The American Thoracic Society is committed to improving health equity throughout the U.S. To this end, the ATS is pleased to provide the ATS Fellowship in Health Equity and Diversity program. This fellowship is designed to support the efforts of senior fellows, post-doctoral students, or junior faculty with research, clinical and policy endeavors to advance health equity for patients with respiratory disease, critical care illness or injury, and sleep disordered breathing.
The ATS encourages candidates from historically disadvantaged groups to apply to this program when the during the selection period. This may include individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups, LGBTQ individuals, and those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.
For questions about the ATS Fellowship in Health Equity program please contact Kimberly Lawrence at klawrence@thoracic.org or 212-315-8633.
2023-2024
Annie Rusk, MD1
Mayo Clinic, Arizona
Project: Respiratory Health Inequities in Indigenous North Americans: A Mixed Methods Study Addressing Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease Risk Factors and Advancing Individualized Medicine
2022-2023
Jamuna Krishnan, MD2
Weill Cornell Medical College
Project: Optimizing Comorbid COPD and Cardiovascular Disease Management Among Socially Disadvantaged Patients
2022-2023
Aaron Baugh, MD3
University of California San Francisco
Project: The Consequence of Changing Racial Paradigms on Access to Cancer Surgery
2021-2022
Christopher Chesley, MD4
University of Pennsylvania
Project: Determining Disparities in Care Quality for Patients with Acute Respiratory Failure and Sepsis: the Role of Hospital-Wide Capacity Strain
2020-2021
Deepshikha Charan Ashana, MD, MBA, MS5
Duke University
Project: Trauma, Conflict and Racial Disparities in the Intensive Care Unit
2019-2020
Isaretta L. Riley, MD, MPH6
Duke University
Project: AdheRence to Inhaled Corticosteroids in Asthma (ARICA)
2018-2019
Michelle Sharp, MD, MHS7
John Hopkins University
Project: Sarcoidosis Low Health Literacy Patient Education
2017-2018
Drew Harris MD8
University of Virginia
Project: Utilizing Medical Legal Partnership to Promote Asthma Health Equality
2016-2017
Edwin Jackson, DO9
Ohio State University
Project: Early Lung Cancer Detection Program
Inaugural fellow
2015-2016
Sarah M. Lyon, MD, MSCE
University of Pennsylvania
Project: Committee Platform and Tobacco
- Annie Rusk, MD is an assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic, Arizona with appointments in the divisions of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. She is motivated to improve Native health as an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation. She strives to improve the respiratory health of Indigenous North Americans through rigorous, ethical clinical research. back to text
- Jamuna Krishnan, MD is an Early-Stage Investigator and pulmonary and critical care physician who is passionate about developing interventions targeted at overcoming healthcare disparities in chronic respiratory disease. Her long-standing interest in healthcare disparities led her to pursue a combined MD/MBA, focused on designing health systems to deliver high quality care for vulnerable populations. She also received rigorous research training through the recent completion of her Master’s in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services. Her current research program is focused on characterizing gaps in the optimal management of comorbid COPD and cardiovascular disease (CVD) among socially disadvantaged patients and designing stakeholder engaged interventions to address these gaps. back to text
- Aaron Baugh, MD is a pulmonary and critical care physician at the University of San Francisco who focuses on improving the care of asthma and COPD for low-income and racial/ethnic minority individuals. His research program emphasizes understanding how social disparities inform differences in lung function and worse outcomes in lung disease. back to text
- Christopher Chesley, MD is a second year pulmonary and critical care fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently pursuing a Master’s of Science in Clinical Epidemiology. As an undergraduate he attended Washington University in St. Louis where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in biology and a minor in anthropology. As a medical student he attended the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, where he first pursued his interests in epidemiology and health policy. He attended the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for internal medicine residency and following this worked as a critical care hospitalist at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. Currently his research interests focus on processes of care within critical illness, how bias affects clinical decision making, and socioeconomic disparities in both healthcare and delivery with respect to critical illness. back to text
- Deepshikha Ashana, MD, MBA, MS research focuses on understanding and addressing mechanisms of differences in serious illness care among underserved patients. She uses mixed methods to study epidemiologic trends in national health claims data and understand patient perspectives on serious illness care, with a particular focus on modifiable clinician and health system factors. She received her undergraduate, medical, and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, before moving to Los Angeles to complete her internal medicine residency at the University of California, Los Angeles. She subsequently worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company where she gained experience in health system operations and change management. While completing a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, she received formal training in research methods through the Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology program. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care. She cares for patients in the Duke University Hospital medical intensive care unit and at Duke Health Center at Southpoint. back to text
- Isaretta Riley, MD, MPH is a pulmonologist committed to eliminating disparities in health outcomes and quality of life of adults living with asthma. She aims to accomplish this by developing an independently funded line of research employing rigorous clinical research methods, through which she will identify and implement effective interventions to improve the health of populations most vulnerable to adverse asthma outcomes. Her areas of interest include medication adherence, access to care, community-engaged research, and implementation science. back to text
- Dr. Michelle Sharp is an Assistant Professor in the division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and she serves as the co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Sarcoidosis Program. Dr. Sharp’s research is focused on improving clinical outcomes for patients with sarcoidosis. Through funding by the American Thoracic Society Fellowship in Health Equality, Dr. Sharp worked to develop appropriate health literacy patient education materials for patients with sarcoidosis. back to text
- Since entering medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, Drew has focused on improving the health of vulnerable populations. Drew has had several formative experiences in health equity, including 2 years working within the Indian Health Service caring for an impoverished Navajo and Hopi community in Arizona. During his IHS years, Drew became well-versed as to the importance of addressing social and environmental determinants of health to improve the health of vulnerable communities. While a pulmonary fellow at Yale, using a community-based participatory approach and partnering with a federally qualified community health center, Drew lead a study that identified common barriers in both the home and work environments that impede asthma symptom control in a disadvantaged community in New Haven. Through a better understanding of these barriers, such as fear of retaliation from landlords or employers, Drew is now focused on how to utilize legal advocacy as a component of a multidisciplinary approach to address the social and environmental determinants of health related to asthma in disadvantaged populations. As the 2017-2018 ATS Health Equality Fellow, Drew is junior faculty at the University of Virginia with a joint appointment in the Departments of Public Health Sciences and Medicine. Partnering with the Legal Aid Justice Center, UVA Law School faculty, the Housing Clinic within the UVA Law School, and the UVA Primary Care Center, Drew is leading a multidisciplinary community-engaged team of lawyers, doctors and social workers to develop and study the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary approach to asthma care in vulnerable populations, centered on a medical-legal partnership. In addition, he is partnering with the Legal Aid Justice Center to survey the home environments within the largest subsidized housing complexes in Charlottesville as a first step towards making systemic environmental improvements for Charlottesville’s poor, elderly and disabled populations. back to text
- Dr. Jackson is a practicing Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Physician at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He served as Chief Medical resident in Internal Medicine at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation and completed his training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at The Ohio State University. While at Ohio State he became the second American Thoracic Society (ATS) fellow in Health Equality. With the support of the ATS, Dr. Jackson developed and implemented a successful smoking cessation and Lung Cancer Screening program focused on socioeconomically disadvantaged and minority patients in Columbus Ohio. Dr. Jackson currently serves as the director of the James Cancer Center Early Lung Cancer Detection Program. In addition, his clinical portfolio focuses on the efficient delivery of health care to those suffering from smoking related lung diseases. back to text