Hannah Gee, MD
I grew up on the south side of Chicago and moved to Philadelphia during high school. I attended UIUC in Urbana-Champaign for my Bachelors degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Here I discovered my fondness for research while realizing that it lacked a lot of things as well, mainly the human touch. I spent some time working on evolutionary metabolism with computer modeling and went on to work with water purification in the civil engineering department. This helped me figure out that medicine was for me. I went on to complete a Masters in Medical Sciences at BU and then attended DUCOM.
Treating the person as a whole is extremely important to me as well as doing things that I love. This helped me find the specialty I wanted to practice in. I knew I wanted to work with the underserved, particularly women, children, and the minority community. I worked with a shelter that took in women and their children, managed a greenhouse, studied Traditional Chinese Medicine for a summer in Beijing, attended a wilderness conference, and translated for a chinatown clinic. Although rewarding, it quickly became apparent that health was related to socioeconomic status. Clerkships reinforced my idea that people are more than a series of symptoms and should not be defined by a moment. I loved my rotations in family medicine as well as psychiatry and struggled with picking just one. Integrating the mind and the body was more intuitive. During my MS4 year, I found that I didn’t have to pick one! UCSD combined residency puts itself within the community it cares for and practices both fields on a daily basis. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to train at this program. My medical interests include global health, healthcare policy, disease prevention, integrative therapy, and cognitive and behavior therapy.
