Meet Our Faculty

Stacy Charat

Director of Primary Care

Stacy Charat is a clinical educator and general internist practicing primary care, addiction medicine, and chronic pain management in the Veteran's Health Administration. She is double board certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine and serves as the PACT Pain Champion/pain management program liaison for VA San Diego and the Desert Pacific Region (VISN 22.) In this capacity she serves as a subject matter expert designing and implementing programs to fulfill national pain management strategic initiatives. She is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, where she is the Program Director for the Internal Medicine Primary Care Track and serves as the Medical Director of the CPX OSCE exam for medical students. She is a prior Chair and current member of the California Consortium for the Assessment of Clinical Competence for which she has authored OSCE cases used at medical schools throughout California.

Dr. Charat obtained her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed a primary care residency in the Department of General Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her family (husband, two sons, and a dog), traveling, gardening, reading, learning languages, and practicing the drums.

Megha Shankar

Director, Social Justice Curriculum

Megha Shankar, MD is an internal medicine primary care physician, medical educator, and health services researcher who seeks to promote justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in medicine. Her educational efforts include her role as Core Faculty within the Internal Medicine Residency Program, leading the Social Justice and Advocacy Curriculum.

Clinically, she practices primary care at the UCSD 4th and Lewis clinic in Hillcrest, as well as provides health screenings through the UCSD Asylum Seekers Medical Screening and Stabilization Program. Her clinical niche is focused on women's health, and she leads the women's health quality efforts as the Co-Director of the Population Health Services Organization Wellness Committee. Through research, she promotes trauma-informed care, reproductive justice, and immigrant/refugee health. Her grant-funded work is focused on trauma and resilience inquiry in family planning, refugee, immigrant, and migrant health curriculum development and evaluation, promoting HPV vaccination in East African families, intimate partner violence screening, addressing female genital cutting, teaching reproductive justice, Veteran postpartum health equity, anti-racism communication, and social justice curricula.

Namita Sachdev

Director, Lifestyle Medicine Curriculum & Mini-Track

Namita Sachdev, MD, is a clinician educator and leads the lifestyle medicine curriculum. She has over 25 years of experience practicing primary care, urgent care and ambulatory care in a medicine/pediatrics clinic. She currently practices primary care at the UPC La Jolla Internal Medicine Clinic and joined UCSD in November 2020. Her clinical interests are preventive medicine and chronic disease management. She uses a lifestyle medicine approach in caring for patients with chronic diseases and symptoms, and feels empowering patients to manage their conditions leads to better personal health and wellbeing.

She is passionate about medical education and actively teaches students, residents and faculty. She believes a positive continuity clinic experience is the foundation for shaping well-rounded future physicians. She advocates for a lifestyle medicine approach in training to reduce burnout and to positively contribute to physician wellness.

Dr Sachdev received her medical degree from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she also completed her residency and chief year. She was faculty in General Medicine and General Pediatrics and served as Associate Program Director for the Combined Medicine-Pediatrics Program. She is board certified in internal medicine and pediatrics. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family, hiking, playing and following tennis.

Christine Sonners

Director, HIV Medicine Education & Mini-Track

Christine Sonners, MD is initially from Southwest Washington State and did her undergraduate and medical school degrees at University of Washington prior to coming to UCSD for residency and chief residency in internal medicine.

She graduated from the UCSD primary care track with additional training in HIV Medicine and Integrative Medicine. She currently works at the La Jolla VA where she serves as the residency clinic site director. She loves her time as a primary care doctor and looks forward to serving her patients and the academic community. She greatly enjoys medical education and process improvement as well as caring for patients with complex diseases. She has a two-year-old son who is the light of her life, and a very supportive husband who is pretty great as well. When she is not being a mom or doctor, she likes to run, hike, bike, and read epic fantasies.

Anna Quan

Musculoskeletal Medicine Coordinator

Dr. Anna Quan is an academic internist in primary care at the San Diego VA and Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSD. She completed both her MD degree and Internal Medicine residency at UCSF. Dr. Quan is currently co-director of the San Diego VA Musculoskeletal Clinics as well as Primary Care Section Chief and Director of the UCSD IM resident clinics at the VA Sorrento Valley clinic.

She is also the co-creator of the SDMSKPROJECT YouTube channel with video content focusing on musculoskeletal exam and injection training. Dr. Quan is a past recipient of several teaching awards, including Outstanding Leadership in a Clinical Preceptorship from the UCSF School of Medicine, UCSD Medicine 401 Excellence in Teaching award, and a SGIM Outstanding Clinician-Educator award.

Deanna Hill

Pain Educator & Opioid Safety Coordinator

Deanna Hill, MD is an internal medicine primary care physician. She has been a clinician educator at UCSD since 2012 and sees patients at the 4^th and Lewis Internal Medicine clinic. A former Resident Clinic Site Director, she loves teaching residents and medical students, as well as building lasting relationships with patients and their families. She has a clinical interest in chronic pain management and is the UCSDH Medical Director of Chronic Pain, Opioid Management, and Opioid Use Disorder in Primary Care. She aims to improve the multidisciplinary care we provide to patients with chronic pain and provide better education and resources for both patients and providers.

Dr Hill grew up outside of Chicago. After attending Dartmouth College, she went to medical school at University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and then did an Internal Medicine Residency and Chief Resident year at UCLA. Outside of medicine, she has a wonderful husband and 3 kids who keep her busy, but she also likes to trail run, read books, and travel.

Ben Han

Geriatrics & Addiction Medicine Coordinator

Benjamin Han, MD, MPH, is a geriatrician, addiction medicine physician, and clinician-researcher in the Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology, and Palliative Care in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego. He is also a primary care physician at the Jennifer Moreno Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he co-leads the syringe service program (SSP-Access to Care Program), which integrates harm reduction interventions with chronic disease management and low-barrier substance use disorder treatment.

Ruth Abeles

Obesity Medicine & Curriculum Coordinator

Dr. Ruth Abeles has been a faculty member at UC San Diego since 2020, with a clinical foundation in primary care and a recent transition to the Division of Obesity Medicine and Bariatric Surgery. She is passionate about preventive medicine and optimizing patients’ metabolic health through the pillars of lifestyle medicine. As a strong advocate for women’s health across the lifespan, she also brings expertise in caring for vulnerable populations, including geriatric patients, individuals identifying as LGBTQ, and people living with HIV.

As Co-Director of the Primary Care Curriculum with Dr. Stacy Charat, Dr. Abeles oversees the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of educational content for internal medicine residents, integrating evidence-based practice with patient-centered care. She mentors medical students and residents on quality improvement and research initiatives, many of which have been presented at both local (ACP, SGIM) and national (ACP, SGIM) meetings. Her work reflects a commitment to developing future physicians who are clinically skilled, socially conscious, and dedicated to improving health outcomes in diverse communities.

Joseph Diaz

Business of Medicine Coordinator

Dr Joseph Diaz, MD is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine (GIM).He serves as the Clinical Services Chief for GIM and Co-Wellness Director for the Department of Medicine.

He graduated from the UCSD residency program in 2019 and is currently studying to get his MBA at the Rady School of Management. His interests including improving physician and patient experience in the ambulatory setting, better understanding how new technologies such as AI can improve quality of care and efficiency, and exploring entrepreneurship and venture funding for companies in the health care space.

Tanner Slayden

Mentoring Coordinator

Tanner Slayden, MD, is a board-certified internal medicine physician who provides primary care for adults, including preventive care and diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic diseases. He enjoys specializing in internal medicine because it enables him to create connections with patients and their communities, as well as the specialty's culture of training, research and quality improvement.

David Bittleman

Career Planning Coordinator

David Bittleman, MD grew up in upstate New York near Albany, attended Yale for his undergraduate degree and the University of Rochester (NY) for medical school and residency in primary care Internal Medicine. He was a chief resident at Rochester General Hospital and completed an Allergy/Immunology fellowship at the University of Iowa. His heart was always in primary care, so he worked as a primary care internist in Cedar Rapids, IA for 11 years. He then followed his English professor/Dean of Students wife, Wendy, to Sarasota, Florida where he worked for another eight years in primary care. In both Iowa and Florida, he had busy outpatient clinics and hospital practice. When Wendy became Dean of Students at Marshall College at UCSD in 2013, he joined VA San Diego.

Dr. Bittleman enjoys working with medical residents and students at VA and UCSD. He looks forward to sharing his career and life experiences with residents as they plan the next stages in their professional adventures. As is often attributed to John Lennon, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Melissa Wong

Women’s Health Coordinator

Dr. Melissa Wong is a dedicated clinician-educator and Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UC San Diego. She serves as the Associate Site Director for the Internal Medicine Residency Continuity Clinic at UPC Internal Medicine, where she oversees educational programming, faculty coordination, and quality improvement initiatives that enhance resident training and patient care.

A passionate medical educator, Dr. Wong has spearheaded innovative projects to strengthen ambulatory education, including the development of a structured ambulatory billing and coding curriculum for residents and the implementation of a collaborative evaluation process to promote meaningful feedback and mentorship. Her contributions have been recognized with multiple teaching awards, including the Graduating IM House Staff Teaching Award and the Chief Medicine Resident Teaching Award.

Dr. Wong’s clinical practice focuses on comprehensive primary care, with a special interest in women’s health. She balances her robust clinical work with scholarly activity, having presented at national meetings and published research on chronic disease management during the COVID-19 pandemic and educational innovations in primary care.

Leonie Heyworth

Digital Health &Telemedicine Coordinator

Dr. Leonie Heyworth is the deputy director for clinical services, Telehealth Services, at the Veterans Health Administration. In these roles, she combines her clinical and research experience to help expand telehealth services to the 6 million Veterans who rely on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for health care. Dr. Heyworth is an expert on national telehealth programs and collaborates with federal agencies to enhance resource sharing. She is passionate about her work in leading national initiatives and developing policies to help front-line VA staff deliver high-quality, accessible care to Veterans. Dr. Heyworth practices primary care at the Jennifer Moreno VA Medical Center in San Diego, California. Dr. Heyworth’s efforts have earned significant recognition, including a Government Innovation Rising Star Award in 2019 and VA’s prestigious Robert L. Jesse Award for Excellence in Innovation in 2020. Dr. Heyworth was also featured on FCW’s 2022 Federal 100 for her work in federal information technology.

Dr. Heyworth earned her doctorate in medicine at Harvard Medical School and completed her residency training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She is board-certified in internal medicine and is an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego.

UC San Diego Primary Care Track Key Faculty

Meet Our Faculty