ABOUT US 

The George Washington University (GW) Residency Fellowship in Health Policy (RFHP) is an intensive three-week elective. It provides multi-specialty resident and fellow physicians with an understanding of U.S. health policy and its implications for medical practice and healthcare delivery. The program increases participant knowledge of key health policy issues impacting their local communities and the nation, thus preparing them to be effective physician-leaders in system-based practice. The elective has two components: first, daily classroom-based learning and second, in-person site visits at various Washington, DC institutions. RFHP uniquely capitalizes on its location and the extraordinary resources available in the region.

​The Residency Fellowship in Health Policy is made possible through the combined resources of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at GW, the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences and Children's National Medical Center. The RFHP is available to GW and CNMC residents from all disciplines who are interested in an intensive, short-term health policy fellowship as part of their graduate medical education experience.

Read About Us

• Teaching Health Policy to Residents Three-Year Experience with a Multi-Specialty Curriculum
• For Doctors-In-Training, a Dose of Health Policy Can Help the Medicine Go Down

Meet the Team

Dr. Natalie Kirilichin

RFHP Program Director ​

Dr. Kirilichin is a board-certified attending emergency medicine physician and assistant professor with the George Washington University Department of Emergency Medicine. Her other education leadership roles include directing the GW MFA Postgraduate Health Policy Fellowship and the Health Policy Scholarly Concentration Program at the School of Medicine. Dr. Kirilichin is also a clinical public health mentor. 
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Dr. Kirilichin received her undergraduate degree (BS, Biology) from Georgetown University and remained at Georgetown’s School of Medicine to complete her MD. She earned her MPH from the GWU Milken Institute School of Public Health and completed residency at University of Chicago Hospitals. During her two year health policy fellowship at GW, she worked for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) on mental health and substance abuse legislation. She went onto become a medical advisor for National Safety Council, a nonprofit that eliminates preventable deaths through leadership, research, education and advocacy. 

Dr. Kirilichin is also active in organized medicine serving as Immediate Past President of the DC American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and as a member of the Pain Management and Addiction Medicine Section.  Finally, Dr. Kirilichin sits on the Advisory Committee for DC Health’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP).

Dr. Jamar Slocum

course Faculty 

Jamar Slocum completed his residency training in internal medicine at Brown University. He is currently completing his final year of the preventive medicine residency program at Johns Hopkins University, where he is additionally pursuing a master's degree in Business Administration. He is a native of Clayton, North Carolina.  A former collegiate athlete that graduated from Winston-Salem State University.  Passionate about equity and primary care delivery led him to Meharry Medical School.  At Meharry he joined the Beyond Flexner movement and gained acceptance into the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholars Program which offers Meharry students from various disciplines the opportunity to expand their knowledge of health policy as it relates to health care planning and health promotion. Additionally, he served as a board member of one of the state’s top non-profit health care advocacy groups, Tennessee Health Care Campaign (THCC).

Dr. Janice Blanchard

Course faculty

Janice Blanchard MD PhD is a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and an Adjunct Affiliate Researcher at RAND. Originally from the South side of Chicago, where her family still resides, she completed her MD from Harvard Medical School and her PhD in health services research from the RAND Graduate School.  She is a mixed methods health services researcher and has worked on a number of projects related to racial disparities in medicine.  Her research interests are how health policy intersects with medicine, behavioral health and racial disparities. She has written extensively on how COVID had highlighted the role of social determinants of health contributing to racial disparities. Her work has been featured on both mainstream media outlets and academic medical journals including National Public Radio, CNN, the Baltimore Sun, the Hill and the Baltimore Sun. In addition to her research work, she continues to practice clinical medicine in the emergency department in Washington DC.   

Dr. Guenevere Burke

Course faculty

Dr. Guenevere Burke is co-director of the Atlantic Fellows for Health Equity, and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the George Washington University (GW).  In these roles, she leads medical education and interdisciplinary graduate programs in health equity, health policy and healthcare technology.  Dr. Burke holds a faculty appointment in health policy and management at the Milken Institute School of Public Health. 
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Dr. Burke is a board-certified emergency physician who provides clinical care in traditional and telemedicine encounters.  She supports telemedicine programs in chronic disease management for urban underserved and is past president of the District of Columbia American College of Emergency Physicians.  Dr. Burke completed fellowship training in health policy at GW, medical education at UCLA and residency training at the University of Southern California, where she served as chief resident. She holds an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and previously worked in international healthcare consulting and hospital finance prior to her career in medicine and education.

​Leigh Anne Butler

Course academic advisor​ 

With over 25 years of experience in graduate and postgraduate medical education at the George Washington University, Leigh Anne Butler currently works on domestic programs in the Department of Health Policy and Management primarily in the area of health workforce equity. Her current projects include coordinating all three arms of the Atlantic Philanthropies award, the Beyond Flexner Conference along with the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation Awards program for the conference, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant on social mission metrics.   ​

Dr. Marisa Dowling

Course faculty

Marisa Dowling, MD, MPP is currently the GW Health Policy Fellow for the Class of 2021. Dr. Dowling graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Human Biology. She then attended Duke University for medical school and completed her Emergency Medicine residency at the University of Maryland. Dr. Dowling also holds a Master in Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Her prior policy experiences include: working for two think tanks during the Affordable Care Act debate and enactment (including publishing peer-reviewed articles), working at state (Massachusetts Health Policy Commission) and federal health agencies (Emergency Care Coordination Center, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), and leading quality improvement and Emergency Medicine professional groups.

As a Health Policy Fellow, Dr. Dowling splits her time between working clinically in local Washington DC Emergency Departments and in health policy placements. In her current policy placement, she serves U.S. Representative Robin Kelly (Illinois' 2nd Congressional District), assisting with COVID-19 response, health disparities, and telehealth legislation, among a variety of health policy topics.

Dr. James Scott

​course faculty

Dr. Scott has been on the faculty of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the George Washington University for 33 years. He served as Dean of the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) from 2003 to 2010. Previously he served as student clerkship director, residency director, Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education, and Assistant Dean for Student Affairs in the SMHS.

Since stepping down as dean, Dr. Scott has devoted his time and energy to improving medical education in Africa.  He served as Senior Academic Adviser to the Global Health Service Partnership, a program that places U.S. medical educators in African medical schools. He was one of the principal faculty members on the Medical Education Partnership Initiative, to improve the quantity, quality and retention of doctors in sub-Saharan Africa. He is founder of synDRME.org, a Website dedicated to delivering high quality medical educational resources to medical schools in resource-challenged parts of the world. He is also the co-director of the health policy fellowship for residents that has trained over 500 residents from GW and Children’s National Medical Center.

Catarina Castruccio-Prince

Program manager

Catarina Castruccio-Prince joined the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity (Mullan Institute) in February 2020 as a research project manager. She currently supports a multi-million dollar SAMHSA-funded research grant focusing on creating a more accurate count of the behavioral health workforce in the United States. She also supports GW's Residency Fellowship in Health Policy as well as other research projects. Prior to the Mullan Institute, she served as a front-line fundraiser for the University of Miami College of Engineering and worked at the Getty Foundation. While in graduate school, she was a consumer assister analysis fellow with Enroll America and a research and policy intern at the Health Foundation of South Florida. Catarina holds an MPH from the University of Miami (UM) and a BA in anthropology from Harvard University. ​

For decades, the practice of medicine has slipped through doctors' hands, outsourced to executives and industry special interests. This is where RFHP offers hope. Physicians are exposed to the constellation of comorbidities  operating behind the proverbial curtain. From the structure of Medicare and reimbursements to drug pricing, workforce shortages, and the evolving needs of GME. The remedy of RHFP has made me a higher producer for my department, a more valuable resource to my colleagues, and a better doctor to my patients. 
                                                                                                     - Luis Dominguez, Senior Fellow 2018 ​