Community Track
Background
The University of California San Diego Department of Psychiatry Community Psychiatry Program is thrilled to offer a Community Track for both the General Psychiatry Residency Program as well as our Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program! This specialized track trains providers to address the complex mental health needs of underserved youth and families. In order to effectively serve this population, our fellows are embedded in a variety of community-adjacent public sector clinical settings. This allows our fellows to develop an intimate understanding of the every day lives of our patients, local health disparities, social determinants of health, and the public mental health system. Our overarching goal is for UCSD Community Track Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellows to not only develop the multi-faceted skills required to provide quality patient-centered care to our population, but also to arm our fellows with the knowledge, experience, leadership, and courage to advocate for systems-level innovations that will lead directly to large-scale improvements in community and population health.
Track Details
Both first and second year of fellowship in all tracks include a full, uninterrupted day of didactics that is pager-free. Community Track fellows also participate in an additional half day of a specialized didactic seminar series that is focused on learning about population health, advocacy, healthcare leadership, program design, finance, budgeting, collaborative care, outcome-based research, and more. Both years also include a multitude of opportunities for psychotherapy, including gender-affirming psychotherapy, group therapy, family therapy with a 1-way mirror, therapy with a 1:1 individual supervisor, and 1:1 meetings with psychotherapy supervisors.
The first year of the UCSD Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program Community Track largely resembles that of the Traditional Track, with core experiences in inpatient psychiatry, consultation-liaison psychiatry, inpatient eating disorders, pediatric emergency psychiatry, community-based outpatient care, and a structured psychotherapy experience. Community Track Fellows are promptly connected to mentors with expertise in Community Psychiatry. These mentors will get to know the fellow on a personal level and help the fellow to establish goals for both the mentoring relationship and their fellowship experience.
The second year of the Community Track offers unique exposure to specialized outpatient community populations. Our fellows rotate at San Diego Youth Services, where they work in the Our Safe Place clinic for LGBTQIA+ youth and their families, and the I CARE program for children and families impacted by commercial sexual exploitation (CSEC). The experience is rounded out by working at East County Behavioral Health Clinic, where fellows see a broad range of diagnoses and presentations impacting underserved and publicly-funded youth and families, including some immigrant and refugee families. Lastly, Community Track fellows have the very unique opportunity of rotating at a Residential Treatment Center at the San Diego Center for Children, a designated campus for youth and families who require a higher level of care. The Center serves a very diverse patient population, and offers youth and families the time and intensity of services that they need to heal fully before transitioning back to their home and community.
However, as described above, our Community Track Fellows move beyond the clinical realm to that of Advocacy, Scholarship, and eventually, Public Sector Leadership in our child-facing community-based systems of care. For example, Community Track fellows routinely attend the APA Mental Health Services Conference, where some of our Community Psychaitry faculty are on the planning committee. Our fellows also routinely attend state and national advocacy efforts, such as the AACAP Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. Our current fellows are recipients of the CALACAP Wasserman Advocacy Award the AACAP Ambassador Advocacy Award.
San Diego Youth Services (SDYS)
Additional San Diego Youth Services Videos
San Diego Youth Services Success Stories
San Diego Centers for Children (SDCC)
San Diego Centers for Children News, Stories, Events and Additional Videos
Applicants
We welcome a broad range of applicants, including but not limited to those interested in community-based systems of care, minority mental health and health disparities, systemic and institutional racism, diversity, equity, inclusion, adverse childhood events, advocacy, public policy, public health system leadership and program development, and health services research. Applicants with a background in humanitarian experiences with underserved communities are a great fit!
Our fellowship typically offers 2 Community Track position per year. Any applicants who feel they would benefit from a community-oriented fellowship experience are welcome and encouraged to apply, and applying to BOTH tracks increases the chances of receiving an interview!
Track Director
Emily (Ema) Troyer, M.D.
Dr. Emily (Ema) Troyer serves as Director for the UCSD Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program Community Psychiatry Track. She is also a supervising psychiatrist in the UCSD General Psychiatry Residency Program. Dr. Troyer grew up in rural Ohio and went to the University of Akron for undergraduate studies, followed by the University of Toledo for medical school. She completed her general psychiatry residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago, an institution dedicated to a highly underserved urban population, where she was Chief Resident. She then completed her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at UCSD, where she also served as Chief Fellow. After fellowship, she completed a 3 year research post-doc fellowship at UCSD in a psychoneuroimmunology laboratory, and her research focuses on understanding immune-brain associations in childhood psychopathology, such as pediatric OCD. Dr. Troyer is passionate about community psychiatry because she experienced first-hand what it was like to grow up in a rural community without easy access to medical specialists. Her experiences in urban Toledo and Chicago, and then working with the underserved youth and families in San Diego, have only served to further her enthusiasm for this work. She is looking forward to meeting our applicants!
ADDITIONAL CORE FACULTY
Huma Baqir, M.D.
Dr. Huma Baqir was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. She received her doctoral degree from Aga Khan University in 2017. Shortly after, she moved to the US to complete her general psychiatry residency training from University at Buffalo, where she stayed for another two years to complete her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship. During this time, she won several awards pertaining to leadership, her academic performance and endeavors in teaching and education. Dr. Baqir was selected as a Resident/Trainee Member
in the Transitional Age Youth and College Mental Health Committee at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), and was the recipient of the AACAP John E. Schowalter, MD, Educational Outreach Program Award and the American Psychiatric Association Diversity Leadership Fellowship. She especially enjoys working with adolescents and young adults, and has long been curious about the intersection between psychiatry and the arts, including storytelling in medical education. In her spare time, Dr.Baqir likes to hike, write poetry and spend time with her family.
Hilary Gould, Ph.D.
Hilary M Gould, PhD is Health Sciences Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She received her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles and attended an APA accredited respecialization program in clinical psychology at the University of Hawaiiʻi at Mānoa. She completed an internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the UCSD/Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System. Her area of professional interest include interdisciplinary training and education, development and lifespan, and outcome-based care. She currently oversees the training and clinical supervision of psychotherapy at community sites. Additionally, she is involved in research, contracts, and project development within the Community Psychiatry Program. She has published several articles and book chapters, and presented at local, national, and international conferences and trainings.
Steve Koh, M.D., M.P.H., MBA, DFAPA
Dr. Koh is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Director of Outpatient Psychiatric Services (Hillcrest), Director of Community Psychiatry Program, Director of Tele-Mental-Health Program, and Co-Founder of Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practice Clinical Training Program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is a Consulting Faculty at Naval Hospital Balboa and Voluntary Clinical Faculty at the University of San Diego, Hahn School of Nursing. He is Board Certified in Adult and Geriatric Psychiatry and carries certification for Community Psychiatry from the American Association of Community Psychiatry. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and UCSD School of Medicine. He received Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (concentration in Aging and Health Leadership and Management with a special area of Mental Health) and Masters in Business Administration (capstone with a focus on medical consultative models) from Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business. He finished an internship at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, a general psychiatry residency at UCSD, and a geriatric psychiatry fellowship at UCSD. He has had research support and funding at Johns Hopkins Lipid Research Laboratories, Palo Alto VA Hospital, Intramural Program of NIH at National Institute of Aging, UCSD Department of Psychiatry, Hartford Foundation Center of Excellence, San Diego Hospice and Institute for Palliative Care, and T-32 NIH program. He has grant support from San Diego County - Work, Education and Training Program, CalREACH, CalSEARCH, and California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. Dr. Koh is Past President of the San Diego Psychiatric Society, Association of Korean American Psychiatrists, and Board of San Diego NAMI, and past representative on the Board of American Psychiatric Association, San Diego County Medical Society, and American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry. Other organizational associations include the American Medical Association, California Medical Association, and Group for Advancement of Psychiatry. Dr. Koh was American Psychiatric Association's Instructor for instructors for the DSM 5 and has been involved in DSM 5 development and review process, Member of the APA Council on Advocacy and Government Relations and Political Action Committee, and past Chair of APA Early Career Psychiatrists. He was Scientific Program Committee Chair for the APA Annual Meeting in Atlanta 2016 and Vice-Chair for the 2017 meeting in San Diego. Dr. Koh’s current clinical interests revolve around patients with cognitive disorders, trauma and stress, co-occurring disorders, and medically complicated patients. His research interests revolve around integrated/collaborative care with primary care, cross-professional training model, mental health systems, outcomes and service implementation projects, and usage of tele-mental-health and large data. Dr. Koh has no financial disclosures or conflicts to state.
Lawrence (Larry) Malak, M.D., DFAPA
Dr. Malak is an Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), Director of Education for the Community Psychiatry Program, and Program Director of the Community Psychiatry Residency Track. He attended medical school in Houston, Texas at Baylor College of Medicine before returning to California for residency training at UC San Diego. During residency, Dr. Malak served as Chief Resident and won the Lewis Judd Resident Research Award for his prototypical work observing Psychiatric Re-Admissions. Within UCSD he co-founded the Advanced Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Clinical Training Program, served as Medical Director for the Co-Occurring Disorders Program, and has been actively involved in developing the psychiatry residency education and curriculum since graduating from the program in 2013. Currently, Dr. Malak serves as an Associate Residency Training Director for the General Psychiatry Program, oversees curriculum for all third-year residents and the Community Track, participates in the Residency Call Committee, Diversity Committee, and the Department of Psychiatry's Anti-Racism Workgroup. Dr. Malak’s leadership in the academic field extends beyond the university as he is involved in several statewide and nationwide psychiatric organizations. He has served as president for the San Diego Psychiatric Society, a board member for the American Association of Community Psychiatry, and a member of the California Psychiatric Association. Additionally, Dr. Malak is heavily involved in the American Psychiatric Association. He currently serves on the Assembly Executive Committee, Annual Meeting Scientific Planning Committee, and is the Area 6 Deputy Representative.
Kevo Rivera, M.D.
Dr. Kevo Rivera (accepts all pronouns) is a queer, genderfree, Filipinx-American child of once-undocumented immigrants. They were born and raised in Los Angeles and received their BS in Biology at Pepperdine University. Before their career in medicine, they worked as a community organizer and speaker in the nonprofit social justice sector. After graduating from the University of Iowa (UI) Carver College of Medicine with a Global Health Distinction, Dr. Rivera completed their psychiatry residency and child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the UI Hospitals & Clinics. While in training, they served as co-chair of the Department of Psychiatry Diversity Committee, as councilor of the Iowa Psychiatric Physicians Society, and as a Diversity Leadership Fellow with the American Psychiatric Association (APA). They also served on Iowa City’s Ad Hoc Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the board of the ACLU of Iowa. For their achievements in advocacy and leadership, they were recognized with the UI Health Care Excellence in Clinical Teaching Award and the UI Health Care Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership Award. Dr. Rivera currently serves as representative to the APA Assembly on behalf of the Association of LGBTQ+ Psychiatrists. Dr. Rivera joins the faculty of UCSD’s Community Psychiatry Program after graduating from Columbia University’s Public Psychiatry Fellowship, during which they worked as an outpatient child psychiatrist at the New York City Children’s Center, a state-run behavioral health facility serving youth and their families facing complex social challenges. They enjoy theatre, Survivor, comic books, Dungeons and Dragons, and queer art.
PHOTOS
Drs. Collins, Hayat, Sidhu, and Troyer at the 2024 UCSD CAP Fellowship Graduation
Drs. Collins and Sidhu at the 2024 AACAP Legislative Conference
Drs. Collins and Sidhu at the 2024 AACAP Legislative Conference
Group Picture at the 2024 AACAP Advocacy Conference
How To Apply
For further information, please contact:
Sabina Perez
Program Administrator
sperez@rchsd.org
(858) 966‒7759