Where is Home?: A Discussion with Zed Zha

When Zed Zha came to the United States for her education, she faced barriers to medical school admission and financial aid, and to establishing a sense of belonging. Then unexpectedly, she found the feeling of “home” in rural New Hampshire. Dr. Zha joins us to share her blog post Where is Home? and to take us through her journey to her life now as a doctor in rural America, focused on underserved patients.

Our guest is: Dr. Zed Zha, who is a writer and a family doctor, a feminist and a fierce patient advocate. Her current work-in-progress is a non-fiction book project on medical misogyny. Dr. Zha is a board-certified family physician. She graduated from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, where she received the Gold Humanism Honor Society Award and the John F. Radebaugh Community Service Award. She completed her residency at the Mayo Clinic - La Crosse Family Medicine Residency, where she was the recipient of the Residency Research Award. Zed practiced full-scope primary care with obstetrics and hospital medicine in rural Washington state from 2019-2022, where she served as her organization’s COVID-19 Task Force Physician Lead. Currently, she is completing her fellowship in Underserved Dermatology.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.

Listeners may also be interested in this playlist:

• Far from Home: A conversation about academic relocation
• Gender bias in medical school and the ER
• Gender bias in the study of science
• Applying the lessons from his working class parents to his academic life, with Dr. Jorge Juan Rodríguez
• Community-building and How We Show Up, with Mia Birdsong

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. The Academic Life podcast is currently listened to in more than 150 countries. You can help support the show’s mission of democratizing education and sharing the hidden curriculum by downloading episodes, and by telling a friend—because knowledge is for everybody.

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