Last Updated: February 13, 2025
In January, RHHD welcomed our new full time Medical Director, Dr. Sarah Elhassan. A medical director helps a health department or other medical service make sure that their work stays connected to updated best practices.
As the Medical Director, Dr. Elhassan is getting to know RHHD’s staff and work broadly. She supports staff working in Tuberculosis, personal care screenings, HIV/STIs, Employee Health, Newcomer Health, and other important clinical services. If you spend just a few minutes with her, it’s easy to see that she’s well suited for this challenge! Her career includes training in family medicine, geriatrics, preventive medicine, HIV/STI research, and an MPH, and it’s taken her from Sudan to New York to Qatar to Florida to Maine to Virginia.
Dr. Elhassan, or Dr. E, is a lifelong learner whose medical training has always been connected to community health. Her med school in Sudan assigned each student a family to connect with and care for: “We would go see if they were sick or needed services,” Dr. E. says. “The concept of family medicine is that you’re treating the whole family. When you’d go visit the family, you would see the baby, and the mom who’s pregnant, and the older relatives. You learned about what a whole family needs. Visiting and doing that health education and getting to know local leadership and CHWs was something that I loved, and it made me go into a degree in public health later.”
Dr. E values her clinical experience, where she works with individual patients, but she says that public health encourages her to understand how we are all connected. “At the health department, you work at a population level. That focus helps you reach underserved populations. We focus on prevention, screening, and treating, which all decrease the spread of illnesses across our communities.”
“We have all these great clinics in family planning, STI/HIV, Newcomer health, and Immunization,” Dr. E. says. “People should come and make use of them!”
Learn more about RHHD’s clinical services online or call 804-205-3501 if you’re ready to make an appointment!
