Jan M. Steckel, M.D., F.A.A.P.

 

Address: PO Box 18797/Oakland, CA 94619. 

E-mail:  jan.steckel@post.harvard.edu

 

Languages

 

Spanish and English written, read and spoken fluently.

 

Certifications

 

Board-Certified in Pediatrics, American Board of Pediatrics, 1997

Physician and Surgeon License, Medical Board of California, 1997

Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, 2000

 

Education

 

1994-1997            Boston Children's Hospital Pediatrics Residency (Harvard Program), Boston, Massachusetts.  Graduated from residency in General Pediatrics, July 1997.

 

1989-1994            Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.  M.D., May 1994. 

 

1979-1983            Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.  B.A. summa cum laude in English with emphasis on creative writing, June 1983. 

 

Additional Course Work

 

1987-1988            Princeton University,  Princeton, New Jersey.  Premedical courses completed while doing research full-time in neuroscience laboratory.

 

1983-1984            Oxford University, Oxford, England.  Studied Golden Age Spanish Literature on a Henry Fellowship.

 

Employment

 

3/98-3/01              Physician Associate at The Permanente Medical Group, Hayward, California.  As a career-track pediatrician at a Kaiser outpatient clinic,  I was the primary care provider for over 2,000 children, 80% of whom were Hispanic, and many of whom were on MediCal, AFDC or Healthy Families.  Most of the care I provided was in Spanish.  I was Chief of the Cultural Competence Committee, served on the Pediatric Asthma Committee, and acted as a New Physician Orientation Liaison.  I founded and staffed our Spanish High-Risk Asthma Clinic, designed and taught a six-part CME series on Culturally Competent Care, and started and ran the local Chapter of KP Pride, the Kaiser-Permanente Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered organization.

 

7/97-1/98              Locum Tenens as Staff Pediatrician, Natividad Medical Center, Salinas, California.   Conducted an outpatient general pediatric clinic in Spanish and English (with a special interest in care of adolescents), attended on the pediatric ward, ICU and Level II Nursery of Monterey County's public hospital, taught residents and medical students in supervision and in formal lectures, evaluated sexual abuse at the Bates-Eldridge Clinic, and spoke at local schools and community groups.

 

1994-1997            Resident in Pediatrics, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.  Completed a residency in general pediatrics at the Harvard residency program.  Responsibilities included direct patient care as well as supervision and teaching of residents and other medical students.  Grand Rounds Lecturer at Children's Hospital in March, 1997:  "The Usual Suspects:  Vertical Transmission of HIV in Boston." 

 

1987-1989            Research Assistant in the neuroscience laboratory of Dr. Bart Hoebel, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.  Measured release of cyclic AMP in the rat nucleus accumbens in response to local dopamine stimulation using in vivo microdialysis and radio-immune assay.

 

1985-1987            Peace Corps Volunteer in Health Education, Samaná, Dominican Republic.  Taught mothers and children about disease and injury prevention, nutrition and first aid.  Vaccinated children as part of a World Health Organization project.

 

1984-1985            Research Assistant in the immunology laboratory of Dr. Karen Thompson, Oakland Children's Hospital, Oakland, California.  Developed monoclonal antibodies to several strains of Streptococcus.

 

1982                      Research Assistant in the immunology laboratory of Dr. Christel Uittenbogaart, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California.  Developed a clonogenic assay for leukemia-derived T-cell growth factor.

 

1981                      Research Assistant in the immunology laboratory of Dr. John Fahey, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California.  Performed tissue culture of lymphocytes and interleukin-2 assays. 

 

1980                      Principal Clerk at the UCLA Tumor Registry, Los Angeles, California.  Followed progress of Spanish-speaking cancer patients.

 

1978-1979            Volunteer Spanish-English Interpreter and Assistant at La Clinica Familia de Venice, Venice, California.  Assisted English-speaking physicians in caring for Spanish-speaking patients in a free family medical clinic.

 

Honors and Awards

 

1993                      Medical Student Research Fellowship.  One-year Yale fellowship awarded for M.D. thesis research on "Patients' and Families' Attitudes Toward the Inclusion of Medical Students in the Clinical Care of Pediatric Patients."

 

1992                      Marguerite Rush Lerner Award for Creative Writing for a collection of short stories.

 

1988                      Sigma Xi, the scientific research honors society, for neuroscience research done at Princeton.

 

1983                      Harvard University

                              Early Phi Beta Kappa (in top 1% of class)

                              Rhodes Finalist

                              summa cum laude                         

                              Harvard Scholar and Agassiz Scholar                                       

                              Henry Fellowship (awarded for academic excellence to one Harvard or Yale student each year, paid travel and all expenses at Oxford University for one year).

 

1982                      Research grant from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America for developing a clonogenic assay for leukemia-derived T-cell growth factor.

 

Publications

 

Steckel, Jan.  "The Pediatrician’s Prayer for Perfection" and "Radiating Pain," in an anthology (ed. Mary Ford-Grabowsky) to be published by HarperCollins in March, 2003. 

 

Steckel, Jan.  "Hands-On Experience: An Emergency Department," in the column Code Blue Stories, Hospital Physician, November 1998. 

 

Steckel, Jan.  "Telegram from Another Planet" and "Family Medicine," in Becoming Doctors, ed. Parminder Bolina, Student Doctors Press, 1995.

 

Geiger, Jan.  "Letter from the End of the Third Year," Diverticulum:  Yale Medical School Literary Magazine, 3:20, 1993.

 

Geiger, Jan.  "Chemé," Yale Medicine:  Alumni Bulletin of the School of Medicine, 27(1):12-13, Fall/Winter 1992-1993.

 

Geiger, Jan.  "Drowning in the Gene Pool," Diverticulum:  Yale Medical School Literary Magazine, 1:29, 1991.

 

Hoebel, B. G., Hernandez, L., Mark, G. P., Schwartz, D. H., Pothos, E., Steckel, J. M., and Stone, E. A.  "Brain Microdialysis as a Molecular Approach to Obesity:  Serotonin, Dopamine and Cyclic-AMP," in Obesity:  Towards a Molecular Approach, ed. Bray et al., UCLA Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology, 132:55, 1989.

 

 

Leisure and Volunteer Activities

 

I write published fiction, sing, and volunteer in the yearly Neighbors in Health Fair for the indigent in Stockton, California.