Welcome Dr. Zach Gitlin, Pediatric Team Leader
Zach Gitlin, MD, joined AMPATH as the new team leader for pediatrics in Kenya. In this role, he will work alongside his Kenyan colleagues providing clinical care, teaching Kenyan learners and visiting learners from the AMPATH Consortium and advancing the research mission.
Dr. Zach Gitlin
Dr. Gitlin grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and attended Washington University in St. Louis where he studied economics and photography. His partner and better-half Katrina is a veterinarian and along with their two boisterous children, they are excited to be in Eldoret.
“Studying economics offered me a playbook for the world-stage,” he reflects. “It helped me understand that the very natural human tendencies toward self-interest can aggregate to allow great inequality. Collectively we need powerful reminders to remain connected to one another. Empathy requires introspection, effort and practice. That drove me to the social science of medicine.”
Dr. Gitlin attended medical school at Columbia University and completed residency in combined internal medicine and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University in the Urban Health tract which focused on issues of care for disadvantaged communities.
Formative experiences in residency inspired Dr. Gitlin to join the US Indian Health Service, and he spent his early career working with the Diné peoples of the Navajo Nation in Shiprock, NM, and with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah in Massachusetts. In both roles he worked to build medical education curricula for medical students, residents and fellows related to the issues of cultural sensitivity, accompaniment (walking along side someone) and structural equity.
“In the US, indigenous healthcare systems at their best can be exemplars of culturally integrated universal health provision,” said Dr. Gitlin. “They are proof that accompaniment and humility can leverage powerful public health gains in the face of static inequity and in times of acute pandemic. Such systems need more advocates.”
“We are excited by the arrival of Dr. Gitlin and his family and welcome them to our AMPATH family in Kenya with open arms,” said Dr. Bill Stauffer, executive site director for the AMPATH Consortium in Kenya. “Zach’s background, experience and commitment to health equity will serve as a lived example to guide trainees and elevate the collective work to further our partnership in the pursuit of addressing health disparities.”
Dr. Gitlin continues to serve as a national advisor to the American Academy of Pediatrics on rural child and adolescent mental health, consults on projects of community health worker development abroad and remains a regular volunteer with Physicians for Human Rights.
In his AMPATH team leader role, Dr. Gitlin hopes to sustain and grow longitudinal curricula and learning opportunities for medical students and residents.
“AMPATH has proven itself a sustainable and now scalable moral framework,” Dr. Gitlin continued. “Issues of health inequity or disparity are often met with tacit pessimism. AMPATH has instead inspired thoughtful progress around common but complex barriers to health. Most meaningful to me, the AMPATH framework rests on a foundation of bilateral medical education, vital in a time when health systems need new champions and thought leaders. The ability to play a small part in that education model is a privilege to say the least.”