The Capital Area Health Consortium, the group of Connecticut hospitals that employs medical residents and fellows in UConn-sponsored programs, announces honors for one fellow, one resident, and one nurse.
The consortium presented its Community Service Awards to Dr. Jasmin Hundal, an internal medicine fellow, and Dr. Joselyn Miller, an emergency medicine resident, and its T. Stewart Hamilton, MD, Fellowship Scholarship to Elizabeth Haskell, a quality assurance specialist.
Hundal is a graduate of UConn’s internal medicine residency and is the first to be accepted into the internal medicine fellowship program.
“Dr. Hundal embodies the leadership our community expects from physicians,” according to her nomination, submitted by Dr. Robert Nardino and Dr. Jacyln Cox, who lead the internal medicine residency program. “She serves as a role model for young physicians and medical students. She goes above and beyond to bring together residents and students from different backgrounds to share a common cause of serving our community at a time when it is needed more than ever.”
Her nominators say Hundal has demonstrated leadership in health equity throughout her residency and fellowship, citing examples including educating peers about disparities in medicine, organizing a Grand Rounds on responding to patient bias, and leading efforts to assist the homeless and those struggling with poverty or hunger.
“Receiving this award is an honor that deeply resonates with my commitment to our community, both inside our hospital and out in the wider world,” Hundal says. “This recognition underscores the importance of our work in the health equity track, which I’ve been privileged to steer. I express my profound gratitude to my mentors: Drs. [Kirsten] Ek, [Christopher] Steele, [Robert] Nardino, [Steven] Angus, and [Eric] Mortensen. Their guidance and support from the onset have been fundamental to my growth and achievements. This award not only validates our collective efforts but also renews my dedication to advancing health equity, making a meaningful difference in the lives we touch.”
Miller is credited with sharing her perspective as a Black female physician and mentoring the next generation of residents.
“She has visited local magnet schools to help provide guidance to underrepresented students starting their journey towards becoming medical professionals,” Dr. Shawn London and Dr. Cynthia Price, who lead the emergency medicine residency program, write in their nomination. “She is a kindhearted and thoughtful individual who has, in addition to her volunteer efforts in the greater Hartford area and in the medical student realm, dedicated a large amount of additional effort as co-chair of the UConn Resident and Fellow’s Forum in the 2022-23 academic year,”
Her examples of community service include organizing an event for residents and fellows to create toys and blankets for the Animal Foundation, volunteering as a medical support physician at the Connecticut SWAT Challenge, and volunteering on the panel for the America Medical Women’s Association to help female students strategize their career goals.
Haskell is applying the scholarship to her study in UConn’s Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program, which she started in the fall. She’s been a UConn Health nurse for the last seven years, during which time she’s worked in the emergency department, intensive care unit, and cardiac catheterization lab before moving into her quality assurance role, which focuses on sepsis prevention.
“Liz maintains a strong clinician’s perspective, demonstrated by her ongoing review of evidenced based practice related to sepsis, as well as her continual study of sepsis related core measures,” writes her nominator, Michelle DeLayo, director of critical care, advanced practice staff, and patient quality and safety. “The SEP‐1 core measure is challenging and complex, but Liz collaborates closely with our core measure quality assurance nurse to audit patients in the institution in real-time to improve compliance with the metrics. Liz has developed a process to identify and follow patients that present with potential and actual sepsis and works directly with the care teams from admission to discharge to ensure the patients are provided optimal care.”
DeLayo also credits Haskell with being among the first to volunteer to assist with the surge of patients during the COVID pandemic, offering to take additional shifts, and providing critical care education to those who were helping in the ICU.
“I am honored to be a recipient of the T. Stuart Hamilton, MD, Fellowship Scholarship,” Haskell says. “It means a lot to me to be supported as I pursue an advanced degree and overcome the barriers of being a working mother and first-generation college graduate. I hope to inspire others to do the same.”
The six-hospital Capital Area Health Consortium administers the salary and benefits to all the residency and fellowship programs the UConn School of Medicine sponsors. It also provides educational seminars to residents and fellows to help them plan life after residency.
The member hospitals include UConn John Dempsey Hospital, Connecticut Children’s, Hartford Hospital, the Hospital of Central Connecticut, the Hospital for Special Care, and Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center.
