Ten family physicians recently graduated from Greater Lawrence Family Health Center’s Lawrence Family Medicine Residency program and all have accepted full-time attending positions at various hospitals across the country.
In their four years of residency, the Class of 2021 delivered more than 1,800 babies and treated more than 24,000 patients at the Health Center’s clinical locations in Lawrence, Haverhill and Methuen. Wendy Barr, director of the Lawrence Family Medicine Residency program, noted COVID-19 made things more challenging than usual
“All the residents worked tirelessly during the past year, staffing the dedicated COVID wings at Lawrence General Hospital—holding the hands of patients as they took their final breaths, and comforting those patients’ families by phone or tablet who just lost loved ones. It was unbelievably stressful, and none could have anticipated working in such conditions,” she said.
Besides advocating for their patients, Barr said, “They educated the community about how to prevent the spread of COVID, and when the vaccines came, they doubled-down and this class was everywhere in Lawrence—in English and in Spanish—telling everybody about how important it was to get a vaccine.”
Graduating physicians and their placements were Elie Ata, Community Medical Associates (Lawrence General Hospital), Lawrence; Layla Cavitt, FQHC and Inpatient Detox Hospital, Miami, Fla.; Julia Cooper, Institute for Family Health/Harlem Family Medicine Residency, New York City; Jamie Ellis, Community Medical Associates (Lawrence General Hospital), Lawrence; Caroline Komanecky, GLFHC North Site, Lawrence; Rebecca Lee, Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, Boston; Yeri Park, White Memorial Family Medicine Residency, East Los Angeles, Calif.; Tuhin Roy, GLFHC main site, Lawrence; Sumana Setty, South End Community Health Center and Boston Medical Center, Boston; and Jennifer Wolf, GLFHC South Site, Lawrence.