Aarti Vala, MD

Vice President 2020 – 2021

Dr. Aarti Vala is a general pediatrician at The University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, recently graduated from the Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, she has been committed to working with underprivileged communities.

During residency, she focused her training on advocating for underserved populations. After working with survivors of sex trafficking at the Phoenix Dream Center and Job Corps, she implemented a hospital-wide training program to educate staff on identifying and helping victims of child sex trafficking. She assessed pre- and post-training confidence in taking care of these patients and presented her work at multiple conferences including the 2019 Society of Adolescent Medicine Meeting. She also designed the sexual abuse and trafficking pathway for the Emergency Department. She plans on dedicating her career to working with at-risk youth, including victims and survivors of sex trafficking.