A Geriatrician, a Mother and More
By AV Board Member Sophia Chen
People often ask me how I have time for all the things happening in my life. It’s not an unexpected question. As a Senior Physician with The Permanente Medical Group in Oakland, I am the lead in developing Kaiser’s Memory Care program. I visit older patients in skilled nursing facilities and in their homes. I’ve just joined the Board of Directors at Ashby Village.
Maybe the highest of all priorities in my life is to promote an intergenerational experience for my two-year-old son, Oden, with his grandparents, my parents. A lot of what we do revolves around him. We try to take him out to do what’s available locally outdoors. Nearby parks afford opportunities for socialization. His preschool is a five-minute walk filled with garbage cans of all colors and other items to build his vocabulary. My partner and I are committed to making his growth the focus of our life.
There’s always time for something you really care about
So yes, I’m busy. And yet, something that has always guided me is the belief that there’s always time, if you really care about something. And joining the Ashby Village Board now at the age of 40 fit into that philosophy and added another way to help me feel motivated and involved in something important.
In some ways, I feel that I’ve always been searching for grandparents. Mine passed away while I was young and I feel I’ve missed a lot not having them in my life. I like my work with Kaiser, but I feel my role with Ashby Village will add to that, contributing to sustaining me spiritually.
A winding path to geriatrics
I didn’t go straight to medical school. I earned a master’s degree in Public Health at UCLA and worked on research and with grassroots nonprofit organizations on the upstream indicators of health in both older adults and young children. I’ve also worked in a homeless clinic and did lobbying for environmental causes.
Along the way, many things I did had a focus on or in connection to older adults. Like many people, I didn’t set out to specialize in Geriatrics. When my National Public Health Service scholarship only allowed Geriatrics as a one-year fellowship to pay back my loan, it seemed like a good fit. Almost a decade in, it seems ideal.
And now I’m on a new path to helping Ashby Village transform how we age.
A Bay Area denizen and practicing Geriatrician, Sophia began her healthcare journey with an MPH at UCLA. There she pursued a Community Health focus and discovered her passion for the aging population while working on evaluating a report of an adjusted federal poverty level index. She understands that there is so much more to health than medicalized services and is thankful to be given the opportunity to be at the intersection of peoples’ lives. Sophia works in the community at various nursing facilities and visits patients in their individual homes, and her specific interest and area of expertise is in dementia. She is currently finishing an internal study within Kaiser about racial and ethnic differences in dementia diagnoses and management.