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Faculty Bios

Kristin Beizai, M.D. obtained her medical degree from Tulane University School of Medicine. She completed her psychiatry residency at New York University School of Medicine. Since the completion of residency, she has worked consistently in Consultation-Liaison settings, inpatient and outpatient. She has served in a variety of leadership roles including Director of the CL Service, Acting Associate Chief of Psychiatry at the VA San Diego, and Co-Chair of the VA San Diego Ethics Consultation Service. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the APA and a Fellow of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. She has been involved in medical education throughout her career, including the development of this fellowship, and has been a recipient of the Nancy C. A. Roeske Certificate for Recognition in Medical Student Education by the American Psychiatric Association. Currently, she is the Program Director for the UC San Diego Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship and is also involved in the development of inter-professional educational programs. Dr. Beizai is a member of the membership committee of the Academy of CL Psychiatry and the Ethics Committee Chair of the San Diego Psychiatric Society. She is involved in multiple scholarly activities in a variety of topics in CL Psychiatry. Dr. Beizai is board certified in Psychiatry with added qualifications in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego.

Alan Hsu, M.D. obtained his medical degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He completed his psychiatry residency at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, and his Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is a staff psychiatrist for the Consultation-Liaison Service, Primary Care Mental Health Integration, and Psycho-oncology programs at the VA San Diego Healthcare System in La Jolla. He also serves as a psychiatrist at Moores Cancer Center, part of the University of California San Diego Health System. Dr. Hsu teaches and provides supervision to psychiatry residents, CL fellows, psychology post-doctoral fellows, and pharmacy residents at the VA and UC San Diego, serving as Associate Program Director for the UC San Diego Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship, core faculty member for the Pain/Consultation-Liaison and Primary Care-Mental Health Integration/Psycho-oncology Behavioral Medicine Psychology Post-doctoral Fellowships, and Clerkship Director for the CL Psychiatry 4th year medical student elective at the VA. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, where he is a member of the Medical Student Education Subcommittee of the Education Committee and the Posters and Brief Oral Presentations Subcommittee of the Annual Meeting Committee. Dr. Hsu is board certified in Psychiatry with added qualifications in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego.

Vanessa Lauzon, M.D. obtained her medical degree from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. She completed a combined residency in psychiatry and family medicine at the University of California, San Diego. She has worked in a variety of consultation-liaison settings since 2013. She is currently a staff psychiatrist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System in La Jolla, where she works with the inpatient Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Service, Primary Care-Mental Health Integration, and the Perinatal Mental Health Care Management program. She has also been involved with the Opioid Use Disorder Task Force at VA San Diego, working to increase access to OUD treatment, including initiation of opioid agonist therapy during inpatient admissions. She has been involved in medical education throughout her career, including teaching and mentorship of CL psychiatry fellows, psychiatry residents, internal medicine and family medicine residents, medical students, psychology trainees, nurse practitioner students, and pharmacy residents; and she has received multiple teaching awards. She is a past president of the San Diego Psychiatric Society and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. She is a member of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, where she serves on the Oral Presentations and Posters Subcommittee of the Annual Meeting Committee. Dr. Lauzon is board certified in Psychiatry and Family Medicine and is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego.

Ashley Clark, M.D. is currently an Associate Professor at UC San Diego in the Department of Psychiatry.  She obtained her medical degree from the University of Vermont School of Medicine and then completed residency training at Harbor-UCLA where she also served as chief resident.  After residency, she worked at the Naval Medical Center San Diego for 7 years where she developed an outpatient practice specializing in Perinatal Mental Health and started the first Postpartum Support Group at the Naval Training Center clinic.  In 2017 she joined faculty at UCSD and her primary clinical focus is in the Women's Reproductive Mental Health Clinic.  She also is the current Medical Director at OPSLJ and is one of the Associate Program Directors for Psychiatry Residency Education.

Pia Heppner, Ph.D. received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the SDSU/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology in 2004 with a specialty in behavioral medicine. She completed her internship at the UC San Diego/VA San Diego predoctoral psychology internship program and was a VA Associate Investigator awardee studying the health-related impacts of posttraumatic stress disorder. Dr. Heppner is an Associate Clinical Professor with the UC San Diego Department of Psychiatry, and serves as staff psychologist and Health Behavior Coordinator (HBC) at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. In her role as HBC, Dr. Heppner provides motivational interviewing training to VASDHS staff and trainees (medicine, psychology, psychiatry, pharmacy, dietetics, nursing, social work). She is co-chair of the VASDHS Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (HPDP) program and works collaboratively with VA Healthy Living teams in supporting and promoting patient engagement. Since 2009, Dr. Heppner has supervised psychology trainees at all levels, with a focus on integrating behavioral health in medical settings, and serves as a primary supervisor within the VA Psychosomatic Medicine Interprofessional Fellowship. She currently provides and supervises patient care within the VASDHS Psycho-Oncology program.

Jeanne Maglione, M.D. is a board certified psychiatrist and geropsychiatrist. She is Section Chief overseeing both the Consult Liaison and Primary Care Mental Health Integration services and serves as a Women's Mental Health Champion for the VA San Diego Healthcare system. Her research interests relate to the intersection between chronic disease and mental health conditions and studying implementable interventions to improve care and access to care in the primary care setting.

Alison Reminick, M.D. obtained her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine. She completed her internship year at Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean and completed her psychiatry residency at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).  Since the completion of residency, she worked as the Director of Women's Behavioral Mental Health at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.  While there she also served as the Outpatient Director of Psychiatry Services.  She returned to California in 2015 and has been the Director of the Women's Reproductive Mental Health Program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).  Over the last decade, she has had the privilege of teaching the specialty of Reproductive and Perinatal Psychiatry to residents and fellows. 

Maria Tiamson-Kassab, M.D. obtained her medical degree from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine and migrated to the US where she completed a residency in Psychiatry and a fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry in New York. She was Director of AIDS Psychiatry and managed the Consultation Liaison Service at Westchester Medical Center/New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York. She then joined the Hudson Valley VA Healthcare System in New York where she managed the Consultation-Liaison Service and the Community Mental Health programs. She was Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at New York Medical College. Dr. Tiamson-Kassab was Acting Chief of Psychiatry and then Associate Chief of Psychiatry at the San Diego VA Healthcare System and Division Director of Acute and Intensive Mental Health Services. She is currently the Director of Psychiatry and Psychological Services at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Jacobs Medical Center. She is actively involved in the American Psychiatric Association (APA) at the local, state and national levels as Assembly Representative for San Diego, a member of the Assembly Committee on Procedures, Vice Chair of the APA Council on Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and a member of the Education Committee of the California Psychiatric Association. Dr. Tiamson-Kassab is the Treasurer of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and a member of its Executive Board. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the APA and a fellow of the ACLP. She has co-authored two editions of Practical Guide to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry/Psychosomatic Medicine, which has been translated to several languages and has written book chapters and articles in various topics in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and other Psychiatry topics. Dr. Tiamson-Kassab is board certified in Psychiatry with added qualifications in Consultation Liaison Psychiatry and is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego.