Jason Prystowski
Jason Prystowsky attended University of California at Santa Barbara where he studied both philosophy and biology. He then went on to get a medical degree and public health degree at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. Jason trained in emergency medicine at Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA, where he served as chief resident and a faculty member while doing an ethics fellowship. Jason spent 2 years as the medical director of the medical student run Open Door Community’s Harriet Tubman Free Clinic. After leaving Emory University, he worked on both the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona, and on the Rosebud Indian reservation in South Dakota. In the global arena, Jason has worked in Uganda, Haiti, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Ghana, Antarctica, and worked for Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders in Sudan doing nutrition, vaccination campaigns, obstetrics, TB, kala-azar, tropical medicine, and surgical trauma. Jason also worked in the West Bank with Loma Linda University and USAID, helping the Palestinian ministry of health develop emergency healthcare infrastructure, disaster preparedness, and train emergency physicians and nurses. Jason embraces the Doctors Without Borders tradition of temoignage and speaks out about what he and other MSF volunteers have seen as doctors. He shares the stories of triumph and challenge about the clinical and public health impact of social injustice, poverty, and social inequalities. Jason is currently an emergency physician at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. He is faculty at University of California at Santa Barbara and is the coordinator of DWW-SBSM annual UCSB underserved medicine course and the faculty adviser for UCSB Street Health Outreach and the UCSB chapter for Global Medical Brigades. He is the medical director for Santa Barbara City Fire Department. He currently is the team leader for the DWW-SBSM communications and the medical director.
