Dr. Jessica Himmelstein, a native of Costa Rica, is the General Medicine and Primary Care Research Fellow at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) and Harvard Medical School.

Himmelstein’s research interests include health disparities in immigrant and Latino populations, linguistic disparities in healthcare access and community-based primary care research development and implementation. She is originally from Costa Rica and grew up mostly in South Carolina where she completed her bachelor’s degree at Wofford College and her MD at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville. During medical school, she completed her MPH at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and recently completed her residency in internal medicine at Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center.

Himmelstein grew up in the Upstate and was a scholarship recipient at the UofSC School of Medicine Greenville.  

Best memory of your time at SOMG? 

• As the inaugural class, we were a small cohort and because of that, it felt we had a sense of shared community that we were all in it together. Being part of something new had its challenges but there was also a lot of excitement, enthusiasm, and creativity from students as well as faculty to create different interest groups and try new ideas or approaches to doing things. Being part of the foundation of some of these innovative ideas was such a great experience for me.