People

Benjamin H. Han, MD, MPH, is an internist, geriatrician, and addiction medicine physician in the Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology, and Palliative Care and at the San Diego VA. His passion is to improve the health of people living with substance use disorders. Dr. Han’s research focuses on integrating the principles of evidence-based geriatric medicine with addiction medicine. He is currently funded through a K23 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to integrate geriatric-based care into opioid treatment programs.

List of publications.

Wayne Kepner is currently a PhD student in the UCSD/SDSU Joint Doctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Research on Substance Use and currently a project coordinator in the Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology, and Palliative Care. Wayne is an advocate for the elimination of health disparities in mental health and addiction treatment. His main research interests include improving the care of people with substance use disorder and how to better deliver harm reduction services. He has extensive experience working with community based (e.g., RCCs/RCOs) and organizational based (e.g., CRPs) recovery programs.

Rekha Narasimhan is a 4^th year medical student at UCSD SOM. She is currently applying to medical residency in psychiatry. Her professional interests include substance use disorders and addiction (particularly cannabis and opioid use) and understanding and addressing the stigma and barriers to care that these populations face. She later hopes to specialize in addiction medicine or child and adolescent mental healthcare.

Nhi Nguyen is a second-year medical student at UC San Diego School of Medicine. She completed her B.S. in human biology and M.A. in global health at UC San Diego. Her research interests include aging, psychiatry, mental health, and health equity.

Paola Cruz Rivera is a third year student at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. Her previous education includes a B.A. in Public Health from Brown University and pre-medical studies at the Harvard Extension School. Prior to starting medical school, she worked at the VA Boston Healthcare System as a research assistant collecting data on COPD and physical activity in the Veteran population. This sparked her interest in older adults and substance abuse research. Specifically, her interests lie in studying chronic diseases and alcohol and opioid use.

Roxanne Ko MD is a family medicine resident at Columbia University’s Center for Family and Community Medicine and a graduate of the John A. Burns School of Medicine. Her previous education includes a B.A. in Linguistics and Spanish from Boston University and a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Hawai’i. She started working with Dr. Benjamin Han through the national MSTAR program at NYU as a rising MS2. Projects that they have completed together include publications and presentations on chronic disease and substance use in older adults, medical cannabis use in New York State and barriers to patients with opioid use disorder.

Mari Miyoshi MD is a psychiatry resident at UCSD and a graduate of the John A Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai’i. Prior to medical school, she worked as the manager of an HIV testing program for people in substance use treatment centers across Hawai’i. She did research on substance use in older adults with Dr. Han as part of the MSTAR program and hopes to specialize in Addiction Psychiatry.