MEET THE TEAM
FORMER STUDENT EXECUTIVE BOARDS
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2022-2023: Dylan Rice, Reef Al-Asad, Rhea Kukkal, Brian Brisebois, Liz Irvin, Daisy Massey, Erik Bratland, Lindon Tran, John Almeida
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2021-2022: Suhasini Gupta, Natasha Bitar, Nadine Kridli, Ariba Memon, Abhinaya Gunasekar, Courtney Chan, Stephanie Choi, Talia Campbell
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2020-2021: Grant Garcia , Carley Herbert, Sabine Shaughnessy, Kassandra Jean-Marie, Aya Abou-Jaoude, Omar Taweh
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2019-2020: Diana Sibai, Sabahat Rahman, Eric Romo, Deidre Buckley
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PAYAL MODI, MD, MSC
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Payal Modi is Director of the Division for Health Equity in the University of Massachusetts Emergency Department. She received her medical degree from the Baylor College of Medicine and a Master of Science in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Modi completed her Emergency Medicine residency at Alpert Medical School of Brown University and her fellowship in International Emergency Medicine at Harvard University/Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Modi is committed to promoting health equity both locally and internationally. She has worked on a range of topics including mass casualty management, trauma training, Ebola response, pediatric illness, and sexual reproductive health with a personal interest in refugees and IDPs. Her research and projects have spanned across 4 continents and over a dozen countries including Pakistan, Liberia, Bangladesh, South Sudan, Haiti, and Thailand.
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Her current projects include developing a trauma informed care pathway for victims of human trafficking, assessing the social determinants of health among the ED patients, and conducting medical evaluations for asylum seekers.
LUCY CANDIB, MD
Lead Evaluator
Dr. Lucy M. Candib is Professor Emerita of Family Medicine and Community Health at University of Massachusetts Medical School. She practiced full spectrum family medicine with obstetrics for 40 years at Family Health Center of Worcester in an inner-city area serving vulnerable low-income families including immigrants and refugees. For the past 20 years, working together with immigration attorneys, she has conducted medical evaluations for persons seeking asylum in the U.S. She lectures regularly to students in the Health Professionals for Human Rights interest group, and is now involved with medical students, therapists, and other physicians in the formation of this UMass Med Asylum Clinic.
Dr. Candib continues to conduct medical asylum evaluations with students observing and documenting the process; she also works with interested physicians wanting to observe the process and learn this skill.
KAMLYN HAYNES, MD
Lead Psychiatrist
Dr. Kamlyn Haynes received her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1997 and completed her residency in Combined Adult, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at University of Massachusetts in 2002. She has provided direct psychiatric care for teens in the Department of Youth Services for a decade and has provided forensic evaluations for mentally ill offenders. Since 2011, she has been the Department of Mental Health’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist for Central Mass. In all roles, she has worked with immigrant families and the majority of patients in her care have endured past traumas.
Throughout her career, she has taught medical students, residents and child and adolescent psychiatry fellows, winning teaching awards from each group. She completed the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Evaluation Workshop in Spring 2020 and is now a physician evaluator.
Learn more about our
STUDENT LEADERS
Read the bios of our UMass Chan executive board.
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PRIYA IYENGAR
Director of Operations
Priya is a first-year medical student. She graduated from Brandeis University in 2021, majoring in Health: Science, Society and Policy, and Biology. Priya immigrated to the U.S. when she was 13 and her experience with English proficiency exams inspired her to volunteer as a tutor for Paper Airplanes during her undergraduate years. Over the years, while virtually tutoring a student in Syria for the IELTS exam to broaden educational/employment opportunities, she gained first-hand insights into the conflict's impact on its people. Priya views her involvement with UHRAP as a natural extension of the sentiments developed here, furthering her understanding of refugee populations and their health needs. She is particularly enthusiastic about UHRAP's current exciting juncture with its non-profit status and revitalized capacity to serve the community. Priya believes practicing medicine without knowing how to extend the utmost respect, empathy and care to every single individual, particularly those who have too long gone underserved, is woefully incomplete. Joining UHRAP is one important step towards addressing this. Priya is eager to use this platform to advance health equity and learn how to be a better advocate for human rights as a future physician.
FARIHA KOHISTANI
Advocacy and Communications Coordinator
Fariha is first-year medical student. She graduated from Brown University in 2020 with a degree in Applied Math-Biology. Fariha and her family came to the United States as refugees from Afghanistan in 2002 and she has lived in Worcester for nearly her whole life. Her desire to help immigrant and refugee populations stems from her own experiences living in the US as a refugee. She has heard firsthand recounts from her parents and extended family about the horrors of war and geopolitical strife in Afghanistan, in the past and currently. These stories have stoked her passion to address and raise awareness on human rights issues. During her four years at Brown, she was a volunteer for Connect for Health, an organization aiming to connect families to local resources in the Providence area. Through this organization she worked with many refugee and immigrant families, mostly from Syria. She was also a member of Brown's GlobeMed chapter, which worked closely with an organization in Kenya teach young girls financial and sexual literacy. Fariha is excited to join UHRAP and bring the human rights issues to the forefront of UMass's campus. She hopes to continue working in Global Health and refugee and immigrant health as she progresses in her career.
SELMA ABOUNEAMEH
Asylum Clinic Coordinator
Selma Abouneameh is a first year medical student at UMass Med and an AHEC Rural Health Scholar. She is from Derby, Connecticut and graduated from Yale University in 2022 with a BS in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and an Advanced Language Certificate in Arabic. She spent her time in undergrad volunteering for HAVEN Free Clinic as an Education Volunteer conducting chronic health management appointments and after college, she worked at the Yale School of Medicine studying malaria transmission. Her passion for refugee and immigrant health stems from her work with uninsured refugees and immigrants in New Haven, CT and from her experience as a child of Palestinian and Bosnian refugees. Her goals are to work with refugee and immigrant populations to improve healthcare access and quality of care and hopes to use her time at the UMass Chan Human Rights and Asylum Program to uplift these communities.
MAYA JOTWANI
Asylum Clinic Coordinator
Maya Jotwani is a first-year medical student at UMass Chan. She grew up in the UK, India, and Japan before moving to the US for university in 2017. She graduated from Pomona College in 2021, where she studied Neuroscience. While in undergrad, she conducted global mental health research at the Columbia University Global Mental Health Program, investigating how trauma impacts mother-infant bonding, and the environmental influences on anxiety and depression for adolescent girls. Before medical school, she also worked at Boston Children’s Hospital performing chronic pain and neuroimaging research. She is passionate about increasing health equity and access for underserved and vulnerable populations, both in the US and globally.
JONATHAN AYASH
Recruitment and Outreach Coordinator
Jonathan is a first-year medical student at UMass Chan Medical School. He graduated from Brandeis University in 2022 where he studied Biology and Business. Jonathan grew up in a non-English speaking immigrant household, where he witnessed first-hand some of the common challenges many immigrants face, including language barriers and adjusting to cultural differences. Throughout undergrad, he worked at the South Boston Community Health Center, a safety net hospital serving many of Boston’s underinsured and low-income patients, where he worked with case management to provide resources for many uninsured immigrant patients and witnessed some of the barriers many of them faced in medicine. Jonathan hopes to continue to work with immigrants and asylum-seekers to better learn how to make healthcare more accessible for these underserved populations.
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KATIE GU
Care Navigation Coordinator
Katie Gu is a current MS1 who studied Public Health at Brown University. While in Rhode Island, she worked as a case manager at the Rhode Island Hospital for patients and families, most of whom were immigrants and refugees. Through her experiences, she learned how to form community partnerships and witnessed the impact that local social organizations could have when partnered with health systems. She developed close relationships with many of the families that she worked with, and she aims to continue this work through UHRAP. In UHRAP, Katie hopes to further develop the case management program in order to provide meaningful, longitudinal support to the patients we work with.
DIANA SIBAI
Senior Advisor
Diana Sibai is a fourth year medical student at UMass Chan and one of the original leaders of HPHR and the asylum clinic. Diana was born and raised in Homs, Syria and immigrated to the United-States when she was 15. She is very passionate about working with refugees and other underserved populations during her career, and is looking forward to starting residency in Family Medicine to become trained in providing full-spectrum care to communities in health shortage areas. Diana is also interested in global health and believes her work with HPHR/asylum clinic provides the unique opportunity to engage in global health efforts locally.
OMAR TAWEH
Senior Advisor
Omar is a medical student in the class of 2024, in the Population, Urban, Rural, & Community Health Track, and the Global Health Pathway. He graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2019 where he studied neurobiology, human rights, and psychology. He is a current Fulbright Alumni Ambassador and a previous recipient of a Fulbright Student Research Award to Jordan studying adolescent refugee mental health. He currently serves as the Co-Director of the National Physicians for Human Rights Student Advisory Board, and as the Communications Director of the Worcester Refugee Assistance Project. Previously involved as the events and advocacy coordinator of the Asylum Clinic & HPHR, he now serves as an upperclassman mentor for the organization.
SABINE SHAUGHNESSY
Senior Advisor
Sabine Shaughnessy is a third-year medical student at UMMS planning to specialize in Family Medicine. She graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University, where she majored in anthropology. After college, Sabine worked as a maternal health advocate at a community health center in the Bronx. As a former Worcester Asylum Clinic coordinator, she noticed an opportunity for medical students to better support Asylum Clinic clients in meeting their socioeconomic needs. This led her to co-develop and implement a care navigation program within the Clinic to connect asylum seekers with community resources and services.
NADINE KRIDLI
Senior Advisor
Nadine is a second-year medical student in the AHEC urban health pathway at UMMS. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience. After graduation, she completed an AmeriCorps VISTA service year in the greater Ann Arbor area where she assisted with the organization of a food pantry as well as a children’s after-school program. As a Palestinian-American, she is particularly interested in being involved with the Middle Eastern community and resettlement efforts in her future career.
NATASHA BITAR
Senior Advisor
Natasha is a second-year medical student in the Global Health Pathway at UMMS. She graduated from UMass Amherst in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. Before beginning medical school, she worked in an infectious disease lab. She has worked extensively with Syrian refugees during her undergraduate studies. As the child of immigrants from Lebanon, Natasha hopes her work with HPHR will further her understanding of the refugee experience in the US.