such an award. For example, women are not referred to cardiologists for chest pain in the same frequency as for male patients.
Please describe what diverse experiences and perspectives you bring that will help AMWA reach its full organizational potential.
I was born in Cuba, where my first language was Chinese, my second language was Spanish and my third was English. As an immigrant, I was acutely aware of linguistic barriers to care as I had to translate for my family members when they got sick. In my own office, I have staff who speak 2 Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese, French and Russian. 85% of “health questions” on internet searches are made by women. As a women physician organization, we should reach out to women who are responsible for the health and well being of their entire family. Using the AMWA website, we could offer health topics to educate our patients. Modern search engine optimization would enable an increase in traffic on our website and create a national awareness of the medical issues facing women and their families. I created the ejournal, Journal of Asian Health in 2009. In 2020, I donated it to the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education (CARE) and it is now part of the Stanford family of journals. I have written three medical textbooks, Retina: The Fundamentals, Ophthalmology for Primary Care, Diabetic Retinopathy: The Essentials, published by JP Lippincott and Wolters Kluwer. In the last 10 years, I have created mobile apps, evaluated their usefulness in Diabetes. I have served on the Endocrine Society as a reviewer for the past 10 years. My pre med students have won First place in Poster presentations at the Endocrine Society.
Biosketch
Dr. Gloria Wu, a graduate of Harvard University, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, did internship in General Surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center (NY, NY), continued her training in the Department of Ophthalmology at Presbyterian-Cornell Medical Center, finished RetinaVitreous Fellowship at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, part of Harvard Medical School. She has served as Clinical Associate Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine prior to moving to California in 2003 where she is now Clinical Adjunct Instructor at University of California, San Francisco, Department of Ophthalmology. She has received Senior Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology. From 2004-2019, she had cable access television channel, Healthtalk + Gloria Wu. Its programming is on Youtube. Since 2022, Healthtalk Friday Reports is on Youtube, featuring facts about COVID 19, Paxlovid, Monkey Pox, Vaccine facts and figures, mental health issues during COVID, Long COVID and other topics. Since 2008, she has been involved in the leadership of South Bay AMWA, a branch of national AMWA. SBAMWA has 160 women members, and in-person meetings began April 2021 and are continuing now with monthly restaurant dinners. Gloria Wu has led all women and mixed gender teams to Tennis Nationals for the over 50 age group. She swims daily and plays tennis daily. She paints and draws and has had two shows locally. She is married to a cardiologist and has two adult daughters.
