Dr. Magdala Chery, DO, MBS, is a doctor, speaker, and activist on a mission to connect the linkages between societal and physical ills in both her professional and public life. In her professional capacity, Dr. Chery is Commonwealth Fund Fellow in Minority Health Policy at Harvard University. This fellowship is a competitive training program designed to prepare physicians, to become leaders who improve the health of disadvantaged and vulnerable populations through transforming health care delivery systems, and promoting innovation in policies, practice, and programs that address health equity and the social determinants of health.
Prior to this, Dr. Magdala Chery served as a primary care general internist and assistant professor of Medicine at Rowan Medicine in New Jersey. Dr. Chery’s holistic approach to patient care includes a focus on women’s health, lifestyle behavioral coaching, addressing health disparities in vulnerable populations, and mental health. Dr. Chery’s dynamic and exceptional medical approach has already led to her recognition as a leading practitioner in her field: in both 2018 and 2019, Dr. Chery was named a Top Physician by South Jersey Magazine.
She has a longstanding dedication to public health and public service which is seen through her accomplishments as an Albert Schweitzer Fellow, Paul Ambrose Scholar, and New Leaders Council Fellow for the New Jersey Chapter in 2018. Outside of the office, she is an on-demand nationally recognized speaker who has delivered many keynotes at events across the nation. She leaves her audience inspired, encouraged, and energized.
Most recently in 2020, Dr. Chery has suffered the loss of her father and mother to COVID-19. Through this tragic experience, she personally witnessed the impact of injustice and racism in our healthcare system. Realizing that her father’s story was simply an amplified narrative that exists in our communities, she turned her pain into purpose and created the #NotJustABlackBody campaign. This platform is dedicated to honoring the Black lives that were cut short from COVID-19 by calling for restorative justice in healthcare for vulnerable populations, with special emphasis on the Black community. This organization aims to achieve this goal through community coalition building, education, and policy solutions.
A New Jersey native, Dr. Chery attended Montclair State University for undergrad and obtained her master’s degree (MBS) and a medical degree from Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine (previously named UMDNJ – School of Osteopathic Medicine). During medical school, she was elected to the Gold Humanism Honor Society for her exemplary service, integrity, clinical excellence, and compassion. At graduation, in recognition of her substantial contributions to the community, Dr. Chery was presented with the prestigious Dean’s Recognition Award. Dr. Chery then went on to complete an internal medicine residency program at the University of Connecticut (UCONN) with a concentration in primary care in 2017. Not only did she serve as her Residency class graduation speaker, but she was also awarded the Richard A. Garibaldi Humanitarian Award.
Dr. Chery is a global transformational speaker, and physician activist who helps vulnerable populations serve, empower, and heal.
Dr. Sabrina Gard, MD MPH, is a primary care and HIV specialist, certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine since 2016 and the American Academy of HIV Medicine since 2020. In addition to providing direct care to patients in East Harlem and Greenwich Village, she prides herself on being an educator of Internal Medicine trainees at a major academic medical center in NYC. Dr. Gard’s professional interests include identifying and addressing structural determinants of inequity as well as promoting HIV prevention in Black and intersectional communities of the United States. She hopes to advance this work through education and policy.
The second eldest of 8 children, Sabrina was raised by a single mother who immigrated to NYC in the 80s from her native country of Haiti. As a child, the bulk of her interactions with the healthcare system were in hospital-based primary care practices that primarily served patients insured by New York Medicaid. It was here that the seeds of her own involvement in the healthcare system were planted, not because of some positive experience, but rather because of the negative impact of the obviously broken system on her community. This perspective, as patient and spectator, laid bare the reality that the system, in its current form, was responsible for the laying roots of distrust. She wanted to prove that it could be done better.
After getting her start in the New York City Public School system, she began her medical education at The Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, an undergraduate program at the City College of New York whose mission is to bring together talented and motivated high school graduates of diverse ethnic, cultural and economic backgrounds to prepare them to serve medically underserved communities as primary care physicians. Here she learned about the importance of community health and the larger structures that impact it from the safety of a small classroom in Harlem with students that looked like her. Before going on to complete her medical education at New York University School of Medicine in 2013, Dr. Gard studied at the University of California where she obtained her Master’s degree in public health. She completed internal medicine residency training at the Columbia University campus of New York Presbyterian.
Jessica Elizabeth Isom, MD MPH is an experienced community psychiatrist, public speaker, medical educator and consultant for diversity, equity, inclusion and antiracism projects. Driven by a passion for collaborative leadership, she takes pride in providing the conceptual frameworks and psychological safety necessary to expand the growing edges of her clients and peers. With over 10 years of demonstrated success in building relationships with patients and colleagues from all walks of life, Dr. Isom draws on her psychiatric training and humble background to connect across differences in power, education, and perspective to foster a collaborative approach to achieving racial justice and equity in medicine and beyond. As a resident in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, she was selected as the Chief Resident of Medical Education and as the Chief Resident of Diversity and Inclusion.
In the Yale Department of Psychiatry, her professionalism, diversity and inclusion expertise and educational skillset were honored through awards and department-wide recognition. Her strong training background and leadership experiences inform her current role in Boston, MA as an attending psychiatrist at Codman Square Health Center. At Codman, she is providing expertise on antiracist transformation of staff and programming with a specific focus on the opioid use disorder services. She received her MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also received her MPH with a focus on public health leadership which inspired her passion for population health approaches to health equity. She currently serves as a leader within the American Psychiatric Association Assembly representing Early Career Psychiatrists, where her contributions center on illuminating the need for health equity in organized psychiatry. She has also been elected to the Councilor Position for the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society where her focus on social justice and health equity provides an opportunity to improve the care provided to marginalized populations in the state.
Her organized psychiatry involvement has earned national recognition as she was awarded the Resident Fellow Member Mentor award in 2019. She has continued to work with the Yale Department of Psychiatry residency program as a faculty track consultant leader for the Social Justice and Health Equity Curriculum. Currently, she is devoting considerable time to growing her consulting company, Vision for Equity LLC, which she intends to grow into a nationally sought out team of antiracism coaches and organizational trainers.