Rita K. Kuwahara, MD, MIH

Kuwahara is a primary care internal medicine physician and health policy fellow at Georgetown University and serves on the Healio Primary Care Peer Perspective Board. She also serves on the National Steering Committee for Prescription Drug Affordability at Doctors for America. She was the 2020 National Copello Health Advocacy Fellow at Doctors for America working on medication affordability and vaccine access, 2021 winner of the national abstract competition of the ACP, and the winner of the 2020 ACP Connecticut Chapter Resident Physician Abstract Competition for Quality Improvement and Original Research for her work on establishing medication affordability as a new vital sign. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, received her Master of International Health from the University of Copenhagen with a focus on global noncommunicable diseases, completed her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College, where she majored in chemistry and peace and justice studies with a concentration in the inequities in the health care system in the U.S. and abroad, and has lived, studied and engaged in clinical and public health research in 11 countries. Kuwahara previously served as the national health policy intern at ACP, is a former federal policy fellow with the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations, representing community health centers across the country, and is a primary care internal medicine resident physician caring for patients at a federally qualified health center in Connecticut.