Current Fellows

Trista Benitez, MPH

Trista is a third-year medical student at the University of Michigan. Originally from Gresham, Oregon, she was selected as a Gates Millennium Scholar in high school which enabled her to complete her undergraduate studies at the University of Southern California. During this time, she developed and implemented several community health interventions oriented to the needs of East Los Angeles and Skid Row populations through her work with the Los Angeles Christian Health Services. This inspired further training at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, where she received her Master of Public Health and helped advocate for reproductive rights at the university, resulting in key institutional changes. She is currently on a research year in the Section of Plastic Surgery and Michigan Center for Hand Outcomes and Innovation Research (M-CHOIR). Her research focuses on achieving health equity in surgical access and outcomes.

Joseph Fahmy, MD

Dr. Fahmy is a current General Surgery at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, IL who joins the University of Michigan during academic development time. Originally from Canton, Ohio, he completed an accelerated 6 year B.S./M.D. program at the University of Akron and Northeast Ohio Medical University.  He is interested in Plastic Surgery, currently conducting health services research with a focus on clinical outcomes and access to care in the field. He is currently working toward a Masters degree in Health and Healthcare Research as an Institute of Health Policy and Innovation Clinical Scholar through the Rackham Graduate School.

Brian is a General Surgery resident at the University of Michigan. Originally from Colorado, he obtained a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College in 2010. He then spent time as high school teacher and coach before completing a post-baccalaureate program at Boston University and eventually attending medical school here at the University of Michigan. During his time in medical school, he spent a year working here at CHOP as a medical student fellow while obtaining an M.S. in clinical research. Brian’s research interests are in surgical quality improvement, specifically in leveraging evidence-based practices to improve the appropriateness of surgical care, as well as using implementation science to drive both policy and individual behavior change. 

Whitney is a general surgery resident at the University of Michigan. She is interested in pursuing pediatric or cardiothoracic surgery. She grew up in San Diego, CA, then attended Dartmouth College where she studied biology and anthropology and Yale School of Medicine for medical school. She served with AmeriCorps in New York City between college and medical school, and worked in the Community Services Administration of the City of New Haven during medical school. These experiences fueled her interested in public policy, health disparities, and healthcare delivery in resource-limited settings.

Her research interests include disparities in the treatment of surgical disease, their outcomes, and burden of care on caregivers and families. She is also interested in the evaluation of post-operative quality of life and other patient-centered outcomes, and the effects of targeting modifiable risk factors on post-operative complication rates.

She is working towards a Master's in Health and Healthcare Research through Rackham Graduate School and the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Professional portrait of Stanley Kalata.

Stanley Kalata, MD

Health Services Research Fellow

Stanley Kalata is a general surgery resident at the University of Michigan and a current research fellow at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy. He received his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  Dr. Kalata's research interests are in healthcare networks, insurance, and policy and their impact on quality and value in surgical care. He is currently researching the effect of hospital mergers into larger networks on outcomes and value, alternative payment models for healthcare delivery including global budgets, and the impact of price transparency on healthcare delivery.

Megan Lane, MD

Megan Lane, MD

House Officer 5 (ADT), Integrated Plastic Surgery Residency

Michael (Andy) Millis, MD, MPH

Department of Surgery - House Officer 5 (ADT), General Surgery Residency

Andy is a General Surgery resident at the University of Michigan. Originally from Chicago, he completed undergraduate education at Rhodes College in Memphis, studying Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He subsequently obtained a M.P.H. at Emory University, focusing on health policy. He graduated from the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago  in 2018. Andy’s research interest include identifying surgeon performance outliers at the national and state level, elucidating the factors that contribute to high and low performance, ethics of big data,  surgical ethics and end-of-life care surrounding the surgical patient. He is currently pursuing an education in clinical medical ethics at the University of Chicago’s Maclean Center, where he was selected as an American College of Surgeons Surgical Ethics Fellow.

Sara is a general surgery resident in the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan. Sara grew up in Boise, Idaho, and graduated from Western Washington University with a B.S. in Biochemistry. She attended medical school at the University of Washington. During medical school, she spent six months at a critical access hospital in rural Idaho and became interested in geographic variation in access to surgical subspecialty care, such as complex cancer surgery and transplant surgery. Her research interests focus on utilizing health care networks to optimize the delivery of surgical subspecialty services across a broad geographic region. She hopes to return to Idaho with a leadership role in the health system to continue to expand access to surgical care in the Intermountain West Region. To facilitate a more in-depth understanding of health care delivery implementation, she will be a Department of Surgery Healthcare Administration Fellow, as well as an Education Fellow during her Academic Development Time. 

Megan Schultz, MD

https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/cardiac-surgery/megan-schultz-md

Dr. Schultz is a Cardiothoracic Surgery resident at the University of Michigan.  Originally from the Chicagoland area, she completed her undergraduate studies at Columbia University where she earned a BS in Biomedical Engineering.  After working at New York University in an HIV research lab for three years, she matriculated to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx where she earned her medical degree.  Her research interests include health services and outcomes in congenital cardiac surgery and enhancing entrustment within the surgical team to drive quality care.

James W. Stewart II, MD