Large group of people standing together outside a white building with a sign reading "Welcome to the CHESA Fellows Retreat!".

UCSF Center for Health Equity in Surgery and Anesthesia (CHESA)

CHESA celebrated its 5th Anniversary on April 22, 2025, bringing together faculty, fellows, alumni, and global partners to reflect on its growth and future direction.

The 2024–2026 CHESA Anesthesia Fellowship cohort brought together four fellows—Drs. Nathalie Paul (Haiti) and Priscilla Aceng, Phiona Nansubuga, and Emmanuel Aporu (Uganda)—who, under the mentorship of Drs. Cornel Sendagire, Fred Bulamba, Tyler Law, Adrian Gelb, Erica Langnas, and Mike Lipnick, led impactful research spanning obstetric anesthesia safety in Haiti, perioperative multimodal analgesia and postoperative pain at Mulago National Referral Hospital, and anesthesia-related mortality in low-resource settings. Faculty including Drs. Mary Nabukenya and Maytinee Lilaonitkul further strengthened the program through educational sessions on research methods, ethics, and publication. The fellowship gained broader recognition through a UCSF news feature and new funding from the Hellman Foundation, while also attracting an unprecedented 113 applications from 24 countries including 17 anesthesia applicants from 8 countries (South Africa, Mexico, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Cameroon), underscoring strong global demand for UCSF-supported mentorship and training.

Program leadership expanded with pediatric anesthesiologist and lecturer at Makerere University Dr. Mary Nabukenya joining as Co-Director, and key milestones included a successful Fellows Retreat in Kampala, with teaching and leadership contributions from Drs. Tyler Law, Mike Lipnick, Fred Bulamba, Cornel Sendagire, and Mary Nabukenya on key topics ranging from international collaborations, pursuing funding opportunities in global surgery and anesthesia, improving anesthesia training pathways, leadership development, and more.

Found people in a clinical room with blue walls and a medical bed.

The Uganda team including co-PI and CHESA faculty Dr. Fred Bulamba, CHESA Fellow Emma Aporu and CRC Philip Ewoku.

We also launched a partner of the UCSF Hypoxia Lab, the Uganda Hypoxia Lab, a collaborative initiative with Lifebox and the Association of Anesthesiologists of Uganda (AAU). Key team members include Drs. Cornel Sendagire, Fred Bulamba, Mike Lipnick, Tyler Law, Emmanuel Aporu, and clinical research coordinator Philip Ewoku. We are pursuing additional funding to sustain and expand this work. CHESA, Lifebox, and the AAU supported a joint Anesthesia Safety Fellowship for Dr. Emmanuel Aporu, who played a key role in advancing research and launching the Uganda Hypoxia Lab.

Dr. Tyler Law stepped into the role of Co-Director of the CHESA Research Team. He has developed AI-enabled systems to support CHESA programming including a platform to streamline CHESA fellowship application review and a new CHESA projects database to strengthen collaboration and project tracking. He also received an International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS) Mentored Research Award for his proposal, Prediction of Pulse Oximeter Bias Using Machine Learning.

Drs. Mike Lipnick, Tyler Law and the Uganda Hypoxia Lab team received the 2025 Innovation in Regulation Science Award (IRSA) from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for their project advancing regulatory science to improve equitable pulse oximeter performance, closely linked to work in the Uganda Hypoxia Lab. Dr. Lipnick dedicated sabbatical time to establishing the Lab and continues serving as CHESA Associate Director while also assuming new roles as Global Health Advisor at the UCSF School of Medicine and Associate Editor for User Experience at JAMA.

CHESA, in partnership with the Department of Emergency Medicine, continues to co-lead the UCSF-WHO Emergency, Critical, and Operative Care (ECO) Collaborating Centre. As part of this work, Dr. Adrian Gelb has been instrumental in advocacy for the removal of halothane from the Essential Medicines List, effective in the 2027 edition, as well as clarification on the use of nitrous oxide in the EML to discourage hospital bulk supplies and to encourage the use of patient-level cylinders (an environmental issue). Dr. Gelb also served as an expert reviewer for the WHO Manual on Adopting, Adapting, and Developing Quality of Care Indicators.

At the World Health Assembly in May 2025, Adrian Gelb co-hosted a well-attended side event with WFSA focused on advancing metrics and standards for patient safety.

Dr. Nicole Hendricks, an anesthesiologist from South Africa, was selected as the CHESA-WFSA Simulation Medical Education Fellow. She was hosted at UCSF in early 2026 and mentored by Maytinee Lilaonitkul.

In addition, Dr. Hung Nguyen continued educational training and capacity-building efforts at children’s hospitals in northern Vietnam.

Lastly, CHESA’s Open Oximetry Project published several key studies relevant to reducing disparities in pulse oximeter performance. This project has been a multi-year effort of numerous CHESA faculty and collaborators including Drs. Phil Bickler, Tyler Law, Danni Chen, Odi Ehie, Jenna Lester, John Feiner, Mike Lipnick, Carolyn Hendrickson, and numerous colleagues at multiple partnering institutions.

Michael Lipnick, MD 
Co-founder, the UCSF Center for Health Equity in Surgery and Anesthesia (CHESA)