There and Back Again

Tuesday, April 10th, 3:00-4:30pm

A UCSB alumni, Dr. Jason Prystowsky has made a career out of delivering healthcare to underserved populations in locations such as Uganda, Haiti, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Antarctica, Sudan, and the West Bank. Now a local emergency medicine physician through Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, Dr. Prystowsky tells the numerous stories of his winding journey that brought him back to Santa Barbara. Dr. Prystowsky's talk will focus on the wide-range of health disparities he has seen all over the globe and will shed some light on  the larger social injustices that cause disproportionate health outcomes. The talk will also be accompanied by a short presentation by a representative from a local non-profit that Dr. Prystowsky is the current medical director of, Doctors Without Walls. This accompanying talk will address how to apply the humanitarian principles that Dr. Prystwosky learned internationally to local health disparities. 

Jason Prystowsky attended University of California at Santa Barbara where he studied both philosophy and biology. He then went on to get a medical degree and public health degree at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. Jason trained in emergency medicine at Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA, where he served as chief resident and a faculty member while doing an ethics fellowship. Jason spent 2 years as the medical director of the medical student run Open Door Community’s Harriet Tubman Free Clinic. After leaving Emory University, he worked on both the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona, and on the Rosebud Indian reservation in South Dakota. In the global arena, Jason has worked in Uganda, Haiti, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Antarctica, and worked for Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders in Sudan doing nutrition, vaccination campaigns, obstetrics, TB, kala-azar, tropical medicine, and surgical trauma. Jason most recently worked in the West Bank with Loma Linda University and USAID, helping the Palestinian ministry of health develop emergency healthcare infrastructure, disaster preparedness, and train emergency physicians and nurses. Jason embraces the Doctors Without Borders tradition of temoignage and speaks out about what he and other MSF volunteers have seen as doctors. He shares the stories of triumph and challenge about the clinical and public health impact of social injustice, poverty, and social inequalities. Jason is currently clinical faculty in emergency medicine at Loma Linda University in addition to being an emergency physician at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. He is adjunct faculty at University of California at Santa Barbara and is co-instructor of DWW-SBSM annual UCSB underserved medicine course. He currently is the team leader for the DWW-SBSM communications and the interim medical director.