Natasha Archer, MD’s interest in working in resource-poor settings began while she was teaching English as a Yale-China Teaching Fellow in Changsha, Hunan.  There, she first witnessed the social and political barriers to delivering healthcare to the disempowered.  When she entered medical school, she began to volunteer with Concerned Hatian Americans of Illinois (CHAI) in Cap-Haitian, Haiti, where she helped to develop and maintain three clinics.  “From this experience,” Dr. Archer writes, “I realized that it is my responsibility as a physician to challenge our current health systems and work to develop healthcare strategies that are not only accountable to the people they are serving, but also address the broader social forces that perpetuate disease.”  By entering the Global Health Equity Residency, she hopes to gain the multidisciplinary skills needed to attack the medical, social and political determinants that lead to poor health.

Dr. Archer earned her BS from Yale University in 1999 and her MD from Yale University School of Medicine in 2006.  Her research experience includes a study of surgical treatment of leg fractures in rural Haiti and follow up interviews in a study of HIV presentation and testing.  In addition to being a Global Health Equity Resident, she is enrolled in the Harvard Combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency training program.